Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 302, Ed. 1 Friday, November 6, 2009 Page: 4 of 12
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Texas Digital Newspaper Program and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Sweetwater/Nolan County City-County Library.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Viewpoints
Page 4 ■ Friday, November 6, 2009
Sweetwater Reporter
DEDICATED TO PROUDLY DELIVERING LOCAL NEWS SINCE 1881
t-n Sweetwater,
Reporter
P.O. Box 750/112 W. Third
Sweetwater, Texas 79556
325/236-6677
Fax: 325/235-4967
Website:
www.swer /uterreportercom
E-mail addresses:
publisher@sweetwaterreporter.com
business@sweetwaterreporter. com
advertising@sweetwaterreporter.com
circulation@sweetwaterreporter.com
editor@sweetwaterreporter com
composing@sweetwaterreporter.com
Sharon LFnedlander
publisher/ad director
Danica Hickson
business mgr
Michelle Ashford
circulation mgr
Tatiana Rodriguez
managing editor
Pablo Rodriguez
composing mgr.
Bleu Reyes
production mgr.
EDITORIAL POLICY
The editorial section of the newspaper is a forum for
expression of a variety of viewpoints. All articles except
those labeled “Editorials” reflect the opinions of the writ-
ers and not those of the Sweetwater Reporter.
GUEST COLUMN
HOME COUNTRY
First kiss
Sometimes there’s a feeling in the early evening air
that makes you know this is a special time. The plan-
ets line up, the fish spawn, the squirrels ... well, do
their squirrel-type stuff. Magic. And that’s what Katie
Burchell was feeling as she held Randy
Jones's hand as they made their daily
walk through our town.
“Randy?’
"Yes?”
"Are you happy having me for your
girlfriend?"
"Oh yes. I think you’re ... wonderful!”
jSSaMSK"'^ “Maybe we should take our relation
ship to ... new level?"
f^gpui "You mean ...”
L “I think we should kiss each other.”
Slim Randy was silent and looked at shade
trees.
Randles “You don’t want to?" Katie asked.
“Oh, yes. It’s just ...” He stopped and
looked at her. “fve ... never kissed a girl
before.”
“No problem. We’ll get it done. Only thing is, to be
proper, I think you should ask me first, okay? ’
“Uh, sure. Katie, would ... may I kiss you?”
' “Yes. But not here. I’ll show you.”
So they continued walking until they stood right in
front of Marcia Fleming’s house. Marcia the Magnificent,
Princess of Teenage Dreams. Former princess of Ranch’s
dreams.
“This looks like a good spot," Katie said, smiling. "So
just close your eyes."
He did, and it happened, and planets went swirling
into space and squirrels took a coffee break and a new
world began. Ana they smiled at each other. Then Katie
looked at the house and smiled at the face peering out
the window.
As the bumper sticker says: Love your neighbors but
brand your calves.
Brought to you by Slim's Alaska thriller,
“Raven’s Prey." Order it at www.slimrandles.
earn.
GUEST COLUMN
Yankees fans pay big money
HOLLYWOOD~God bless America, and how’s every-
body?
New York Yankee fans paid ticket scalpel's twenty thou-
sand a seat to watch Game Six Wednesday. The bonus
checks cleared. If a bomb had fallen on that stadium every
investment banker in New York would have been killed, for
the second time in one year.
ABC’s series V premiered Tuesday about
a charismatic leader who comes from
nowhere to charm American voters. He
turns out to be a totalitarian space lizard
who intends to eat them. Halfway through
lunch the lizard dies belly-up from E. coli
and swine flu.
USA Today reported Monday on all
the new office etiquette due to the threat
of swine flu spread. Rather than shaking
hands, people are patting fists or touch-
ing elbows or bumping hips. At ESPN,
normal office activity has been replaced
by phone sex.
House Democrats said the health care
reform bill is bogged down over the issues
of abortion coverage, illegal immigration, and how to pay
for it. These are unsolvable problems. They can’t even agree
whether Jerusalem should lx' the capital of health care.
White House adviser David Axelrod was interviewed by
Bob Schieffer on CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday, lie
explained why President Obama hasn't yet made the1 deci-
sion on the war in Afghanistan, solved the vaccine shortage
or fixed the economy. When he came into office he inher-
ited an addiction to golf from the previous administration.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published
research Thursday showing that women who drink mod-
erate amounts of wine have healthier blood vessels. Wine
works two ways for women. It raises their good cholesterol
and lowers their standards.
David Hasselhoff will do a reality show with his two
daughters that focuses on his binge drinking at home.
Picture the suspense. At the end of every episode he threat-
ens to cut the girls out of the will if they don't tell him where
the) hid the car kevs.
Shaquille O'Neal made his debut as a Cleveland Cavalier
in Cleveland this past week. He also applied to lx> a deputy
sheriff. How can the government say there's no inflation
when a man making tnirty million dollars a year is forced
to work two jobs?
Argus Hamilton is the host comedian at The Comedy
Store in Hollywood. He cun he reached Jhr speaking
engagements by e-mail at argus(u)argushamilton.com.
Argus
Hamilton
The population boomerang in Iran
Iranian students are
engaging this week in
Round Two of their street-
level struggle for reform.
Round One took
place last June,
when young peo-
ple protested the
fixed re-election of
President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
About 30 people
died in those huge
demonstrations.
That was a remark-
ably low number
given the brutal ten-
dencies of the hard-
liners and the in-
your-face challenge
of the protestors. The old
leaders had clearly pulled
the choke-leash on their
Basij paramilitaries. They
understood that they were
not dealing with down-
trodden masses that they
could mow down without
enormous consequences.
The maxim "demo-
graphics is destiny" helps
explain this careful behav-
ior by the side with the
guns. Iran's plunging
fertility rate has created
a different kind of young
person, one with a sense
of entitlement. These stu-
dents are educated. They
own cell phones. They
have ambition.
"No wonder the explo-
sion on the streets of
Iran this year seemed
Froma
Harrop
like a clash between two
worlds," The Economist
says in a cover story about
falling fertility across the
globe. In one cor-
ner were Iranians
between 15 and
29, one-third of
the total popula-
tion, "better edu-
cated and with
different expec-
tations." In the
other corner was
the "established
regime and the
traditionalists."
Most devel-
oping countries
have seen signifi-
cant drops in their fertility
rates - the average num-
ber of children women
have in their childhearing
years. Between 1950 and
2000, the number of chil-
dren borne by women in
poor countries has fallen
from an average of six to
three.
The Economist links the
trend to better education,
greater wealth and more
political stability. It notes
that Congo, Liberia and
Sierra Leone, countries
that haven't lowered their
fertility rates, are still rav-
aged by war.
Watching the recent
events in Iran, one must
regard the American
right's hostility toward
family planning programs
with wonderment.
Bush administration went
to war against a radi-
cal Islam that feeds off
exploding populations of
young, frustrated males --
while withholding money
from the United Nations
Population Fund. It bog-
gles the mind times-three.
Iran's demographic
story is amazing. One of
the first things the mul-
lahs did after taking over
in 1979 was to crush fam-
ily planning sendees. They
wanted to build an Islamic
population bomb. Little
did they know that the
bomb might later fall on
them.
What happened early
on was that fertility rose
to a veiy high seven chil-
dren per woman. But after
1984. the rate started
plunging, to 1.9 by 2006.
That is below the (devel-
oped country) replace-
ment level of 2.1 children
per woman.
Thus, the clerics now
face a double-barreled
demographic threat.
Because of their hyper-fer-
tility policies of 30 years
ago, there's a bubble of
young people in the rebel-
lious ages. (Even as fami-
lies became smaller, the
population continued to
grow because of the large
number of women in their
childbearingyea rs.) Today,
The 70 percent of Iranians are
70 per
under 30.
As an offshoot of smaller
families, meanwhile, Iran
now has one of the best-
educated populations in
the Mideast, women as
well as men. The young
expect to enjoy the fruits
of modernity. The women
are thinking about their
careers, and neither gen-
der wants to hear that
their vote didn't count.
The activists are boldly
using the 30th anniver-
sary this week of the U.S.
Embassy takeover — a
national celebration — as
the pretext for mass rallies
against the authorities.
(Once the focus of the stu-
dents' wrath, the United
States is now almost a
bystander.)
Iranian leaders knew
there were limits to mess-
ing with these entitled
young people last June.
Whether desperation will
make them cross lines
they stopped at back
then remains to be seen.
Whatever they do. Iran's
demographics are not run-
ning in their favor.
To find out more about
Froma llarron, and read
features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and car-
toonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
s/>S ■pfe/WeiTKYP A/tZTTTE
e>2JJ0°l cRCARjRS.CcW'
WriTfirilEFL*
F&Lv'efeac!yf*.
f fPROjecr^j,
\ V.
OBAMA 'chmge waffenfb&y
i
FR O b*
OBAMA 'cwm&e waffens
■ ///,
Susan
Estrich
GUEST COLUMN
There’s an old story
about a Harvard professor
who gets a call from the
president (of the United
States) and responds that
his president is the presi-
dent of Harvard.
Being a professor at
Harvard is like that.
Academics in
Cambridge are a IN
big deal; Harvard mg
is an amaz- j f
ing place; and
if you're lucky
enough to make
it there, you gen-
erally never leave.
Why would you?
I left for the
University
of Southern
California 20
years ago. It was
not an obvious
move at the time, unless
you were a football coach.
But I was pregnant with
my daughter, and short
of delivering at O'Hare, it
was time to stop commut-
ing.
My only previous expe-
rience at USC was when
we stopped there dur-
ing the 1984 presidential
campaign. Vice President
Mondale's appearance was
cut short when fraterni-
ty boys started throwing
tomatoes. Not an auspi-
cious introduction. But
the dean of the law school
offered me a chair, a park-
ing space and a personal
assistant, and more money
than the budget-strained
folks at UCIA so I jumped
in the pool.
Steve Sample came the
next year.
The riots were the next
year.
On Monday, Sample
announced his retirement
after 19 years as president
My president
of USC. Ifyou ever wonder
whether sustained strong
leadership can change
institutions, look at USC.
He did.
I should note that the
law school was, even when
I arrived, well-regarded
among academics and
professionals. But
the joke was that
you could only get
so high in academic
ratings (as opposed
to, say, sports rank-
ings) with USC at
the beginning of
your name.
The college was
not so well-regard-
ed, and universi-
ties are judged bv
their undergraduate
programs. When
Sample came, USC
accepted 70 percent of all
applicants. People would
call me; I'd pick up the
phone. Done. Easy. Today,
USC gets three times as
many applicants as it used
to and accepts only a third
as many of those. The days
of the party school in the
bad neighborhood — the
reputation the school used
to have — are over.
Steve Sample did a
number of things extraor-
dinarily well. Spectacular
doesn't begin to describe
his fundraising skills.
There was, for all intents
and purposes, no endow-
ment before him. The
campus was made for
cars, with more parking
lots than anything else. I
can't count the number of
new buildings erected in
the past 19 years. Equally
impressive is the num-
ber of times I’ve switched
parking spaces, as more
and more hardtop turns
green.
He was also the most
enthusiastic salesman and
promoter of a university
that I've ever seen. He
convinced the media that
something big was hap-
pening at USC. He con-
vinced the alumni to buy
into a plan that would
make it tougher for their
own kids to get in, which
it has. (As it turned out,
more of those kids wanted
to come to USC, and more
of the alums wanted to
send them, so the percent-
age ol legacies actually
went up as the school got
better.) He cut the size of
the freshman class, raised
the standards, started
giving out merit scholar-
ships to the top students,
vastly expanded the fac-
ulty, rewarded entrepre-
neurship of the academic
variety, and unleashed an
explosion of energy and
innovation on campus.
He believed that a pri-
vate university has an obli-
gation to the surrounding
community. In the midst
ol the riots, there were sto-
ries of rich parents send-
ing helicopters to pick up
sorority girls. The truth
is, absolutely nothing on
campus was touched by
the riots. Almost 19 years
later, the neighborhood
is up-and-coming, and
(lie Trojan family is more
diverse and more interna-
tional than it ever was - all
while retaining the sense
of close-knit connections
that makes it unique.
Most university presi-
dents don't make it past
10 years these days. USC
picked the right guy 20
years ago, and then they
gave him the time and the
support to change the face
of a university.
Sorry, Barack, but Steve
Sample is my president,
and I have been very lucky
for that.
To find out more about
Susan Estrich and read
features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and car-
toonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate website at
www.crcators.com.
The SWEETWATER REPOR’IER
(USI'S 5.XKI-8M1) IS published daily
cxixpl Saturdays and holidays by 1IPC
nl Icxas Ins (Periodical Postage I'ald)
IldW Xrd. Sweetwater, lexus 79556
Postmaster: Send address changes in:
SWEETWATER REPORTER
P.O. BOX 751)
SWEETWATER I X 7955ft
City Delivery VMKJ per tnunlh. S'KI.tK)
per year, ft-mnnths SSI)(Ml. '-months
57ft ihi By mail In .......is Rates
I months 5'fttKt. ft imaiths 565.(10,
12-months 5115(Hi tint ot ('mints
Rates ' months 550111) ft-nwmhs
sum* 1, 12-months vnikhi
Correction Pc
Editorial:
As a matter of poll
Sweetwater Report
publish corrections ol
in fact that have bee
ed in the newspaper.
The corrections vi
made as soon as p
after the error has
brought to the atten
the newspaper's ec
236-6677.
Advertising:
Publisher reserves tf
to reject, edit or cant
advertising at any tim
nut liability. Publisher’
ity for error is limited
amount paid for adve
Reporter
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Matching Search Results
View five places within this issue that match your search.Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Rodriguez, Tatiana. Sweetwater Reporter (Sweetwater, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 302, Ed. 1 Friday, November 6, 2009, newspaper, November 6, 2009; Sweetwater, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth559777/m1/4/?q=%22~1~1%22~1: accessed July 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sweetwater/Nolan County City-County Library.