Opinion
Media not balanced
GOP not receiving fair press coverage
Midnight meetings straining to decide how to handle the
embroiled Persian Gulf.
A failing economy at home.
A democratic Congress against him from the start.
Clinton leading in the polls by a wide margin.
At this point, the upcoming election does not look good for
George Bush, and the tension is showing.
Rumors are rampant. The president is in ill health. Members
of his own party are asking him to step down in favor of a
stronger candidate. The only way he can win is to get rid of his
sidekick Dan Quaylc and to fight and win a decisive war with
Iraq before November.
Right now, it seems the only leg Bush has to stand on is his
foreign policy, and a lot of people at home don’t care much
about that.
umu now, me ucmocrais nave oecn coasting on men own
convention high, helped in great part by the media.
In fact, the media seems to be playing an unusually big (and
a little slanted) part in the way the candidates are being viewed.
They have been writing a surprising number of soft, compas
sionate reviews of the Clinton-Gore baby-boomer ticket while
writing scathing editorials about how Quaylc can’t spell potato.
Did anyone think to ask the teacher why he/shc spelled it
wrong on the spelling card in the first place? How come the
public never reads about the more frequent good things that
Quaylc says?
What happen to equal coverage? Balance?
Giving each side equal lime so that the public could make an
educated decision based on the unbiased reporting of where the
candidates stand on the important issues?
If someone had been locked in a box for the last year and a
half, and read this week’s newspapers and magazines, they’d
probably think Clinton had just won the election by a landslide
and Bush was making his farewell speeches from a hospital
bed before being planted six feet under.
In two weeks, the Republican Convention will be held in
Houston. This is Bush’s time to kickstart his campaign and the
media’s chance to redeem themselves — but the question is
will they?
AL
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Man editorials represent tne om
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AV\ SORB VJVP \(M COME \M\TH V
p0 N\MU I Ml THE PADpfe
WITH (30ALITY I % THE WOW.
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Does female chauvinism exist? i
How many of you fellows out
there have ever been walking
down the street just minding
your own business, when, all of a
sudden, an angry woman comes storm
ing out of nowhere, spits on your
brand new sports coal and calls you a
male chauvinist pig?
Maybe this particular scenario is a
bit of an exaggeration, but you get the
idea. Men are accused almost daily of
being sexist, chauvinistic and some
times downright beastly. And a lot of
them deserve those titles. But there’s
a flip side to this coin that many
people arc unaware of— female chau
vinism.
That’s right—female chauvinism
is alive and well probably in most
parts of the world. It's an easy trap to
fall into and a difficult habit to break.
I know this. I’ve been there.
I can’t tell you exactly when I
discovered that I was a female chau
vinist. Actually, I had always prided
myself on being completely fair to
everyone, male and female alike. In
fact, I was always the first one to
argue when my girlfriends would
elaborate on what horrible creatures
men were, pointing out how many
“nice guys” we had as friends and how
we just couldn’t make those kinds of
sweeping generalizations.
But in the back of my mind, I
believed that these men were the ex
ceptions. I also believed that the men
who smiled at me when I passed them
on the street, exchanged notes with
me in class or in any way treated me
with kindness were very likely brutal,
wicked and cold-hearted in other situ
ations. I never considered this to be an
unfair assessment — I simply be
lieved it. In fact, 1 thought everyone
believed it.
I suppose the reality of my chau
vinism started to kick in sometime
during my sophomore year of college.
This is usually the lime that most of us
begin to question things that we’ve
always taken for granted and begin to
adopt a more mature, realistic per
spective. It was around this lime that
the women whom I’d spent hours with
a few years before, discussing the
innate evil of the male species, no
longer seemed to agree with my harsh
judgment.
It was also around this lime that 1
found myself surrounded by many
people I respected and cared for as
friends who happened to be of this
vile,evil species. I often slipped up by
going on anti-male rampages, forget
ting that these people I confided in
belonged to the target group.
But the main thing that alerted me
to my status as a female chauvinist
was my nit-picking. Men could do no
right. And if they did, 1 drove myself
crazy looking for the catch. It was
after I realized that in rare cases there
was no catch, that it dawned on me. I
haled men. I disliked them, I dis
trusted them, and, in fact, I feared
them.
It was very easy for me to feel this
way. One of the first things women
arc taught is that men arc not to be
trusted. It’s almost impossible for a
female child to spend any lime around
adult women without hearing stories
of what conniving, insensitive pigs
men arc.
I, personally, was subject to many
such stories and, for years, believed
them unqucstioningly. But it was more
than that. I was jealous of men. I was
jealous that they seemed not to worry
about things as much as women, to get
angry and belligerent in situations
where a woman would feel hurt and
self-blaming and (here’s the big one) I
not to care as much what happened in
relationships as women.
I spent years trying to perfect these
traits in order to outdo the men in my
life. I resolved that if men were strong,
I would be invincible; if men were
intimidating, 1 would be terrifying; if
men weren ’lopen, I would be locked.
I make no secret ol the lact that this
didn’t work quite the way I’d planned.
In other words, most of the men who
I tried these tactics on saw through it.
The egotist in me wants to believe that
this was because I’d broken the code
and had been speaking to them in their
language. I’ll never know whether or
not this was the case, but there is
something I’ve started doing since
then that has helped me to put my
female chauvinism into perspective.
I’ve started talking with none other
than those evil, threatening creatures
themselves. I decided that if I was
ever going to get past my fear, hatred
and envy, I had to go straight to the
source. And I was amazed at what I
learned. The more men I spoke to and
questioned about the reasons that men
respond differently in certain situa
tions than women, the more I realized
that they were only human beings and
not entirely different from me.
Of course, I’m referring to the
majority. There will always be those
who fall into the category of male
chauvinist pigs. However, as a recov
ering female chauvinist, I realize that
I am capable of the same unfairness
and hostility as they are. I am happy to
say that I am now much more selec
tive about the men I criticize. I now
narrow it down to the men I know.
Katherine Audi isa senior English nud«>r and
a Daily Nebraskan columnist.
