The Elephant in the Room: The Silenced Republicans of FCLC

“Elephant?  What elephant?”

 

         Between the anti-Bush greeting cards in the bookstore, the Obama flyers decorating the student plaza and the Bush-as-a-monkey printout taped up in the scene shop, it’s pretty clear where the political loyalties of most of our college’s population lie. But during this hotly contested Election 2008, we must not forget the Republicans in our midst – supporters of John McCain instead of Hillary or Barack. They’re the Few but Proud – the Republicans of Fordham College at Lincoln Center.             

      There is a longstanding College Democrats Club here on campus, but we’ve never had a College Republicans Club that lasted very long.  In fact, when FCLC conservatives, in preparation for this historic election year, tried to gather support for a College Republicans Club, their efforts failed. This was in part because they just couldn’t get the required sixty signatures on their petition – liberal students weren’t very interested in helping the conservative cause, and there weren’t enough conservative students who wanted to publicly express their Republican politics.                

      Artur Jagielski, FCLC ‘09, who helped spearhead the movement to form a College Republicans Club at FCLC, said that the process was difficult because of “some of the criticism I received from several people [Democrats]. I’m sure there are more Republicans on this campus who don’t voice their opinion, and if we could reach out to them, maybe we could form a club here on campus.”      

      But who is it that’s really making the Republicans feel unwelcome at Fordham? It’s got to be the students, right? Everyone knows how hot-headed and opinionated college students can be. Actually, conservative students say that it’s not their peers who are the problem.  It’s the people you’d expect to have a more reasoned approach: the professors.     

      While both the faculty and the student body are filled with Democratic supporters, Jagielski and Republican recent grad Howie Ray, FCLC ‘06, assert that while professors are very narrow-minded, fellow students seem open to debate. “I found a lot of the student body was open to intelligent political discourse,” pointed out Ray. Jagielski says that liberal politics aren’t even much discussed among students: “… I don’t hear much talk about it [liberal politics] outside of the classroom. All I see is pro-Obama posters here and there.”     

     But professors in many departments, say Ray and Jagielski, frequently lash out at the president, loudly lamenting the fact that we have a Republican administration in Washington D.C. And while most FCLC conservatives understand that liberal teachers have complaints about Bush (and are more than prepared for the Bush- related “litanies of woe” professors often launch into), they feel beleaguered nonetheless. Professors, claims Jagielski, “…continuously bash the president [and] conservative politicians without taking into account that there may be Republicans sitting in the classroom. They just assume that if you are a Republican, you must be a bad person.”  

The Envelope Please: 80th Annual Academy Awards

photo courtesy of MyCine

In a year filled with dark films, perhaps the darkest, “No Country for Old Men,” took home the top three honors at last night’s Oscars. The maverick Joel and Ethan Coen won three awards — Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture — during the course of the evening, thanking the academy for “letting us play in our own corner of the sandbox” when they won their first award, and then seeming increasingly emotionless as the night went on.

The acting categories were an international affair, with all four awards going to non-Americans. Javier Bardem, of course, came away victorious in the Supporting Actor race, making sure to joke about his now infamous haircut upon accepting the award. The Supporting Actress trophy went to a stunned Tilda Swinton (“Michael Clayton”), whose performance beat out Cate Blanchett’s gender-bending turn as Bob Dylan (“I’m Not There”) and Amy Ryan’s much lauded work in “Gone Baby Gone.”

In the Lead Actress category the Academy proved that its love of rewarding actors who play real people (think Jamie Fox, Reese Witherspoon) trumps its long-standing disregard for actresses who lip-sync (think Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood), by giving French actress Marion Cotillard the Oscar for her portrayal of “the Little Sparrow” Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose,” despite the fact that another actress provided the singing. (“La Vie en Rose” also won the award for Makeup Achievement, beating out “Norbit,” much to everyone’s relief). In the Lead Actor category, it was certainly no surprise when Daniel Day Lewis won his second Oscar for his performance as Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.”
In the other major categories, the Academy acknowledged a wide range of films. Brad Bird (who won three years ago for “The Incredibles”) made a return trip to the podium to accept the Best Animated Feature award for “Ratatouille.” The Documentary Feature prize went to “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a documentary about torture. “There Will Be Blood” won for cinematography, while “Atonement’s” score (which uses the typewriter as an instrument) won the Best Score statuette. A song by the young leads of the independent film “Once” beat out three chirpy Menken-Schwartz production numbers from “Enchanted” to win the Best Original Song Oscar. And, in the Best Original Screenplay Category, Hollywood newcomer (and former stripper) Diablo Cody won the award for her much-quoted “Juno” script.

Not Again! Ralph Nader Announces Another Presidential Run

photo courtesy of patia

Sunday on “Meet the Press,” consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced that he was entering the presidential race. . .again. Nader, a successful consumer advocate who pushed for everything from seatbelts in cars to eliminating misrepresentation in advertising, ran for president for the first time in 1996, but had no impact on a race in which Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in a landslide.

Nader infamously ran again in 2000, earning over 90,000 votes in Florida (which Al Gore lost by less than 1,000 votes), tipping the balance in that critical state and, in the eyes of many, handing George Bush the White House. Though in an Obama-McCain race, Nader would likely attract barely any votes, in a Clinton-McCain scenario, he would likely be slightly more successful, and either way Nader’s candidacy is simply annoying to the Democratic Party. Nader seems to have learned nothing from the Florida disaster in the ridiculously close 2000 Election, but as Democrats cringe at the possibility that Nader could be a spoiler all over again, they are fervently hoping that the voters have learned their lesson and won’t let history repeat itself.

And The Nominees Are…

photo courtesy of oscars.org

Although the Oscar ceremony is in jeopardy because of the still-raging standoff between the Writers Guild and the movie producers, the nominating process went on as it does every late January. On January 22nd, in the wee hours of the morning, the Academy Awards nominations were revealed in Los Angeles. Here then is news about some of the most interesting and hotly contested nominations for the 80th Academy Awards:

Best Picture: “Atonement” surprised everyone by ending a bad awards season run, broken only by a Golden Globe win, with a nomination in this category. “Juno” also snagged a nod, but it is basically just your requisite indie comedy entry. The real contest though seems to be between “No Country for Old Men,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Michael Clayton.”

Supporting Actor/Actress: Though these two categories have been all but locked up by powerhouse frontrunners – Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men” and Cate Blanchett in “I’m Not There”-- this nomination morning belonged to two veterans who got their first nods. Eighty-three year old Ruby Dee for her role as Frank Lucas’s mother in “American Gangster” and eighty-two year old Hal Holbrook for his brief but heartbreaking performance in “Into the Wild” are sentimental favorites in their two categories.

Best Actor: George Clooney, Viggo Mortensen, and Tommy Lee Jones all scored nods, but it is Daniel Day-Lewis who really stands to win the trophy. Day-Lewis rarely takes film roles anymore, but when he does, they almost always earn him Oscar nods. He is the odds-on favorite to win this award for his performance in “There Will Be Blood,” but you never know – maybe Johnny Depp’s willingness to sport a hairdo like Cruella De Vil’s and sing an impossibly hard score will finally win him the statuette (though heaven knows that sashaying bizarrely, wearing eye-liner, dancing with a bear and making Willy Wonka seem creepily like Michael Jackson have all failed to win Johnny the coveted little gold man in the past).

Best Actress: Yes, this is a strong year for this category, which has three very competitive nominees – Ellen Page for “Juno,” Julie Christie for “Away from Her” and Marion Cotillard for “La Vie En Rose”—although the battle will probably end up being waged between Christie and Cotillard (the two Golden Globe winners), with the precocious Page  Cate Blanchett and the off-the-radar Laura Linney to fill out the category? I guess the Academy wasn’t impressed by Nikki Blonsky or Angelia Jolie, or even Keira Knightly.

Best Original Screenplay: The big news in this category is that three of the five nominees – Diablo Cody for “Juno,” Nancy Oliver for “Lars and the Real Girl” and Tamara Jenkins for the “The Savages” – are women. This is one of those Oscar categories that has been dominated by men; in fact, there have been only a very small handful of women who have been nominated for this award, including Sofia Coppola who won for her script of “Lost in Translation.”

Best Director: Julian Schnabel for his work on “The Diving Bell and Butterfly” was the surprise winner at the Golden Globes, but the Coen brothers, who are said to be at the top of their game with “No Country for Old Men,” have won a fair share of the hardware this season and are still in the hunt to end their long winless streak at the Oscars. But let’s not forget how Oscar works – if “Michael Clayton,” “Juno” or “There Will Be Blood” wins Best Picture, the smart money would be on it to also win this prize as well.

“Harlem for Hillary”: Clinton Wins Endorsement of Prominent African-American Pastor

photo courtesy of jsgraphicdesign

Sunday afternoon, one day before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, Hillary Clinton won one of the most influential African-American endorsements. Abyssinian’s pastor, Reverend Calvin Butts, endorsed Hillary Clinton as his candidate of choice for the presidency. Rev. Butts (who taught Black Church History at Fordham University) bolstered Clinton’s message in what has become an increasingly change-oriented election by opening with the statement that “experience is not synonymous with status quo…with the right experience comes change.”

The timing of today’s endorsement comes at a very opportune moment for the Clinton campaign. Clinton is doing damage control after days of attacks over her ill-chosen words, which seemed to suggest that Lyndon Johnson’s contribution to civil rights was greater than Dr. King’s. Sunday morning Barack Obama also courted African-American church-goers as he spoke from what was Dr. King’s pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. This announcement also arrived just hours before Clinton is scheduled to arrive in South Carolina, a state with many African-American voters, to begin campaigning there.

Race has become a major issue in the Democratic primary. Rev. Butts made clear, to the largely African-American crowd gathered outside Abyssinian, that his choice is not motivated by race: “This was not, and is not, and will not become a race-based decision for me,” he declared. Butts also made sure to placate African-American Obama supporters by saying the decision he made was not personal and assuring listeners that “I love him [Obama] like a brother.” Clinton too went out of her way to praise Obama, telling the crowd that “I am honored to be running with him” and extolling his “many contributions to our country and to our world.”

Although Butts’ and Clinton’s speeches were the main focus of the event, rival Clinton and Obama supporters who braved the cold outside the Abyssinian church added significantly to the drama of the press announcement . Vocal Obama fans stood out in the freezing weather for hours to support their candidate with a large banner, which by far overwhelmed the small signs and buttons Clinton supporters displayed. Feeding on the ire surrounding Clinton’s remarks about King, Obama followers shouted campaign slogans as HARLEM4OBAMA forcefully handed out red, white and blue flyers that equated King’s dream with Obama’s candidacy. Clinton supporters, for their part, reacted to the Obama followers by chanting “Harlem for Hillary” and “Madam President” to drown out the competition.

While acknowledging the amazing opportunity Democrats have in this primary season to support one of two truly historic candidates, Clinton also seemed intent on separating gender and race from what each candidate stands for. To this effect, she quoted the masthead of Frederick Douglass’s newspaper The North Star, which read, “Right has no sex; truth has no color.”