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Internet Message Format | 1999-02-01 | 19KB

From: "Perry L. Porter" <[e-mail]>
Subject: ---> "Slime and Punishment"
Date: 01 Feb 1999 22:19:52 -0700

SPECIAL NOTE: The following column -- or, more accurately, the
Communications Department's refusing to publish it -- is the reason I am
discontinuing "Snide Remarks" after next week. Feel free to forward this
particular column to anyone you think may find it amusing, especially BYU
students, since they had no way of reading it in the paper.

(This column can be found online at

http://www.ericdsnider.com/writings/universe/du59-5clinton.html)

"Slime and Punishment"

by Eric D. Snider

"Snide Remarks" #59.5

NOT PUBLISHED; intended for publication Jan. 11, 1999

I've been working on my sympathy lately. This is because I've occasionally

been accused of being insensitive and heartless by certain people upon
whom I will wreak horrible, deadly vengeance as soon as I get around to
it.

There are a lot of people to have sympathy for these days. Just over
Christmas break, in fact, we bombed the crud out of Baghdad; Clinton got
impeached by the House; and those two BYU football players got suspended,
one of them eventually expelled. Unfortunately, the only ones I can work
up any sympathy for are the football players.

See, with Hussein, it's just hard to feel sorry for the guy. I mean, he's
misbehaved for as long as we've known him. No one has ever trusted him. He
has lied to the world countless times, and the only question is, Why did
it take so long for him to be punished? Oh, wait. Sorry. Replace the word
"Hussein" with the word "Clinton."

Hasn't this guy always seemed like a weasel? He's got that sleazy "trust
me" voice, like a used-car salesman, or a politician. And he's apparently
used his high political standing to gain personal satisfaction. Proof:
What woman would sleep with him if he weren't powerful? He's fat as a
house, he's not handsome, and he's full of crap. If he weren't the
governor of Arkansas or president of the United States, he'd be living in
a trailer park, drinking beer and watching "Cops." In fact, I don't think
his sexual dalliances are nearly as disturbing as the lack of taste
demonstrated by the women he's slept with. At least JFK -- the other lousy
president who had a lot of affairs -- was kind of classy.

Many of the commentators have tried to excuse Clinton's adultery by saying
that ALL U.S. presidents have had affairs. I find this excuse flimsy
because 1) even if it's true, that doesn't make it right, and 2) my brain
automatically rejects the notion anyway because of some of the images that
accompany it. (Are you aware that William Howard Taft weighed over 300
pounds?)

So I can't really feel sorry for Clinton. I feel bad for his wife and
daughter, both of whom seem genuine and dignified. I feel bad for the
American people for having to put up with him (although, I hasten to
remind you, it's not like a bunch of aliens flew in and elected him)
(twice). But he kind of brought all this on himself, you know? He made his
bed and now he has to lie in it, not that lying has ever been a problem
for him.

And Hussein -- do we even NEED to feel sorry for him? He certainly doesn't
invite sympathy. Even after we bombed the dickens out of his city, he was
telling the Iraqis that THEY were victorious. That's like LaVell Edwards
telling the football team they won the Liberty Bowl.

Which brings me to those two football players, who, as I mentioned, are
the only ones I feel sorry for. In case you missed it, they were suspended
from school due to Honor Code infractions, and they weren't allowed to
play in the Liberty Bowl (not that it would have mattered). One of them
was ultimately expelled from BYU. And the reason I feel sorry for them,
and not for Clinton or Hussein, is that the football players never denied
doing anything wrong. They received their punishment, they accepted it,
and they seem genuinely sorry. Clinton and Hussein both have serious
difficulty even admitting they've done something wrong, let alone show
remorse for it.

Sure, Clinton has apologized something like 8,000 times in the past few
months -- but that was only after he spent six months denying he had done
anything. ("I didn't do anything wrong. And for what I did wrong, I'm
sorry.")

Ironically, if the football players HAD denied any wrong-doing, we
probably would have believed them. After all, it was the Honor Code Office
punishing them, and we all know that mere innocence does not necessarily
protect you from being punished by the Honor Code Office. No, the
important thing there is that someone has TOLD the Honor Code Office
you've done something wrong.

Whether or not you actually did it is irrelevant. The principle of
"innocent until proven guilty" applies only in America, after all, not
here. (The same goes for the principle of "you have the right to face your
accuser, or at least know who he or she is.")

* * * * [In an effort to appease some faculty members and get the column
published, the preceding paragraph was modified to read as follows. Note
that a couple things in this second version are more clear, not that it
helped...:]

Ironically, if the football players HAD denied any wrong-doing, we
probably would have believed them. After all, we're dealing with the Honor
Code Office here, and most students are aware that just because the Honor
Code Office punishes you for doing something doesn't mean you actually did
it.

The important thing is that someone TOLD the Honor Code Office you did it.

Whether it's true or not is irrelevant. The principle of "innocent until
proven guilty" applies only in America, after all, not here. (The same
goes for the principle of "you have the right to face your accuser, or at
least know who he or she is.") * * * *

HONOR CODE OFFICE: A person whose name we're not going to tell you has
informed us that you were smoking crack on your apartment's balcony.

STUDENT: My apartment doesn't even HAVE a balcony!

HONOR CODE OFFICE: Oh, right, like we're going to believe a crack-smoker.

Where were you smoking the crack, then?

STUDENT: I've never smoked crack.

HONOR CODE OFFICE: Don't play games with us. You're obviously a
crack-smoker. We can tell by the way you're lying when you say you're not
a crack-smoker.

It occurs to me now that rather than having Ken Starr investigate Clinton,
we should have had the Honor Code Office do it. Compared to them, Ken
Starr seems underzealous.

HONOR CODE OFFICE: Mr. President, we've been told that you had sexual
relations with Monica Lewinsky.

CLINTON: Well, not exactly....

HONOR CODE OFFICE: And since you did, that means you must have been lying
when you said you didn't.

CLINTON: I didn't really lie....

HONOR CODE OFFICE: So you're lying now?

CLINTON: No, I'm just saying -- HONOR CODE OFFICE: Stop lying.

CLINTON: I'm not lying.

HONOR CODE OFFICE: What you're saying goes against what we already think.

Therefore, you must be lying.

CLINTON: You're right. I'm lying.

HONOR CODE OFFICE: Yes, but only because we say you are.

* * * * * * * * * *

COMMENTS & REACTION:

This was it: The column that led to the demise of "Snide Remarks."

What was so controversial about this column that made BYU Communications
Department faculty refuse to run it? Was it when I said the president of
the United States was "full of crap"? Was it where I called JFK a "lousy
president"? Was it where I said William Howard Taft was so fat, the idea
of him having sex disturbed me? Nope.

Those of you familiar with BYU will not be surprised to learn that it was
my comments on the Honor Code Office that were troublesome -- everything
else was fine.

I'll briefly summarize the weekly Review Process that "Snide Remarks" went
through. On Monday, I would go to a meeting with the column I intended to
run the following week. At the meeting was the Communications Department
Chair, the Daily Universe faculty adviser, and two student editors -- the
managing editor and the editor in chief. (This semester, since I was
editor in chief, the news editor came, too, just so there would be a
balance: two grown-ups, two students, and me.)

Also, you should know about the Honor Code Office. The Honor Code is a
statement signed by all BYU students which says they will refrain from all
illegal activity, as well as pre-marital or extra-marital sex, and just
generally lead honorable, decent lives. No profanity, no immodesty -- you
get the idea. The Honor Code Office is the organization that enforces the
Honor Code. If you know of a BYU student who is not living up to the Honor
Code, you are obligated to report him or her so they can correct the
problem and take action, if necessary. (In fact, if it comes to light that
someone has violated the Honor Code and you knew about it and did not
report it, YOU can be punished, too.) The Honor Code Office is widely
feared and mistrusted by students, partly because of the
"rat-on-your-roommate" system, and partly because of the horror stories
we've all heard -- some of which admittedly are probably more Urban Legend
than truth -- in which students are falsely accused and yet punished
anyway because the Honor Code Office believed the accuser over the
accused.

When we discussed this column, originally scheduled to be published as the
first column of the semester, on Jan. 11, there was immediate concern from
the Department Chair over the Honor Code stuff. First, her concern was
whether these allegations were true. Is it true they won't tell you who
turned you in? (Yes: Although it's not their official policy, anyone can
tell you of instances in which an accused person was not told who his
accuser was.) Is it true they often have a "guilty until proven innocent"
attitude? (It certainly seems that way, although that's obviously more
difficult to prove.)

The Department Chair was told by me, the two students and the Daily
Universe faculty adviser that these things were true. Eventually, her
skepticism gave way to greater concern -- if this is how things are, we've
got to DO something about it! She eventually supported the column and
agreed to run it.

Well, at some point over the next couple days, she began to doubt. She
feared she would be fired over publishing a column that took potshots at
such a hallowed and revered institution (I think those concerns were
unfounded), and she wanted to be positive, before she let it be published,

that she could defend every word of it. So we decided to run another
column for the first week, and another meeting was called to discuss this
one.

This time, two additional Communications Department faculty people were
called in as ringers -- they felt the column shouldn't run (one of them, I
think, has never felt ANYTHING I've written should be run), and they felt
that way before they even got to the meeting. They were not open to
discussion.

At this second meeting -- which lasted two hours, by the way, and during
which I had to go to the bathroom very badly -- we discussed several
issues. No one doubted that the Honor Code Office often used questionable
tactics -- or, at least, that students PERCEIVE that they use questionable

tactics. Now the issue was, Is "Snide Remarks" the best way to address
this issue?

The general tone was, no, it's not. The feeling was that if we ran this
column, it would ruin any chances The Daily Universe had of conducting a
legitimate, serious investigation later. It would be like opening a debate
by throwing a grenade on the table.

Furthermore, someone said, while it is important for me as a humor
columnist to address social issues, there are some issues that cannot be
addressed in a humor column. This angered me deeply, for we had seen this
attitude before, and I didn't like it then, either. In fact, I worried the
first time whether we were setting a dangerous precedent; apparently, we
were. The humor column is being made into a second-class citizen: "You can
do most things regular columns can do, Mr. Humor Column, but not quite
everything. But keep pluggin' away, little guy!" It's a condescending
attitude -- humor is nice, but ultimately a secondary method of expressing

opinions.

My major defense of the column was, simply put, that it was true: Students
do perceive the Honor Code Office this way. Whether or not the Honor Code
Office actually does this is irrelevant (although I strongly believe it
does); what matters is that students think it does. That's all I was
saying in the column -- that students think the Honor Code Office is often
unfair.

I used this example: What if I were saying that people tend to think auto
mechanics are dumb? It doesn't matter if they actually are; it doesn't
matter how unfair that generalization might be; it doesn't matter what the
auto mechanics have to say about it; what matters is that people DO tend
to think that! Period, end of discussion.

Also, I said, if we actually want to address this issue in the paper, at
least doing so in my column, instead of on the editorial page, would
guarantee that it actually be read. This argument made a few people
grumble, but I had to say it.

The counter-argument was that the Honor Code Office is large and daunting
enough as an institution to where such defenses aren't enough. We can't
just make jokes about the Honor Code Office like I would something else
and have that be the end of it. The Honor Code Office would surely be
enraged and come after everyone at The Daily Universe -- and they're
powerful enough, being tied in closely with BYU administration, to make
some serious waves.

I offered to make a couple changes. I offered to make it more clear that I
was bothered by the Honor Code Office's tactics, not by the Honor Code
itself. I added a paragraph in which I made it clear this was the
students' perception of the Honor Code Office, and that it was based on
anecdotal evidence, not in-depth research (well, I said it funnier than
that, but that was the essence of it). I rewrote a paragraph, as indicated
in the text. All of this ultimately did not help.

And so it was decided that a humor column was not a dignified, legitimate
way of introducing this very sensitive discussion. Everyone decided that
instead, The Daily Universe should launch an actual journalistic
investigation of the Honor Code Office -- we even managed to get BYU
President Merrill J. Bateman's support on this -- and try to rectify
whatever wrongs were being committed. This column, it was decided, would
damage that investigation. I vehemently disagreed, and I reminded everyone
that fixing the Honor Code Office was NOT my crusade, nor was it my
original intention with the column -- you'll notice the column is only
tangentially even ABOUT the Honor Code Office -- and that if an
investigation was to be launched, I would lend as much support, as editor
in chief, as I would to anything else, but make no mistake -- this was NOT
my war. (In fact, none of us students editors were that keen on it. It was
clearly the faculty members' idea the whole way, taking what I said in the
column and running with it, and definitely making more of it than I
originally intended.)

The Department Chair didn't officially make the decision not to run the
column until two days after the meeting. In the meantime, I had decided
that if the column wasn't run, I would quit writing "Snide Remarks."
Things had been changed before, of course, and even an entire column was
not run once (though it later appeared in the first "Snide Remarks" book).
But those things generally had to do with matters of taste or religious
propriety. Here was a non-religious, non-sacred institution that I was
being told I couldn't make jokes about. I could make jokes about the sex
life of the president of the United States, but I couldn't bring up the
fact that BYU students don't like the Honor Code Office. Basically, while
things had been censored before, the censorship had never been as
unjustified and unreasonable as this was.

I really couldn't see myself continuing to write after this column was
quashed. To do say would have been to say, "OK, if you don't want to run a
column, that's fine. You don't have to have a good reason or anything;
just let me know, and I'll write something else. La la la, everything is
happy." Or words to that effect. As a matter of principle (as much as I
don't like that phrase), I couldn't set that precedent.

So when I was informed the column wouldn't run, I informed the Department
Chair that I would no longer write "Snide Remarks." She seemed genuinely
surprised. It was my intention to stop writing immediately -- that the
column that had run a few days earlier would have been the last. She knew
I had written a few columns that were waiting to be run (I usually have a
few stored up); she convinced me to go ahead and publish those. I agreed,
on the condition that the Review Process meeting be abolished, and that I
would send those last few columns directly to her for approval. I didn't
care who she had read them after that; I just didn't want to have any more
meetings. She agreed. (I should have made that demand MONTHS ago!)

The reason I didn't post this column on my Web site immediately, or send
it out to the people on the e-mailing list, has to do with the group's
concerns. Obviously, I disagree that publishing the column would damage
the newspaper's investigation. But I knew they felt strongly that it
would, and that as editor in chief, I should have the newspaper's concerns
as my first thought. I knew that distributing the column on my own would
make it look like I was more interested in my own concerns than in the
paper's -- that I was willing to ruin the investigation by sending the
column around, just so I could get it out there. Again, I didn't think
distributing it would hurt anything -- but I knew they thought it would,
and I didn't want them to think I was less than dedicated to my job. If I
weren't editor in chief, I wouldn't have cared.

As of this writing (late January), The NewsNet investigation (NewsNet is
the student-run organization that houses the print, online, broadcast and
radio news outlets at BYU, including The Daily Universe) is underway. We
have full cooperation from administrators, and we had a lengthy meeting
with some of them recently to let them know what, exactly, we want to find
out. Will anything come of the investigation? Will any reforms be made?

Will we be able to prove any unfairness or wrong-doing? I don't know.

Was it worth not running this column, and putting an end to "Snide
Remarks"? No.

-