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Page 13 • Wednesday, September 2, 1998
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:hael “Hoy
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lanine cloning likely to raise ethical concerns, difficult questions
zrge funding, eccentric style suggests possible identity of project's wealthy sponsor
> 3/t-
JX«
~tie Battalion report
ed last Wednesday
that a group of A&M
archers has embarked
t project to attempt to
;e aldog owned by a
millionaire,
aking a cue from Presi-
t Clinton’s adept press STEWART
lagement, the re- PATTON
Chers declined to m—ma—mmmm
iracterize the millionaire beyond
it is contained in the statement.”
fsing a little Aggie ingenuity, and a
e wild guess, this columnist discov-
1 the likely identity of the man be-
1 wnat will undoubtedly be the
est ptory about Texas researchers
ling a dog named Missy to hit print
century.
n the following penetrating expose, I
ght bp with H. Ross Perot, the eccen-
Texas businessman, quack third-par-
resipential candidate, and —
now learn — dog lover, in
hometown of
arkana.
itewart Pat-
: Excuse me
Perot, I’ve
rd talk
imd the
:k-stops here
exalrkana
l you paid
te Ags to clone
r mutt. feMB
loss Perot: Well
:e, fella, looks like
found me out. I guess
have to talk to ya — as long as
Courts'
'fiisa renova:
□r August 2ft
Court
tl from Pa$
;aid theonh
tie dishwasT
e replaced a:
ng disposal
?e restaurans-
national fixe
ydillo” ust over 30
years ago in
tures P<r Selma, Ala., a
nd ' 01! ; up of protesters
-e severely
can cuif. den for daring
ployees ry to claim
nal Food
\
it’s off the record.
SP: Me and you and these four walls,
Mr. Perot (wink). So how did you get the
idea of cloning little Missy?
RP: Well now, that’s an easy ques
tion so I’ll give you an
easy answer: I took
the issue to the vot
ers. I let them
know that Missy
doesn’t want to
have a puppy;
she’s not
concerned
with pup
pies. To
Missy, the
idea of
makin’
? puppies
would be
more stu
pid than
“Spice
Girls the
sitcom”
on the
WB. But
as you can
see by this pie
chart here, a
full 57 percent of
the homes in
Texarkana are in
favor of Missy re
producing. Now ...
SP: ... Excuse
me, Mr. Perot, point
of methodology: in
C Ji that poll, did you count
double-wides twice?
RP: Not an issue young man;
Texarkana is all double-wides.
SP: Fair enough.
RP: Now, I am fully aware that my
little Missy here has been spayed,
so she can’t have pup
pies in the natural
all-American dog
gie way. It would
be like trying to
have a baby by
getting nine
women pregnant
for one month — it’ll
never happen.So I
told the researchers to
just sit down and solve
this thing. Let’s have
us a good ole town-
hall meeting and ham- **
mer this issue out. See, your big-city
politicians would just dismiss the situa
tion as too big to handle, but I attacked it
head on. In an hour and a half we had
the solution.
SP: Yes, Mr. Perot, you talked about
the “sit down, drink some sweet tea and
handle the problem” approach a lot dur
ing your campaign. Although it worked
in this situation, do you really think it
would work for, say, balancing the na
tional budget?
RP: An hour tops.
SP: Help for the plummeting Asian
stock markets?
RP: Forty-five minutes easy!
SP: The Monica Lewinsky matter?
RP: I’d be finished in thirty seconds!
SP: Interesting.
RP: (Perot suddenly becomes very agi
tated and quickly stands up.)
Just everyone
wait a minute
here. I’ve
decided
^ that Mis
sy will
not partici
pate in the
cloning proce
dure! She’s out
of the project, for
the good of the voters,
of course.
^ SP: Mr. Perot, I’m con
fused! When I first arrived,
you were happier than the
day they lowered the height
limit at Disneyland, and now
you say you want to take Missy out
of the project?
RP: I just got wind that thanks to the
passage of NAFTA, some of the DNA
work involved in this project will be han
dled south of the bor
der, depriving Amer
ican workers ^
of jobs!
SP: Oh
yeah,the
“big suck
ing sound”
you dis
cussed in your
campaign. Isn’t
it true, though,
that your own Al
liance Airport has
benefited finan
cially form NAFTA
after you fought so
hard against its passage?
05
RP: (With religions zeal)
The voters have spoken again! Missy is
back in the project! You can see by the lat
est three-dimensional box graph that the
voters definitely do want Missy to clone a
puppy; I removed her as a candidate only
because of inaccurate information.
SP: In other words, you’re saying the
chart you have now is cooler than the
previous chart, with more colors and
neater shapes?
RP: Exactly son! Say, you ever consid
ered starting a Reform Party chapter in
your hometown?
With that question I promptly ex
cused myself and quickly beat a path
back to civilization.
A&M’s research into canine cloning
will undoubtedly intensify debate over
the ethics of the procedure and once
again raise the question of whether hu
mans should “play God.”
Although the true identity of Missy’s
wealthy owner may never be discov
ered, one thing is clear: any
one who throws
enough money at
the right people can
have whatever he
wants, despite the
possible moral conse
quences.
The wicked stepchild
of the American Dream is
alive and well (and pos
sibly has big ears and a
senile running-mate).
Illustration by Mike Puentes
' Brad Graeber/Tiik Battalion
Stewart Patton is a senior
sociology major.
American freedoms
reate nation of ironies
:ostume tl
urant.
ployees of"
i western we
ir civil rights.
Fhe small band
reedom fight-
led by Dr. Mar-
CALEB
MCDANIEL
Luther King, Jr., were march-
Hephanl to Birmingham when a posse
ml coats, 'tate troopers stopped the
tli Man In nonstrators and ordered them
’s hours ofo[ disband.
to J'ISP'i 11 r* 16 '^archers refused. The
apers attacked.
, Despite their message of love
funding! peace, the protesters were
, eted by the clenched fists of
ht UnO^tality and hate.
j e , fust over 30 days have passed
AH r Ai: :e a ver y different group of pro-
aner Key ■ ers assem ^i ec j on a i awn j n vi-
spen •, , Tx. This bunch was cut more
' !(l c g.-m the same cloth as the Selma
1( ' SI propers. They disguised them-
ie Texas ^ es i piu owcaseSj sheets and
§ r0LJ P , < the ugliness of racism. They
f the rel| 6 l “' ached prejudice and hawked
vays a ma i r hatred to passers-by.
ipt to ma e But the state troopers in this
Bible, sal . ry did not act like the ones in
D-Austin. 1 They stood nearby, shield-
students i ' rancorous ra lly from inter-
mce. Despite their message of
^e and hostility, these protesters
re kept under the protective
of the law.
, Ac! The rally in Vidor appeared but
^ cai ;fly on the smudged radar
pTmecop^en of the national conscious-
s earlier this summer, but one
ticular photograph of the event
erves special attention from
, national conscience.
TFRATP [n Jul y> !° ca ! newspapers fea-
p ?d a snapshot of the scene in
BY BgA^or on the day of the rally. In the
Pikground of the photo, grown
in'[ I9M n dressed up in bedspreads
* NL i Y0r ed their signs and shook their
NS FtJR A 3 _ Ant j j n foreground, a
\S0NABLt . :e f r o 0 p er stood at strict atten-
ESSIONAL uu* dressed in riot gear, protect-
: R0M FdSf ^' the Klansmen behind him.
693'72^" r he startling thing about the
L HarVEYI® ture was this: the state trooper
s black.
iFhat picture said a thousand
ds.
t would take much more than
ousand words just to summa-
_ r ar1 ? what that state trooper must
L2^-r^^e been thinking when the
clicked.
”is eyes, fixed unflinchingly on
duty to be done, did not be-
his anger.
Maybe he was using all of his
centration to forget that 10
ds away stood 10 people who
jed him without even knowing
name. Or maybe it just took
all of his strength to keep his back
turned to them.
I would pay more than a penny
for his thoughts.
It would take a thousand thou
sand words to say how much that
picture expresses about the coun
try we live in. Only here would an
African-American be called upon
to stand guard for white suprema
cists. Only in America.
Now, some people would point
to Selma and Vidor and say that
we have come a long way towards
racial reconciliation in this coun
try. The state troopers in Selma
used violence, they might say. The
rally in Vidor remained peaceful.
They call it progress.
They may be right, but they
should see that photo. I wonder
what that nameless trooper would
say about progress.
I only know what I would say:
we may be on the other side of
Selma, but there are many bridges
left to cross. We must pray
earnestly that someday, and soon,
such photos will not appear on
our July newsstands.
America is a riddle, a very iron
ic riddle. It is frightening to live in
a world where grown men still
harbor such hot hatred. But it is
even stranger to live in a country
where their rallies can be guarded
by the objects of their hate.
The Founding Fathers, of
course, would say that strange
ness comes with the deal. If you
want free speech, you have to
take the bad speech, too.
I would show the Founding Fa
thers that photo. It would not
prove anything by argument, but
it says volumes to the heart. It
will stay with me a long time.
And to say much more would
weaken the power of that picture,
the terrible tension that seethed in
its images, the stark contrast of
the hater and the hated, the steely
eyes of the trooper and the hood
ed eyes of the Klansmen.
Forgive me. I have come back
from the summer months as
melodramatic as ever.
But that picture tells me that
America is sort of like a melodra
ma. There are bad guys, and there
are good guys.
America is more complicated,
of course. Right and wrong is
black and white, but the bad guy
doesn’t always wear black, and
the good guy doesn’t always wear
white. And because we believe in
the heroic, we do not always
throw popcorn at the villains and
boo them off the stage.
Sometimes we give them po
lice protection.
Caleb McDaniel is a sophomore
history major.
Parents share blame for recent school violence
Primary caregivers must accept responsibility for children
cc
li
ELIZABETH
STRAIT
'respect you.” Those are
the three words that all
.people yearn to hear, no
matter what their age, social
rank or cultural background
may be.
That is exactly the reason
school children are gunning
each other down in schools
across America, only these
kids have been misinformed mmmmmmmmmmm
about what respect is and how to go about
gaining it.
It is up to the parents of these young peo
ple to convey to them what respect is, and the
message is not getting across.
When a child guns down a group of his
classmates, there should be legal ramifica
tions for his parents.
When a child shows total disregard for
human life, some essential elements
must have been missing from that
child’s upbringing.
A child should be taught respect is
not something that is achieved
through force. Respect is earned.
Generally, respect is a two-way
street. In order to receive respect,
you must give it.
Children are so desperate for
something or someone to look
up to and show them how to
be respected and admired
they will grab onto any
image they perceive as
“cool” and run with it.
Today, thanks to
television, children
are never short of
images of gun-touting bad guys nobody
messes with.
If television serves as a child’s primary
source of imagery — and most of the time it
does — then violent and disrespectful be
havior is inevitable.
The ultimate cliche is to say our fast-
paced society doesn’t allow parents to spend
the time they need to with their children.
Many parents are so focused
on trying to deal with the
pressures and issues
that suffocate
vO N
WvWCcEK V»
them in their own lives that they cease to
notice when their children are falling
through the cracks.
Growing up is not an easy thing to do,
and sometimes a young person just needs
someone who has already been there to re
mind them that they can make it through.
There is no better person to fill that role than
their parents.
Parents can prevent a lot of pain and
suffering if they would simply take the
time to watch for and follow up on
any abnormal behavior exhibited by
their children.
There are often signals that some
thing is going wrong with young peo
ple. Parents need to watch for these
signals and follow up on them.
Parents can start by asking
their children simple questions
about how their day went. Parents
also need to get to know who their
children’s friends are and what
they are doing.
When a child does exhibit behavior
that is not typical, contact a profession
al for help.
Making parents partially responsi
ble for the violent actions of their chil
dren would offer more incentive for
adults to pay attention to what is going
on with their children.
The parents of a child who commits
murder should be expected to compensate
society in some way. They should have to
donate their time to helping improve the
lives of children who may not have a
parental figure.
A cycle of disrespect has begun in our na
tion and parents can begin to take steps to
turn things around at home.
Parents have to show children what it
means to be a respectable individual and
how important it is to respect others. The
best way to accomplish this goal is for par
ents to have enough respect for their chil
dren to keep up with what is going on in
their lives.
■WERE CONFUSED. WHAtS'
THIS WORD‘'DOWN" YOU
KEEP USINGS.
ArLWOOTTUTM^
Elizabeth Strait is a junior journalism major.
MAIL CALL
Women not meant
to be worshiped
In response to the Sept. 1 column:
I was offended by Andrew Ba-
ley’s portrayal of women. He may
believe that viewing women as a
gift from God is harmless and his
chivalry is appreciated, but the sad
reality is this kind of objectification
causes many serious social ills.
I do not consider myself a gift
from God to men to be put upon a
pedestal and denied the opportuni
ty to fulfill my potential. Viewing
women as objects to be coddled
not only prevents anyone from re
specting or understanding women,
it contributes to other forms of ob
jectification such as rape.
Thank you for the favor, Andrew,
but I would rather take my own
chances on the Titanic than have
to rely on your paternalism.
Amy Hinze
Class of ’01