COLUMN: As Election Day approaches, (a)pathetic state of affairs

From Lee Bailey's, "The Innaculate Perception?", Fall '96 From Lee Bailey's, "The Innaculate Perception?", Fall '96 If we've heard it once we've heard it a million times: "Kids today don't care about anything of importance." Not politics, not the economy, not even their own futures. Five years ago, we rolled our eyes at the adults who regurgitated this criticism, but today we curiously find ourselves saying it. So it's just a function of age, right? A good contrast lies in the late Kathy Change. Although utterly abnormal, Change was certainly nothing if not political. In the days since her horrifying self-immolation, many members of the University community have applauded her commitment to activism while regretting their chuckles during her lifetime. I, too, am one of these. Late in the spring 1995 semester, I had to write my last column of the year. Pressed for time and groping for subject matter, I chose Change as column fodder. As part of a rather bad piece about Penn's oddities, I wrote: "Any regular passerby at 34th and Walnut knows about the bizarre dancer who frequently adopts the corner as a venue for her enigmatic political protests. She is nothing short of a spectacle, her lithe body squirming to an evidently homemade soundtrack. Her wardobe includes hemp-leaf bikinis, plush feathered headresses, globe-shaped pasties and phallic rockets attached to her bony pelvis. She hisses and sighs mantras of indeterminate political origin, extolling the merits of the forthcoming revolution and subsequent utopia in which we will all drop acid and love freely. A fiscal conservative, social liberal and certifiable freakshow, she is surely Penn's most engaging attraction." While I still maintain that this description is for the most part accurate, I certainly regret the mocking tone in which I wrote it. I was using a "normal" mode of free expression -- a newspaper column -- to vacuously ridicule a woman who actually expressed real opinions, albeit in strange ways. I mocked someone who held an opinion in a space that should have contained my own -- I was just too busy to think of one. Indeed, death has given Change sanity and legitimacy, and has given us cause to evaluate our opinions and the expression thereof. But I haven't learned my lesson. The most important political event in four years, the presidential election, is just a couple of days away. One would think that a column in the DP would be a great pulpit from which to persuade Penn's voters. So I've thought and I've thought, but I honestly have nothing to say. While I attribute this in part to the pitiable condition of American statesmanship, it is mostly due to my own absorption in things more immediate, namely my studies and perhaps my leisure. I've always considered myself politically opinionated, and I certainly know who I'm voting for, but I can't seem to articulate convincing reasons why. I'm not alone. Other campus publications (read: The Red and Blue) have sometimes relied on brainless attacks similar to mine on Change. We waste our time poking fun, unknowingly exposing the unsettling truth that we ourselves have less to say than we thought. I'm not sure what this observation means, but it should definitely send a message: Shut up or say something intelligent. This piece has been more than a personal confession. Even if you are reading and thinking, "Speak for yourself -- I'm not like that," think again. An overwhelming amount of "political" discourse these days is sheer ideological banter with little real value. The candidates are guilty, and so are we. Wake up, smell the coffee and think -- before it's too late.