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MOUNTAIN VIEWS: JUST WONDERING -- THINGS TO PONDER

By John Hanchette

OLEAN -- Here's an updated list of things to worry and wonder about, as if you didn't have enough.

Let's open with a caveat. I work for a Catholic university, but I'm not listing this first item for brownie points with my bosses. I'm listing it because it's growing as a national issue.

ANTI-CATHOLIC BIAS

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is still simmering over a lengthy dispute concerning a reading assignment given incoming freshmen and transfer students. Initially, they were told to read "Approaching the Qur'n: The Early Revelations," by Michael Sells, a Haverford College religion professor.

The assignment was made voluntary after the state legislature threatened to cut off the big school's funding -- and critics claimed the book conveniently leaves out most of the currently newsworthy parts of the Koran pertaining to jihad and knocking off "infidels" who don't conform to the Islamic faith.

Citizen anger over the assignment -- many compared it to making students read "Mein Kampf" before World War II -- collided with freedom of speech defenders and proponents of academic freedom. The school finally settled on a series of discussion groups.

Three anonymous students sued to stop the assignment -- a Jew, a Catholic and a Protestant -- as did the Christian organization called Family Policy Network. They argued the assignment amounted to Islamic indoctrination and violated the church-state separations implied by the Constitution. The suits failed, even on appeal.

Here's my take: I'm pretty much a purist when it comes to freedom of speech, and celebrate anything that can get kids to learn about the big wide world out there. But this falls under my Just Wondering category.

I'm Just Wondering what the reaction would have been if a UNC professor had mandated the Tar Heel freshmen read the last three encyclicals authored by Pope John Paul II. We may never know, but my bet is the outcry would have been even louder, and the courts would have ruled for the plaintiffs.

While I'm on the subject, I'd also like to bring up the bonehead shock jocks who broadcast live a breathless report on a couple having apparent sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan during a particularly important holy period. (The couple had been put up to the act as part of a radio station contest rewarding sex in public places. The man and woman face criminal charges.)

This was supposed to pass as humor, but it got the DJs canned, the alleged lovers arrested, and sent the Federal Communications Commission into a tizzy. The flap drew jokes from professional comedians, and stout defense from freedom of speech defenders -- but not an overwhelming amount of network or mainstream press criticism of the radio morons.

Again, Just Wondering what the media reaction would have been if the perpetrators of this idiotic prank had been visited upon a synagogue or a mosque.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS

This falls into the Worry category. According to the usually reliable "Harper's" magazine, the expenditures for which the Pentagon could not account last fiscal year totaled $22 billion -- with a B.

YOUR PRIVACY

Same category. Same magazine. The percentage of the nearly 2,400 surveillance cameras in New York City trained on spaces that are privately owned now totals 89 percent, according to "Harper's."

THE WAR ON TERRORISM

Again, from "Harper's" and other publications, which worry me with reports that the CIA inadvertently sold 25 laptop computers containing top secret information at a government surplus auction in 1995.

THE CHECK IS IN THE MAIL

Here's a Just Wondering item. Remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989? The company was ordered eight years ago to pay punitive damages and cleanup costs of $5 billion. So far, as of early summer, it had coughed up not one penny. Just Wondering why the environmental community isn't raising pluperfect hell over this.

WE HAD TO BURN THE VILLAGE TO SAVE IT

This was an alleged statement from an American officer during the war in Vietnam when a TV honcho asked him why several huts were torched. It came to mind when President George W. Bush last week announced his plan to save the fire-endangered forests by allowing big timber companies to cut down the trees. Defenders of the plan claim the only way to prevent devastating forest fires is to clear the old tinder and overgrown brush from underneath the tall trees.

Just Wondering if we'll see pigs and monkeys fly before the big timber companies actually do that in removing the lucrative, ancient and previously protected trees they have coveted for so long.

SHIFTING SAUDI SUPPORT

Just Wondering how long the Saud dynasty can hang on -- with or without Bush administration support -- in the face of statistics like the one on the desert kingdom's per capita income: Down an astonishing 75 percent in the last two decades. This makes it a teeny bit more understandable why our "friend" Saudi Arabia spawned 15 of the 19 terrorists responsible for the havoc almost a year ago. Might be time to sell your gas-hog SUVs.

GULF WAR ILLNESS

Just Wondering when the Pentagon is going to admit that study after study is showing "stress" was not the much-ballyhooed cause of mystery symptoms that affected about a sixth of the allied forces in the 1991 war with Iraq. Before mounting another war against that country and its dictator Saddam Hussein, defense officials should figure out if American troops were actually attacked with nerve gas in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and why a significant number of once-healthy veterans suffers neurological impairment.

John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He can be contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@aol.com.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com August 27 2002