THE DAILY REVEILLE
Opinion
PAGE 16
OUR VIEW
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Jindal’s recommendations a nice thought, not a solution While most students were catching beads and reveling in Mardi Gras festivities, Governor Bobby Jindal released his proposed budget for 2011 last Friday. Impressively and importantly, the budget doesn’t include any cuts to higher education. This budget proposal shows Jindal has at least the pretense of caring that higher education doesn’t get completely gutted.
While the proposed budget is certainly welcome here on a campus that is already feeling the sting of budget cuts, it’s important this minor success not be blown out of proportion. First, Jindal’s budget is by no means law. The budget has to actually be implemented by the legislature, whose members are under no obligation to follow his reccomendation. Jindal’s recommendations
may make sense, but only if he and our representatvies spend the effort and political capital to make sure it actually gets implemented. They should do this swiftly and in an overwhelimg show of solidarity. Second, there should be no illusion that this proposal means an end to our budgetary woes. The budget for this year already inolves significant and painful funding cuts, and we have yet to
feel the real brunt of decreased funding. Finally, this budget is certainly a short term fix. It does nothing to rectify the major structural inequalities that lead to higher education and health care suffering wildly disproportionate cuts when the money gets tight. This is and will continue to be the primary issue in this matter, and it should be our elected officials’ primary concern when
AGE OF DELIGHTENMENT
ple who have Twitter accounts, and 12 of them are Reveille opinion columnists. The remainder of accounts I follow are not actual people — with the exception of Joel McHale, Lady Gaga and shitmydadsays. Twitter is rife with organizations looking to promote their products or Web sites. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I personally prefer Sara Boyd to join someColumnist one’s e-mail list if I give a crap about what they do. Celebrities are also very involved with Twitter. This is as much a marketing tool for a celebrity’s “brand” as it is for their actual persona. Celebrities have lots of followers, and their Tweets make major news. That’s fine too, but most celebrity Tweets consist of mundane details and uninteresting observations, and I can barely tolerate those from people I actually know. I have no reason to care about Tom Hanks getting his scooter license. 2. They are idiots. Take a look at trending topics at any given moment. As I write this, the topics include five people I’ve never heard of, two racist catchphrases, and some stuff about the Olympics. I see a bunch of Tweets from teenagers and bots when I click on the trending topics. Teenagers and bots are stu-
THE DAILY REVEILLE Editorial Board NICHOLAS PERSAC JERIT ROSER GERRI SAX ELLEN ZIELINSKI MATTHEW ALBRIGHT
Editor Managing Editor, Content Managing Editor, External Media Managing Editor, Production Opinion Editor
Contact the Editorial Board at editor@lsureveille.com
PAOLO’S PUZZLE
Twitter: irrelevant, useless, lazy man’s Facebook isn’t cool Twitter is a useless, big, fat waste of my time. I created a Twitter account after all the CNN anchors kept talking about how important it was. I figured I’d see what the fuss was about because I’d heard absolutely zero other people talk about Twitter. After a while, I decided it was essentially a lazy man’s Facebook status update and deleted my account. Before it would let me leave, Twitter told me vehemently there was no going back and asked if I was sure I wanted to get rid of every single Tweet I’d ever Tweeted. Yes, Twitter, I said. I feel like I can part with those useless 140-character-or-less musings about coloring my hair at home, stuff my dog did and jokes only my boyfriend would get. Irony: I was told the very next day a Twitter account was required as part of my job as a Daily Reveille Opinion Columnist. The powers that be feel, as many old-school newsy types do, that Twitter is the future of news and the voice of the people. God help us all if that’s true. But I’m pretty sure it’s not. I’ve come up with a short list of reasons people use (and presumably like) Twitter. And none of those reasons really make it worth my while, or most people’s for that matter — especially when there are far better options (Facebook, e-mail, RSS feeds, etc.). People use Twitter because: 1. They have to. I know a total of 24 real peo-
the legislature convenes. This budget, while absolutely something to be applauded, can’t be made out to be a silver bullet, when it’s at best a few sandbags thrown on the gaping whole that is the state’s fiscal system.
pid, and no one cares about either of them. 3. They live in countries with criminally oppressive governments or are the victims of disastrous circumstances and have literally no other media outlet. See: Iran, China, Haiti. OK, you can use Twitter as a kind of international 911. I’ll give you that one. 4. They are “newsies.” News organizations <3 Twitter. They feature replies from their followers, and they report crap from Twitter alongside crap from the Associated Press. This constant, pathetic, failing attempt at relevancy is probably what keeps me from watching major news networks and reading major newspapers (well, that and monster bias). It’s also one reason why these forms of media are dying. Actual relevancy is a hard thing to achieve. It’s kind of like trying to be cool in high school. When you try too hard, it turns people off. Twitter does not make you cool, interesting or relevant. It makes you look like someone’s mom doing the Macarena at a wedding – hopelessly, embarrassingly out of touch. Sara Boyd is a 23-year-old general studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow her on Twitter @ TDR_sboyd. PAOLO ROY / The Daily Reveille
Contact Sara Boyd at sboyd@lsureveille.com
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QUOTE OF THE DAY “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Henry Kissinger American political scientist and diplomat May 27, 1923 — present