THUMBS XVI: Keep WV's Helmet Law; Toxic Universities; Republican Party Animals; Miami Beach Architecture in Manhattan
by David M. Kinchen
Editor, Bluefield News Network
Hinton (BNN) — This is the sixteenth installment of an occasional series expressing approval or disapproval of recent news events, commentaries, etc. Thumbs Up for approval; Thumbs Down for disapproval. I welcome contributions, which will be credited in the item. The contributions can come from within the BNN family or from our readers – I welcome them all. Contact me at davidkinchen@hotmail.com or send the contributions/suggestions to stories@huntingtonnews.net.
THUMBS UP – To Gov. Manchin's Highway Safety Director Bob Tipton for saying this week that he opposed relaxing West Virginia's motorcycle helmet law. As a licensed motorcyclist for 37 years in Wisconsin, California and West Virginia, I'm opposed to doing away with the mandatory helmet law or making it optional for adult cyclists. I know this doesn't square with my libertarian views on many things, but I try to temper these views with common sense.Tipton, a former Beckley police officer, said that "I think everybody in highway safety would be opposed to changing the helmet law." Oddly enough, Harley-Davidson owner Manchin said a few weeks ago that he would be willing to change the law to encourage more out-of-state bikers to visit West Virginia. Despite the arguments of some motorcycle owners – mostly H-D riders – helmets save lives. I've never ridden bareheaded, no matter how hot the weather is, but my bikes have been BMWs, Bultacos, Hondas, Yamahas and Triumphs, no Harleys. For some reason, Harley owners are the most vocal in their opposition to helmet laws. A shorty helmet – the kind worn by Highway Patrol motor officers in California, which still has a mandatory helmet law – will give a rider plenty of hearing capacity as well as protecting the skull.
THUMBS DOWN – To Cincinnati's Xavier University, a Jesuit institution, for joining what I call the Toxic University list. As reported by FrontPage Magazine, this venerable institution – it was founded in 1831, according to my World Almanac – has "increasingly fallen under the sway of a different kind of faith: radical leftist politics." The conservative online news and opinion site says Xavier's Peace and Justice program makes no effort "to disguise the left-wing activist agenda...and a palpable hostility to free-market capitalism" of the program.
To those who value the rigorous intellectual approach that is supposedly the hallmark of Jesuits, this is an odd program at a Jesuit college. However, the program borrows directly from its founder and co-director, Father Benjamin J. Urmston, a Jesuit priest and devout radical.I have no objection – indeed I strongly support the concept – of a free exchange of ideas at universities; however I vehemently object to indoctrination of the kind prevalent at places like Columbia University, Berkeley, Duke and other so-called "prestigious" universities. The more "prestigious" the university, the more likely it harbors indoctrination masquerading as education, in my view. I like the approach of Marshall, Concord, Bluefield State and my alma mater, Northern Illinois University – at least when I attended it – of providing a variety of views rather than predominantly left-wing propaganda which almost always includes America and Israel bashing. It's hardly news that the senior faculty members of most of the universities today are strongly left-wing, even radical. Today's ultra-lefties like Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado are uniformly U.S. haters, even as they draw comfortable salaries for eight or 10 hours of classroom work a week for nine months a year.
FrontPage says: "Urmston's disdain for the United States is equaled only by his enthusiasm for the communist cause. It is no accident that one of the earliest programs sponsored by Xavier's Peace and Justice program, under Urmston's direction, was a discussion series called Comprehending Communism. The unambiguous aim of the discussions was to sell Xavier students on the proposition, then in vogue among the pro-communist Left, that anti-communism was far more pernicious than communism itself.""Urmston remains committed to the Cuban revolution," FrontPage says. "While he concedes that 'Cuba is not heaven,' Urmston holds the United States accountable for the fact 'that Cuba does not handle dissent well.' The blame for Cuba's intolerance of dissent, as Urmston sees it, properly rests with the U.S. antagonism toward the Castro dictatorship, which has produced a 'bunker mentality' within the Cuban regime."
THUMBS DOWN – To West Virginia Senate Republicans who say they have no plans to ask Sen. Vic Sprouse, R-Kanawha, to resign as minority leader in the wake of his disclosure that he's filing for divorce from his third wife, who is four months pregnant.According to news accounts, the 36-year-old legislator has based at least one previous political campaign on "family values." Get real! This guy is acting like a Democrat! Doesn't he know that Republicans aren't supposed to be acting like this? His THIRD WIFE? I'm 30 years older and have only had one wife for the past 40 years and I'm still a registered Democrat! We're supposed to be the party animals (or is it the party of animals?).
Sprouse's father-in-law, David McKinley, is a former House minority leader. He has called for Sprouse to step down and has also said he believes his son-in-law needs treatment. Sounds like a plan to me!
McKinley has said that Sprouse's announcement in a GOP caucus last week that he was filing for divorce left the false impression that his daughter, Amy McKinley Sprouse, did something wrong. McKinley said his daughter is the aggrieved party.
"This is the third time he's caused anguish and ripped a family apart," said McKinley, a former lawmaker and former chairman of the Republican Party in the state. "It's shameful."
THUMBS DOWN – To New York City's bureaucracy for allowing demolition of the Paterson Silks building at Union Square in Manhattan and for okaying façade changes at the former Summit Hotel at 51st and Lexington in Midtown. Both buildings were designed by Morris Lapidus, famous as the architect of Miami Beach's Fountainbleau and Eden Roc hotels. I didn't know Lapidus had designed buildings in Manhattan; he also designed the gigantic Sheraton Hotel & Tower on 7th Avenue in Midtown, a 1960s-vintage, 1,700-room hotel which is still essentially the way he designed it.I've stayed at the Fountainbleau and found it to be a marvelous exercise in kitsch, the good, wholesome kitsch. Lapidus was the Rodney Dangerfield of architects, getting no respect from his peers or critics. Today, however, there's a movement to preserve kitschy architecture wherever it appears. According to the article in the March 9, 2005 New York Times, the 1961-vintage Summit is now called the Doubletree Metropolitan Hotel and is facing possible façade changes, although the hotel's web site brags about its curved façade and architect Lapidus. Chicago's architecturally significant 1895-vintage Reliance Building on State Street, now called the Hotel Burnham after its architect Daniel H. Burnham, shows that sensitive preservation and adaptive reuse can be compatible with preserving the classic lines of a building.
Although Lapidus's mix of French Provincial and Italian Renaissance styles were long scorned by some critics as "palaces of kitsch," the Miami Beach style had come back into vogue in recent years, giving his buildings both a retro and preservationist appeal, the Times says, adding that Kathleen Randall, a representative for the New York-area chapter of Docomomo U.S., which works to identify, document and protect buildings and sites of the Modern movement, said that Docomomo had made repeated requests for a preservation commission hearing on the two buildings over the last several months.
Related:
– MERGINET.com - The Ultimate EMS Resource - Motorcycle Deaths Rise in Florida After Helmet Law Repealed
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Thumbs Archives:
10/16/04 — Part I
11/10/04 — Part II
11/26/04 — Part III
12/15/04 — Part IV
12/24/04 — Part V
12/31/04 — Part VI
01/08/05 — Part VII
01/14/05 — Part VIII
01/21/05 — Part IX
02/04/05 — Part X
02/11/05 — Part XI
02/18/05 — Part XII
02/25/05 — Part XIII
02/28/05 — Part XIV
03/06/05 — Part XV
03/10/05 — Part XVI
03/18/05 — Part XVII
03/26/05 — Part XVIII
03/30/05 — Part XIX
04/09/05 — Part XX