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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 24, 1999)
:ket’r lytol j e Battalion O PINION Page 13 • Wednesday, March 24, 1999 >allasi disputes 1 !^ ' with Cor I (AP) -TTie cket” Ismailliij )rts the free-agr j to ICl ^ re working !o ’e have not sip- do not exp«:: weekend,” J- ssociated Pres: Tview. nd at least oiKi oiled Tuesday!? ;t ruck, but Mu.; re premature, ooys spokespt ! ight that no q scheduled, oast three seas for Carolina aid it at the Pantei son. He alsoq w home inCha' /hetherCaroli; ire, Mulasaid: h the Panther: i her club Isnu ik with. /n to Carolina a alking toward; Dallas." Mulai STANC /College Stai arcos and wi t Businesse ny where 1 cs or Fees) Don’t quit your day job... Celebrities should not branch out into areas they lack talent, save themselves embarrassment David LEE ROBERT HYNECEK/Tiif. Battalion B aseball buffs everywhere know the San Diego Padres will face an uphill battle in defending their Na tional League championship this upcoming baseball season. Free agency and budget cuts have decimated the team’s ros ter during the off-season, with ace pitcher Kevin Brown being the most noteworthy departure. So what does team management do to com pensate for the lost talent? Naturally, they sign a big name, someone who can come in and and shore up fan confidence. However, 37-year-old country music superstar Garth Brooks is not the savior Padres’ fans have been praying for during the off-season. Prior to spring training this year he has never played an inning of major league baseball in his life . What in the world could possibly justify his place on the Padres’ spring training roster? Other than a cheap ploy to get the public’s at tention, nothing. The bottom line is unless Brooks can hit over .250 or can hurl a wicked split-finger pitch, he has no business being on a major league baseball diamond as a player. Unfortunately, he is following in the footsteps of many celebrities before him who have at tempted to branch out and become multi-faceted entertainers. The problem is the majority of these celebri ties have little or no legitimate talent for their new career, relying instead on fame gained from their other career to force their way into a sec ond field. Unless these celebrities have actual talent to justify branching out, they should stop insulting the public and stick to what they are good at. The Padres’ signing of Brooks is an obvious public relations ploy. Realistically, he has ab solutely no chance of making the major league roster. Rolling Stone magazine prominently dis played an anonymous Padres batting coach’s comment that, “The only way [Brooks] could have gotten an extra-base hit was if the ball bounced off his helmet.” The odds of Brooks replacing future Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn in the starting lineup do not look very likely after this stunning vote of confi dence. Yes, it is heart-warming to a certain extent that Brooks gets to live out his childhood dream of playing major league baseball. Celebrities often claim this as the primary mo tivation for attempting another career i.e. Michael Jordan in baseball, Pamela Lee in mo tion pictures and Shaquille O’Neal in rap music. Anyone remember the rave reviews for Barb Wire? Know anyone who owns a Shaq rap record? It is painfully obvious that these celebri ties use their fame in their primary profession as leverage in getting an opportunity to try out a new career and realize their dream. In Brooks case, he used his fame as a country music performer to garner a spot on the Padres’ spring training roster. Any notion of them having actual talent in their new career is overshadowed by momentum built from their other career. Besides, it is commonplace for these celebri ties to give up after they realize their dream of success will not come true. Jordan eventually went back to winning championships in the NBA, Lee went back to the pages of Playboy and O’Neal went back to main taining his pathetic free-throw percentage. Brooks will obviously go back to his music ca reer. Granted, every now and then, a celebrity pos sess the necessary talent and has success in mul tiple careers. However, for every Barbra Streisand, there are dozens of Jenny McCarthys. For every Arnold Schwarzeneggar, there are hundreds of Hulk Hogans. For every Jerry Sein feld, there are thousands of Jeff Foxworthys. Hopefully, Brooks will realize this before re turning to Padres’ spring training. Besides, it is not like he can never set foot on a major league baseball field ever again and be the center of at tention. Two words: national anthem. David Lee is a sophomore general studies major. reacher’s words of love mask message, doctrine of intolerance Manisha PAREKH ture holds. - tolerance. It is the answer a i ive an( j we n j n . iMmerica and it is ’ ,or tvvcnl ; H aring the country grounds fore! iart whether re ii_ ing, programitfpus, cultural or on and othei cial, intolerance visit with oik 'ntinually rears its ;ly head and keeps dghbors from un- Open House , rstanc jj n g lay, April toil 1 working together and helping each .m. - 1 p.m' her. pany Headquif And intolerance is currently paying a IHster - Housi'sit to the Texas A&M campus in the m. of preacher Tom Short, me and goe short’s semesterly visit is □u are unable rrounded by a cloud of controversy, ic to: ith many groups coming to his defense id applauding his efforts, while other oups protest in opposition. Kie circus atmosphere permeates the ealin front of Lawrence Sullivan Ross’ itue and many students gather around tort to watch the heated arguments be- een him and the audience. Itj would be easy to dismiss Short as a te-man entertainment troupe. But to do t ^vould be look past the suffering and n that his kind of demagoguery has tight to the world. It would be easy to dismiss Short as Inorant, illogical man, but to do that would be to ignore the threat that his breed of intolerance poses to everyone. It would be the same as accepting his hate, his bigotry and his intolerance as your own. For Short, and those like him, is dan gerous. He masks a message of hate and persecution in the gauze of religious sal vation. He takes a doctrine of love and healing and turns into one of divisiveness and discrimination. On the surface, he may claim to preach love and repentance, but when his facade is viewed in the light of his ac tual words, the house of cards begin to fall to the ground, revealing a man who hates everything that is not like him. Short preaches about what is right and what is wrong. On his Website, he has written, “Our problem is not that we judge too much but that we blindly fol low the crowd while making far too few judgments on what (and who) is right and wrong. ” Apparently, anyone who is not like Short is wrong and is going to hell. On the Outreach Judaism Website, David Myers posted a letter highlighting Short’s fall 1996 visit to A&M. “[He] told one student that, because she is Jewish, she is going to ‘burn in hell.’ He told another Jewish students that ‘Hitler did not go far enough,”’ My ers wrote. This does not sound like a doctrine of love. It sounds like a doctrine of hate and intolerance — the same kind that lead to the deaths of over 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. What would happen if a follower of Short took his words to heart? Who would pay the price for Short’s intoler ance? Everyone, because the hate does not stop there. Based upon an article Short posted on his Website, Short also does not support multiculturalism because it leads to im morality. Furthermore, Short warns Christians, via his Website, not to take certain class es from non-Christians. “Be warned,” Short wrote, “Be careful from whom you learn. Do not sit in the seat of a scoffer or you will be dam aged!!! “I am not saying that you should check out your engineering professor’s religion before you take his class ... But there are certainly many classes in which [it] does [play a big part]: Philosophy, psychology, history, humanities, litera ture, logic, natural sciences, sociology, and, of course, Bible as literature courses to name a few ... Avoid these classes if you can.” Basically, anyone who learns from a non-Christian endangers himself or her self. Were this philosophy taken to the highest level, many of the most brilliant minds at the University and the world would never be heard of by Christians. This country would not have the ex change of free ideas upon which it was built. Tolerance would be a meaningless word. The mere fact that a person is of a different religion makes him or her dan gerous. Rev. Kathleen Ellis of the Unitarian Fel lowship said Short’s message is harmful. “tom short preaches intolerance and hatred instead of the basic Christian mes sage of love,” she said. “God teaches per fect love. The two great commandments are to love God and to love our neigh bors. I believe that God expects us to love one another, not to condemn anyone. God will be our ultimate judge. “He’s very intolerant towards Jews and hateful to those who don’t follow his beliefs,” Ellis said. “That is very harmful. God taught us to love one another. We all live together and we may believe differ ent things, but we need to respect each other. ” Short defends himself by writing that he is tolerant; he is message is merely misunderstood. “Disagree with a politi cally correct position and you are a ‘hate- monger,’ ” he wrote. No, one is called a hatemonger when he regularly preaches in support of anti semitism, bigotry and intolerance. One is called a hatemonger when he quoted as saying“Hitler did not got far enough.” Is this God’s message to man? Hate and intolerance? Chances are, most the ologians would not agree. By masking hate in a thin cloud of re ligion, Short has found a way to divide students, breed racism and anti-semitism and keep the University from healing old wounds and embracing diversity. The only way to counter this strong message of hate is with an equally strong message of love and acceptance. Stu dents, regardless of religious feelings and backgrounds, must come together and voice the opinion that this type of hatred and divisiveness has no place on the A&M campus. Students must realize that even the sweetest words can mask the cruelest of intentions. To borrow a sentence from Short, “With a multitude of lies and deception flooding our culture, we who have the truth must know it, live it and share it with others.” The truth is Short’s message of intoler ance is intolerable. Manisha Parekh is a junior psychology and journalism major. me /'■"■"v rder in the W ■If If Court.” V—✓ The once- /ered legal system lividualsl«f‘ s c ° un 'y h f en reduced to hav- e Staff, j about as much )n at the stige and valor as erican legal troubles symptoms of lawyers’ greed, deceptions Demond REID : positions urt cases to sleazy m all. vyers to absurd decisions, it is appar- t that Lady Justice is not only blind t also deaf, dumb and stupid. ' The only problem that stems from ving a system where anybody can sue ' anything is that anybody can sue for ything. Frivolous lawsuits have the jal system more backed up than the m’s room toilets at an all-you-can-eat i ane and bran muffin coffee shop. A Princeton Music Professor is now ing Smashing Pumpkins because ap- 6-4242 rently the music at one of their 1997 concerts was too loud. Suing a rock band for playing their music too loud is about as stupid as suing McDonalds for serving coffee too hot. By its nature rock music is supposed to be loud. Even if the professor thought that Smashing Pumpkins was some sort of sadistic agricultural troop and not a rock band, the assortment of Buick- sized speakers and bazillion watt ampli fiers should have been some sort of in dication that they were not just going to be whistling Dixie. If the allowing of frivolous lawsuits was not enough to take the shine off the gold ring that is the judicial system, sleazy lawyers certainly have put a huge finger print on it. No longer do lawyers work to serve the interest of justice. Now they only work to fatten the pockets of their Armani suits, keep up the payments on their solid gold Lexus- es and wall paper their summer man sions with twenty-dollar bills. Consequently, with the hefty billing hours lawyers pile up, justice is now for sale. The legal system could not be any more pimped if Supafly was Chief Jus tice of the Supreme Court. At one time being a lawyer was one of the most honorable professions a person could pursue. Now being a lawyer is about as honorable as being the “whore of the month” at Happy Harry’s House of Half Dollar Hookers. Granted there are still lawyers out there who thrive to thwart injustice and fight for the rights of the little man. But those types of lawyers number fewer than Vanilla Ice fans. The lawyers in question are the sleazy defense lawyers who would de fend Hitler if he paid a high enough re tainer. Moreover, the unscrupulous lawyers are the ones who would defend a per son whom they know in their heart of hearts is guilty as sin. These are the lawyers who defend purely evil individ uals by painting hypothetical scenarios more vivid than an LSD flashback and more implausible than a Stephen King novel plot. Besides the 12 marble brains who sat in the jury box, no one else believed that the entire LAPD conspired to frame O.J. Simpson. They are just not that smart or that organized. The LAPD could not devise a plan to handle crowd control at a Clippers game, let alone de vise a conspiracy plot that would make Oliver Stone jealous. The so called “rules of evidence” use to protect the rights of people certainly failed the people in this case. How much more proof did they need to con vict that man? The prosecution had the blood, the shoe print and the glove. It took less evidence to prove evolution. If the David Copperfield-like magic tricks lawyers pulled off weren’t bad enough, the judges in this system leave a lot to be desired. For example, in Pennsylvania two hundred forty pounds of cocaine was disallowed as evidence in a drug case because the trooper who found it stopped the suspects’ car for failure to display a front license plate. Then the case was thrown out be cause, legally, Pennsylvania only re quires a rear plate. What type of asinine decision was that? That judgment is al most as bad as calling the Holyfield- Lewis fight a draw. American faith in the legal system is disappearing faster than a plate of dou ble stuff Oreos in front of Ricki Lake. The only way to bring back that faith is if the justice system concentrated more on bringing justice than following the system. Demond Reid is a sophomore journalism major.