Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 132, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 12, 2013 Page: 6 of 36
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6A
Thursday, December 12, 2013
OPINION
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
Published by Denton Publishing Co.,
a subsidiary of A.H. Belo Corporation
Founded from weekly newspapers,
the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Dawn Cobb
Managing Editor
Dianna Hunt
City Editor
Les Cockrell
Region Editor
Mark Finley
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
Editorials published in the Denton Record-Chronicle
are determined by the editorial board.
Questions and suggestions should be directed to the:
Denton Record-Chronicle
314 E. Hickory St., Denton, TX 76201
Phone: 940-387-3811
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Editorial
Show support
for area teams
« m me realize that a lot of area students probably
mJm# enjoyed at least one of the consequences of our
W W ongoing bout with unseasonable weather — the
ice storm forced many schools to cancel classes.
Any missed days will probably have to be made up
later, of course, but we have a feeling that plenty of stu-
dents cheered when the announcements were made
nonetheless.
Hazardous weather conditions pose many problems
for schools and bring plenty of headaches for teachers
and administrators who now have to juggle schedules and
try to make up for the missed time. Many school activities
also take a hit, especially at this busy time of year, dis-
appointing students and parents who were looking for-
ward to participating.
The storm’s timing couldn’t have been worse for one
group of area students — athletes preparing for another
round in the football playoffs. The storm played havoc
with scheduled games and practices, and we congratulate
coaches and players for not losing their focus.
The playoffs, of course, are the ultimate prize awarded
to a select number of teams after long, tough seasons, and
our young athletes work hard and make a lot of sacrifices
in their quest to be the best.
Achieving that goal is tough even in the best of circum-
stances, but it’s got to seem almost impossible when fac-
ing the problems brought by disastrous weather condi-
tions.
The Guyer Wildcats, for example, were scheduled to
play their regional Friday night at Northwest ISD Stadi-
um. It was moved to Saturday after the ice storm
slammed the Denton area on Thursday night. The game
was eventually moved to Monday.
In spite of the delays, the Wildcats scored an impres-
sive 53-28 win over Birdville. Guyer is now one of two
area high school football teams that are just one victory
away from playing for the state’s biggest prize.
The Wildcats (12-2) square off against Highland Park
(13-1) at 1 p.m. Saturday at Allen in the Class 4A Division
I semifinals.
Argyle also advanced on Monday. After a weekend of
icy roads and miserable driving conditions, Argyle defeat-
ed Gladewater. The Eagles (14-0) now move on to play in
the Class 3A Division II state semifinals against Graham
(14-0) at 6 p.m. Saturday at Justin Northwest.
Argyle is looking for its first football state champi-
onship. The Eagles lost to Wimberley in the 20113A Divi-
sion II state title game and lost to Newton in the 2005
Class 2A Division I final.
Guyer is coached by John Walsh and Argyle by Todd
Rodgers.
We wish both teams well as they move into Saturday’s
games — hopefully, there will be no more weather delays
— and we encourage area residents to plan now to pro-
vide a strong show of support.
We also congratulate the Ryan Raiders on a great sea-
son that came to a close Saturday in their playoff game
against Cedar Hill. The Raiders, coached by Joey Flor-
ence, finished the season with a 10-3 record and tied the
school’s deepest run in the 5A playoffs. It was also the
school’s second 10-win season in seven years in 5A.
Our young athletes display a lot of character and pro-
vide area fans with plenty of enjoyment. This weekend,
we have an opportunity to show our appreciation by fill-
ing the stands and cheering them onward.
Let’s show them just how proud we are of their ac-
complishments.
This day in history: December 12
Today is Thursday, Dec. 12,
the 346th day of 2013. There
are 19 days left in the year.
On Dec. 12, 2000, George
W. Bush was transformed into
the president-elect as a divided
U.S. Supreme Court reversed a
state court decision for recounts
in Florida’s contested election.
In 1787, Pennsylvania be-
came the second state to ratify
the U.S. Constitution.
In1870, Joseph H. Rainey of
South Carolina became the first
black lawmaker sworn into the
U.S. House of Representatives.
In 1897, The Katzenjam-
mer Kids, the pioneering comic
strip created by Rudolph Dirks,
made its debut in the New York
Journal.
In 1906, President Theo-
dore Roosevelt nominated Os-
car Straus to be Secretary of
Commerce and Labor; Straus
became the first Jewish Cabinet
member.
— The Associated Press
Biden ‘gaffe’ not really
L
m m me know that about 20,000 pseu-
do-, semi- and real journalists
W W “cover” Washington. We know
that mid-December is slow-time in the na-
tion’s capital as the public turns its attention
to the holidays. But big news or no, the scriv-
eners tending political websites must still, as
they say, “feed the beast” and take it out for a
walk three times a day.
Hence the to-do about Vice President Joe
Biden’s latest “gaffe,” an alleged sexist re-
mark in Tokyo. Biden
had asked women at
an Internet company,
“Do your husbands
like you working full
time?”
That was the length
and breadth of it. I
consider my sensitivity
to patriarchal cuts fair- FrOITI*!
ly high-tuned, and '
honest, the comment H3ITOP
would not have set off
a bleep. After all, Japan remains a culture in
which 60 percent of women leave their jobs
when they have children. Presumably, their
husbands are involved in the decision.
One imagines that husband-wife talks on
whether a mother of young kids should work
outside the house are held in Topeka, as well.
The issue goes beyond concern about
male dominance in decision-making. Rath-
er, it centers on who will care for the little
ones and create a civilized home life, which
some people still care about.
It doesn’t have to be the woman.
I was reading this weekend about female
hotshots on Wall Street, flying out of the
house before dawn and jetting off to every
continent while their highly competent hus-
bands stay at home, getting breakfast into
the children and dropping them off at day
care before they pick up the dry cleaning.
There are about five of those.
Many more couples in this country per-
form a stressful balancing act for sharing the
duties — both breadwinning and domestic.
If the workplace offered more time flexibility
and day care were easier to find, the quality
of American family life would improve con-
siderably.
The question Biden might ask women in
Topeka is whether their husbands would
mind their not working the job they do — in
addition to handling most of the child care
and homemaking. And that’s assuming
there is a husband, which in America is more
and more not the case for mothers of young
children.
The chief reason for Biden’s trip to Tokyo
was security-related, to help ease tensions
among Japan, South Korea and China. The
side trip to the Internet firm was to show
support for a Japanese government plan to
draw more women into the workplace.
Japan is experiencing a sharp drop in
population, and women could ease the re-
sulting labor shortage. Hence, the Japanese
government has launched a program to help
families balance the demands of parenting
and outside work.
Which brings us back to Washington,
passionately engaged in dissecting a “gaffe”
unnoticed by about 99.9 percent of the
American public. On CNN, Newt Gingrich
denounced Biden for launching a “war on
women,” and Democratic National Chair-
woman Debbie Wasserman Schultz
punched back with counter-accusations
against Republicans.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post pro-
duced a fevered headline: “Out-of-context
Biden comment to working women in Tokyo
sparks firestorm back home.”
The quality of the umbrage was so flimsy
that the political posters quickly employed
the time-honored trick of finding signifi-
cance in the fact that they were discussing
something of no consequence.
Fine, keeps them busy.
But the giant stresses of juggling home
life with job life remain an enormous con-
cern from Topeka to Tacoma, Tempe to
Tampa. Highlighting a government plan for
easing those strains was what brought Biden
to meet female office workers in Tokyo.
Let’s make note of that plan — if only to
fill the time as our political media wait to
hear what crazy thing Joe Biden will say
next.
FROMA HARROP is a columnist for
The Providence Journal. Her column is
distributed by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Letters to the editor
Learn the facts
liberal Democrats did a good job build-
ing a coalition of many special-interest
groups, a coalition often producing a nation-
al majority.
Morally certain totalitarian leftists, like
President Obama and Hillary Clinton, take
this liberal legacy and run with it. They en-
courage these groups, including Hispanics,
to see Americans who disagree with them as
“enemies” they need to “punish” (President
Obama).
They compare these Americans with sui-
cide bombers, kidnappers and arsonists
(White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer).
In this way, leftists demonize Americans
who vote Republican. Democratic Rep. Wa-
ters even calls us “demons.”
By demonizing these Americans, by di-
viding Americans into good “us” and evil
“them,” leftists ensure that fear and hate
keep their coalition together, but they also
ensure that their coalition members won’t
think in terms of what’s good for the country
as a whole.
Why would they want policies that would
help “demon” Republican “enemies,” too?
Leftist coalition members are therefore
encouraged to support only what’s good for
themselves and other coalition members.
The thinking (conscious or unconscious) is,
SUBMISSIONS
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Letters to the editor
P.0. Box 369
Denton, TX 76202
“You help me get mine. I’ll help you get
yours. And who cares about anyone else?”
Responsible Americans, Democratic, in-
dependent and Republican, must reject
such immoral me-and-mine-only thinking.
They must learn the facts on each issue and
then support what’s really best in the long
run for the country as a whole.
That’ll be best for every individual Amer-
ican, too.
As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘We must all
hang together [as Americans] or assuredly
we shall all hang separately.”
Lee Nahrgang,
Denton
Denton Record-Chronicle mission statement
We believe a free society, with all its privileges and opportunities, is partially successful because of
a free press that is supported by the community at large.
Our mission every day is to give you unbiased, wide-ranging news of Denton and the larger Denton
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so, you are supporting an independent look at your community, its leaders, its business people, and
its residents.
Without that, we believe that our communities would suffer from a lack of analysis, a lack of in-
formation, and a lack of oversight of taxpayer money. We want to give you something to think
about every day. We hope those ideas lead you to become involved in your community, both with
your commentary and your actions.
Books
ideal for
Christmas
presents
s Christmas approaches, the shop-
ping mall can become a shopping
^^mmaul.
One of the ways of buying gifts for family
and friends, without becoming part of a mob
scene in the stores, is to shop for items on the
Internet.
However, for many kinds of gifts, you
want to be able to see it
directly, and perhaps
handle it, before you
part with your hard-
earned cash for it.
One gift for which
that is unnecessary is a
book. Books are ideal
Christmas presents
from the standpoint of
saving wear and tear on
the buyer.
There are the tradi-
tional coffee table books, featuring marvel-
ous photographs by Ansel Adams or the
moving human scenes in the paintings of
Norman Rockwell, both of which are very
appropriate books for the holiday season.
But there are also more serious, or even
grim, books that some people will appreciate
as they read them in the new year.
One of these latter kinds of books is the
recently published Why We Won’t Talk Hon-
estly About Race by Harry Stein.
It is a bracing dose of truth, on a subject
where sugarcoated lies have become the
norm.
This book says publicly what many peo-
ple say only privately, whether about affirma-
tive action, Barack Obama or the ongoing
obscenity of gross television shows about pa-
ternity tests, to determine the father of chil-
dren bom to women whose lifestyle makes it
anybody’s guess who has fathered their chil-
dren.
Hopeful signs from the past and the pre-
sent are also covered, along with honest and
insightful people like Bill Cosby and Shelby
Steele.
But the abuse to which such people have
been subjected is a sobering reminder that it
is still a stmggle to confront many racial is-
sues.
A very different book, but one with the
same goal of getting at reality, despite soci-
ety’s prevailing fog of rhetoric, is Choosing
the Right College.
For both students and their parents, this
book can be enormously valuable. It is by far
the best college guide, for both its honesty
and its insights.
Unlike other college guides, Choosing the
Right College is judgmental.
For example, it says that Boston College
has a “Terrific political science department”
and its graduates in “finance have a fast track
to jobs in big Boston firms” but “Education
and sociology departments are mediocre
hotbeds of radical activism.”
That kind of information not only helps
when deciding which college to attend, it also
helps in choosing which courses to seek out
and which to avoid after you have enrolled in
school.
Too many colleges have a narrow and in-
tolerant politicized atmosphere, with profes-
sors giving low grades to students who do not
go along with the leftist vision.
Barnard College is described as having
“doctrinaire leftism” that “pervades every
nook and cranny of campus.”
But the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology is credited with a politically “diverse
or neutral” environment where the students
“are too busy for activism.”
Unlike most other colleges, Hillsdale Col-
lege still has “single-sex dorms, with firm vis-
itation rules” and a “very extensive well-
taught core curriculum.”
It also has “almost unanimous political
conservatism” that may not be for everyone.
Nor is its isolated location “in a very cold part
of the country.”
In short, the 900-plus pages of Choosing
the Right College lay out in plain English the
pluses and minuses of colleges and universi-
ties across the country, calling a spade a
spade.
They report, you decide what is right for
you.
With so many people already speculating
as to who might be the “front runner” for the
Republican nomination for president in
2016, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s new
book, Unintimidated may be especially
worth reading.
It shows a man of real depth, and with an
impressive track record that ought to over-
shadow the rhetoric of others, especially
among the Washington Republicans.
Unlike the Washington Republicans,
Gov. Walker has been tested and has come
through with flying colors.
His ending the labor unions’ sacred cow
status in Wisconsin, in spite of union thug-
gery in the capitol and death threats to him-
self, his wife and his children, tells us what
kind of man he is.
Merry Christmas to all.
THOMAS SOWELL’S column is dis-
tributed by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Thomas
Sowell
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Cobb, Dawn. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 132, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 12, 2013, newspaper, December 12, 2013; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1102324/m1/6/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .