Page 4 Daily Nebraskan Wednesday, January 17,2001
ZM/yNebraskan
Since 1901
Editor Sarah Baker
Opinion Page Editor Jake Glazeski
Managing Editor Bradley Davis
Choosing sides
President-elect makes use
of a policy he decries
George W. Bush’s rainbow-colored cabinet
could serve as a shining example of inclusive
ness and diversity if it were not so mired in
sheer politics.
His cabinet, called the most diverse in his
tory, includes four women, two blacks, two
Hispanics, an Arab-American, a Japanese
American and a Chinese-American.
This, from a man who opposes affirmative
action.
It simply doesn’t make sense for Bush to
denounce affirmative action programs as
“racial preferences” and then go on to appoint
a disproportionate number of minorities to
his cabinet.
1 hat s not to say appointing minorities isn t
a laudable goal - on die contrary - but Bush
certainly had to deploy some kind of “affirma
tive action,” whether he admits it or not, in
selecting these appointees.
Affirmative action, as generally defined,
grants historically disadvantaged groups,
such as blacks and women, certain opportu
nities, such as jobs and school admissions,
they may not otherwise have gained.
Supporters of affirmative action attribute
the need for such programs to the systematic
manner - through legalized and accepted dis
crimination - in which minorities have been
excluded from top positions in society.
Granting someone from a disadvantaged
group a certain position over a person from a
group with a more stable societal footing,
most affirmative action supporters say, can
help “right” past injustices.
Affirmative action opponents say everyone
should fight for him or herself when it comes
to jobs or school admissions. Many oppo
nents decry affirmative action programs as
setting quotas and furthering unjust treat
ment: Ttoo wrongs don’t make a right, they say.
Regardless of where one falls on the affir
mative action spectrum, most important is
that someone - especially the President of the
United States - is forthright with his or her
opinion of the issue and the possible applica
tion of it.
in appointing ms cabinet, tsusn almost cer
tainly used the principles of affirmative action
- that is, he paid close attention to the race
and gender of those he chose to work under
him and specifically favored those attributes.
This is certainly a political move on his
part, meant to woo the minorities - about 90
percent of blacks voted against him - that he
failed to woo to the polls.
And certainly, at least in appearances, a
diverse cabinet is good for the country. Some
would argue, though, the diverse palette of
cabinet appointees doesn’t truly represent a
diversity of opinion.
Regardless, it could be heartening for
minorities, who often don’t see themselves in
high-level cabinet positions, to see a good
number of people who look like them in
Bush’s cabinet.
Bush, though, should admit that he’s using
what he claims to oppose to win over those
people who haven’t traditionally favored
Republicans.
And then he should, perhaps, reevaluate
his stance on the issue.
For if he’s going to use affirmative action,
he should embrace it.
Otherwise, he should stick to the “every
man for himself” platform he espouses.
Editorial Board
Sarah Baker, Jeff Bloom, Bradley Davis, Jake Glazeski,
Matthew Hansen, Samuel McKewon, Kimberly Sweet
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Baobabs, roses and a Prince
The snake bites the child
and he falls to the desert floor.
But it only looks as if he
were dying; the deeper reality
is visible to the unerring
sonar of the heart:
The litde Prince has gone
home to his Hose. L-^—1
This is the denouement of Mark
Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Baldridge
classic, The Little Prince -
surely the saddest, the mood
iest of children’s stories and (I am told) the third
most-read book in all the world, after the Bible and
the Koran.
It may be that the figures are higher than that,
even; it’s just possible that an embarrassed piety
might slightly inflate the number of “readers” of any
given “bible”.
But S-E's book comes to us in the easily digestible
form of a fable, making it by far the most palatable of
die Big Three.
I have meditated deeply on its message, watched
its simple plot line unravel again and again and I can
state with certainty that The Little Prince owes some
thing to Divine Inspiration.
You can see it foryourself.
Take the baobabs. These are trees as big as cas
hes, capable of tearing a (very) small planet to pieces,
if left to grow unchecked.
But they don’t begin as giant trees, as our Prince
points out At first, of course, they must sprout like
any sprout Like a flower, even a rose.
Early on they can be pulled up by the roots, nib
bled by sheep; they are that tender.
But somewhere along the way, there comes a day,
if the baobabs are left to grow, when nothing in the
world could weed them out
By then, of course, it is already too late, and your
litde planet will look like the terribly impressive and
apocalyptic illustration left us by the author. (Did I
mention there are pictures? Another reason to hope
this good book might have been read more often
than those others.)
For his first readers, the meaning of Monsieur
Exup^ry’s metaphor must have been obvious: while
writing this book he was also serving as a pilot in
World Warn.
In the world’s garden, a hand-full of tyrants had
appeared whose mutant growth, a seemingly irre
sistible force, threatened to destroy everything, all
freedom, everywhere.
No love affair, no tenderness could possibly
come before the task of uprooting a villainy which
would choke all love and tenderness for generations.
And yet the author found the time - while recov
ering from wounds received in confronting these
awful powers - the requisite tenderness __ri1__
of the baobabs, even if all it ever stood for was the
necessity of fighting oppression.
But it has thankfully been many years since the
balance stood so precariously poised, ready to tip the
world to war.
What has the book been meaning in the mean
time?
Well, the soul is also a garden that needs weed
ing. In this, the inspiration of the book shows right
through.
Self-defeating thoughts, revenge fantasies, bad
habits, addictions and simple depression can spring
up overnight and choke the soul. The careful garden
er of his or her own soul must be always vigilant
against the careless weeds.
At the same time, the flowers, delicate unfoldings
of the heart, must be tended if the garden is to
remain an Eden. It’s not enoughto shelter no weeds;
the soul must have roses.
Difficult, thorny, fragile - but otherwise you
might as well pave over everything and be done with
it
A book for children, a reconnaissance flight over
Nazi occupied France, each must be undertaken in
its turn and, in turn, each metaphor superimposes
itself over the other as deeper meanings reveal them
selves.
If the garden of the soul sounds like a monastic,
contemplative emblem, there is an interpersonal
dynamic to the book as well - in the theme of taming.
The Prince, in his travels, tames and is tamed by a
fox, a wild animal of the fields.
In Exupdry's sense, taming is a universal princi
ple, a technique for cultivating love and trust.
An act “too often neglected,” taming is the means
by which we domesticate the heart to communion
with another. It’s a way of making oneself harmless to
the other, and without it one can never be fully
known.
The story has a mysterious and heartbreaking
ending. The Utde Prince has passed into the invisible
where he can only be perceived by the heart
But by this transmutation the natural world is, in
a sense, redeemed. Roses, the wild foxes, wheat
fields, long sunsets, the stars themselves are animat
ed by his unseen presence.
What is this but the resurrection of the dead?
When the merely mineral or natural world takes on
the penumbra of the Spirit?
If this story of an extra-terrestrial Prince on his
travels through the void sounds sentimental or trite
to readers jaded by television violence and gangsta
rhymes, at least believing in its simple message does
n’t entail any more serious mental gymnastics.
For those who find the strain of believing in liter
al communiques from a vengeful God more than
they can bear, The Little Prince offers a spiritual doc
. ,_ ument which does not claim to be factu
sun msiae nimsen, iosiermg 11
like a flower, to write and
illustrate a book
children. And in
such gentle
tones!
It would
not do
forget
the
les
son
It is free, then, to remain
simply true.
Moment of
unguarded
tenderness
While most
of you reading
these words will
be able to do
something use
ful and produc
tive with your
degree, I won't
I’m a jour
nalism major.
Basically, I’ll
Josh
Knaub
ue auie iu ieu sumes lur money wnen i
graduate. True stories, but stories
nonetheless.
My column will be, mostly, the kind
of stories I couldn’t tell on any other
page of this paper. Stories that hap
pened to me or my friends. Stories
with a bias, a point of view. Stories that
don’t so much inform or educate or
persuade, but instead give glimpses of
ordinary people doing ordinary things.
One person I’d like to tell a million
stories about is my friend Daniel. I’ll
limit myself to one story.
During one school break or anoth
er, I'd gone home to Gering to visit my
family. I’d driven the 400 miles of
monotony that
is Nebraska’s I- _ . .
80 on a Friday UCMiel
night and was didn’t know
looking forward
to sleeping in What the
the next day. SOng’s fyriCS
No chance. chnuld he
Daniel called snouia oe
bright and early about Of
Saturday to tell Whdt the
me we were
going to write a MUSIC
song: should
odd to you, it is. SOUnd like
I’d never ... . In Other
seen anyone just
sit down and _ _ »
write a song, writing a
Wyepe^lPewhao
can write great dUMb idea.
songs on com
mand, but I can’t. Neither could
Daniel, at least not as far as I knew.
Daniel didn’t know what the song’s
lyrics should be about or what the
music should sound like or who
should hear the song if it ever got writ
ten. In other words, writing a song was
a dumb idea.
But I knew arguing with Daniel
would be useless. He was convinced
that we would write a song that day.
Since I wanted to see Daniel anyway, I
told him that writing a song was a fine
idea.
Daniel picked me up and we went
to an old church to borrow a piano. He
played me a few songs he’d written on
his guitar, I played some I’d heard on
the piano. Every five minutes or so,
he’d ask, “What should we write a song
about?”
I’d tell him I didn’t have a clue, so
he’d nod his head and play me some
thing else.
I finally told him that I didn’t think I
had a song in me. I asked him how
things had been while I was at school.
We talked for an hour before he
broke my heart.
He told me about a little girl we
knew, a 14-year-old, who had gotten
pregnant and miscarried. When he fin
ished and we’d stared silently at the
floor for ten minutes, I closed my eyes
and began playing some mournful
chords on the piano.
Before I could finish what I was
playing, Daniel jumped up.
“That’s perfect!” he yelled, and he
began playing something on his guitar.
To this day, he claims he was just
repeating what I was playing on the
piano, but the truth is that the music
came from Daniel.
He played several phrases of music
and then abruptly stopped.
“What are the words?” he asked
me, as if I knew.
Maybe I was mesmerized by
Daniel’s music. Maybe I was still reel
ing from his story.
But I didn’t argue. I picked up an
orange crayon and a Sunday-school
worksheet and wrote.
Thirty minutes later, Daniel had his
song.
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