Editor:

It is both shocking and alarming for any fair-minded student to read amid the pages of our university newspaper, the Guardian, the extremely offensive sort of condemnations that are more akin to rabid, journalistic McCarthyism than the articulate arguments that mark quality collegiate newspapers throughout the United States.

It seems that Ms. Baharian and Mr. Wikner — for what appears to be a lack of something to write — must turn to pillorying the U.S. president to fill their columns. It would appear to the reader that both writers accrue to the “”tabloid”” school of journalistic thought … concerned more with the entertainment of readers than conveyance of meaningful thought and discussion. I speak now of their articles concerning President George W. Bush on Feb. 20, 2001.

Briefly, Baharian condemns Bush for speaking at the infamous Bob Jones University (an institution widely known for its discriminatory policy on interracial dating), and Wikner (apparently never having studied Bush’s resume) pillories him as incompetent, decrying his lack of oratorical skills.

I would like to address Wikner’s arguments first. Wikner seems to believe that simple oratorical skills are synonymous with competence, and because the president is not as gifted a speaker as his predecessor, his political competence is brought into question. To this, I might direct Wikner to a rather good book, “”I, Cladius,”” written by Robert Graves, which describes a far worse speaker than Bush (Claudius Caeser) who — despite a speech impediment — rose to become one of the greatest emperors of Rome.

Wikner seems to neglect the fact that Bush held a gubernatorial role in the United States … governor of the state of Texas, that he was a graduate of Yale University and is an officer and a pilot of the Air National Guard. Wikner seems to base his entire argument upon rather vague incidents of slips of the tongue.

Now turning to Baharian’s article, which describes Bush’s speech at Bob Jones University. To her credit, Baharian presents far more research than Wikner, but with far less substance.

Her statement that “”it is clear that a politician must woo Bob Jones’ extremists as a rite of passage into conservative power”” is blatantly unfounded and ridiculously broad. If one is to speak of the “”racial intolerance remaining at the core of the Republican party,”” one should first look to former Vice President Al Gore’s draconian concepts of “”foreign policy,”” which often entail Perry-esque diplomacy.

It is an unfortunate indictment of The UCSD Guardian, which remains in my mind a good and faithful newspaper, that its pages must be marred by the shallow and unwarranted attacks by the more rabid of gutter journalism. I leave both Baharian and Wikner with words spoken by Gorgias, which I hope may prove useful to them in future journalistic efforts: “”The measure of discourse is not in the speaker, but in the listener.””

— Kelly Xi Huei

Lalith Ranasinghe