Meet Matthew Jezierski: "[He] started a club in honor of a group he considers to be oppressed and undervalued: the white male. The Caucasian American Men of ASU grabbed attention thanks to the club's name, but Jezierski insisted it wasn't a white pride organization. Jezierski, who is fluent in Polish (he was born in the United States), said he only wanted to promote cultural awareness. He didn't understand why being of European descent is anything to be ashamed of."

Dude?

But that's not the whole story. The whiny-white-boy club is now over, and Jerzierski is too embarrassed to talk about it. Especially because he was someone else's bitch at the time: a younger Ann Coulter named Emily Mitchell. Mitchell was also ruled by a guiding hand, that of the ultra-conservative Leadership Institute, who pays people like Mitchell to recruit virgins, racists, pro-lifers, conservatives, and generally repressed Republicans on college campuses. Thankfully, as swayed as one can be in college, eventually they grow up and get minds of their own. If not, consider this scenario:

"Hi mom, I joined a club for white men only."
"Son, we've stopped the tuition check and changed the will."

Until then, however, Mitchell and her ilk can still find plenty of easily influenced minions. There are still plenty of college boys who have never:
•been stared at or threatened for dating someone of a different race.
•been stared at for walking into an establishment with the gall of being adifferent race.
•been followed by a security guard for shopping while black.
•been pulled over by cops for driving while black.
•been afraid to walk alone at night or had his "no" ignored.
•had ancesters who were chained in ships to be sold or held in death camps to be exterminated.
•experienced or felt a single negative thing in life because of their gender, religion, or skin color (aparently Polish jokes have just rolled right off Jezierski, but maybe that's because he is one all on his own).

Yet these nice boys still buy a load like this from a pretty blond: "It's about balance. The African American men…their name is equally divisive. They're excluding Caucasian men. The Caucasian population is declining by percentages making it a growing minority," Mitchell says. "He [Jezierski] speaks fluent Polish and was offended. There's a separate Latino studies or Chicano studies but nothing for people who are white in color. They don't have anything to represent Slavic or German studies. Why aren't European cultures considered diverse?"

First of all, Heidi, there are European studies programs at colleges and universities (literatrue, history, language, and clubs like the German Devils Deutsch Club, which Jezierski settled for). Outside of that, programs like women's studies and Chicano studies exist not to exclude contemporary white men, but because white men of the past two millenia have excluded them. From everything. And now in the somewhat enlightened 20th and 21st centuries, minorities are telling their side about existing on the same planet, past and present. It's only a problem for the whites like Mitchell who don't like it.

People like Mitchell also need to remember this: America does have a white-men only club — it's called the White House. 

Jennifer Leblanc

Laura Mallory has spent the last couple of years, legal fees, and too many people's time trying to get the Harry Potter series removed from the shelves of the school libraries in Georgia. I don't really have to explain why, do I — witchcraft, children, bad, etc. The local school board shot her down, as did the state board, and now a superior court judge. Next stop — federal court.

Here's the best part — Mallory hasn't even read the books. She says she doesn't have time, what with not working and dropping kids off at school. But she does have time for an obsession with a harmless, fictional children's book that even Christian groups across the country have hailed as teaching good against evil.

"At Tuesday's hearing, Mallory argued in part that witchcraft is a religion practiced by some people and, therefore, the books should be banned because reading them in school violates the constitutional separation of church and state."

Let's start with this — witchcraft is not a religion. More specifically, Wicca and variations are practiced by people, have been recognized as a religion since 1974, and were recently allowed to display their religious symbols on soldiers' graves and remembrance walls. The "witchcraft" of Harry Potter, however, is not real at all. If there is someone out there who can wave a wand, say something in Latin, and suddenly a child sprouts a tail, I'd like to meet that person. Until then, what goes in a Harry Potter book has never and will never be considered a religion.

Next, Mallory argues the books violate the separation of church and state. For argument's sake, fine. But Mallory also says, "I have a dream that God will be welcomed back in our schools again." So, Harry Potter is not welcome due to violating church/state, but Mallory's Christian God should be? And here's what it's obviously about — a Christian stamping her feet about not having control over what other people's children believe (or don't). Georgia residents — pray for your tax dollars.

Jennifer Leblanc

Let me explain. Nothing would make me happier about the future of this country or the world than if Al Gore were to become president. I voted for him in 2000, and I would again in a second. But, as the Time article suggests, a transformation would have to take place. Gore would have to become a politician again. He couldn't be the passionate geek who has earned the respect of the world with what began as a slide show in 1989. He would have advisors, speech writers, analysts, PR people, Naomi friggin' Wolf telling him what colors to wear. He couldn't speak or move freely. He would have stop being Al Gore and start being president. And I like the man who can call our president a drug addict and dilettante without having a crowd of people running to do damage control. I like the unapologetic intellectual who has influence in every country to save our planet.
If Gore were president, he would have to deal with Iraq, and he would fail, at least to a point. It doesn't matter who is elected next, Iraq will damage him or her. At this point, I don't even think God himself could fix it and keep everyone happy. 

If Gore were president, he couldn't focus on global warming. And we need him to focus on that. It's what he does best, and he devotes his entire self to it. No one else, at least no one with the convincing energy and exposure, has or could do that. A president is pulled in every direction by every need — war, health care, poverty, the party, both Houses, the polls, economies, staff, other presidents and prime ministers, allies, and enemies. I have no doubt that Gore could do it, and well. I just think that someone else — Obama, Hilary, Edwards — could also do it well. But no one can do what Al Gore is doing now.
If you disagree, you're not alone, and there are two websites you can visit. DraftGore.com and AlGore.org have petitions to sign to get him to run and much more. If successful in convincing him, you all and Gore have my full support.

Jennifer Leblanc

I've always found it absurd when money is spent to do a study that finds obvious things such as "Racism Still Exists." There's only one word I can respond with, a perfect word, that I haven't really used since I was 12: Duh! I know it's not mature or intelligent, but to me it's perfectly fitting.

I came across another "duh" moment this week when I saw this headline: "Women's rights key to Africa AIDS crisis: study." My fellow Democrats, liberals, feminists, and users of common sense and logic have known this for years. If a woman has the right to say no, to use her own protection or insist that her unfaithful husband use protection, to have control over the body that she lives in, she will be in better health. The study focused on the failings of African governments in regards to women, but I can't help but think of our own country's failings for women around the world.

Jennifer Leblanc

Seventeen years ago I woke my mom and aunt up with a problem: I wasn’t breathing normally. My mom worried because that’s what she did, and my aunt worried because she had one idea: asthma.

This was the beginning of what has been a wonderful life of wheezing, gasping, and taking steroids. And the best part is that I have to pay for inhalers — the devices that give medicine to asthmatics. I use this wonderful device because I need it to live.

So let me write this line and see if you’re as angry as I am: After insurance I get to pay $10-$30 a month to live. Not “live comfortably,” just “live.” And thanks to that wonderful, conservative idea of the “free market” (where corporate bailouts and subsidies are somehow allowed), there is a person out there making money off of me.

The idea of profiteering off of the illness of someone else is infuriating. I think of someone — a stock owner! — sitting on his ass collecting dividends or (even better) waiting until that hugely profitable moment when a bigger corporation buys his stock for an assload of money. Making this nightmare even better is the fact that if I don’t find affordable insurance in the next few years (I can stay on my dad’s until I’m 25), my inhaler cost will eat away my bank account quicker than a cake in Oprah’s greenroom.

My government does not care about this and continues to defeat any attempt to help everyone afford the cost of medical care. I am pretty sure I know why: Those people collecting dividends and making money off of my sickness, well, some of them are running for Congress. And, oh, it makes me feel great to know that.

When I was five I was told I could grow out of asthma, that it would improve with age, but it never has. I have a thousand triggers that can set off the panting/gasping sweat-storm that is a normal asthma attack for me. Luckily I only have one of these every couple of days, so I’m doing wonderful.

And when I lose my insurance and have to pay out the ass to live, it’ll warm my heart that I will be helping this generation of pharmaceutical stockholders buy BMWs, which is going to be a real comfort when my O₂ stats drop.

Patrick Duganz