DKL

INSTANT GRATIFICATION

Two University of Kentucky professors, Dr. Lewis Dittert and Dr. Anwar Hussain, have developed a nasal spray form of the now infamous drug Viagra. The reason for the development of the new nasal spray form was the delay most people encountered with the traditional tablet.

"Hussain was overseas last year, and we talked on the phone," said Dr. Dittert when commenting on their research. "He said people are complaining about having to wait for Viagra to work."

This delay is apparently the result of one having to wait for the body’s digestive enzymes to break down the drug. With the new nasal spray form, small dosages will be required to achieve a much faster result.

Hussain and Dittert have approached Pfizer, the company that first introduced Viagra, to be a sponsor, but they have been slow to react. Once these ambitious doctors do find a sponsor, testing can begin. Does America have the patience to wait?

BOXERS OR BRIEFS

Laetitia Thompson is only 21 years old, but she already worries that her obituary might describe her as "the woman who said ‘boxers or briefs?’" The Princeton University senior, interviewed recently by The Washington Times about her controversial question to President Clinton during his MTV appearance in 1994, said that she never expected such a barrage of publicity about it.
"It sort of grew into this monster that won’t die," said Thompson. Saying that her curiosity was piqued during the period before the MTV broadcast, Thompson noted that the president "definitely seemed like a boxers guy. Everyone was betting on boxers," because of his laid-back behavior.

When she finally popped the question to the Prez, "he turned bright red" before answering, saying: "I can’t believe you’re asking me that," recalls Thompson.
Even if Clinton waffled, Thompson says today that she appreciated his candor. "I really just thought he was the coolest guy," she said. Although she’s disappointed by the President’s behavior with Monica, Thompson, the daughter of Dateline NBC reporter Lea Thompson, says she remains one of Clinton’s most avid supporters. After graduating from Princeton with a degree in history, Thompson will pursue a journalism career.

REVISIONISTS ROUT

California school children routinely learn the story of gold pioneer John Sutter, and how the gold found at his sawmill sparked the famous gold rush. However, the name that graces streets and buildings all over California is being deeply tarnished at the hands of politically correct revisionists, eager to smash another icon. In the university town of Davis, for example, where political correctness reigns so supreme that smoking is banned at bus stops, local historian Jack Forbes has deemed John Sutter "an immoral man, a sexual predator, a rapist and an enslaver of Native Californians." The litany of Sutter’s dastardly deeds inspired concerned citizens to change the name of Sutter Place to "Shasta Place."

"Change can be painful, but still good and necessary," said Councilwoman Sheryl Freeman. However, many residents said they oppose changing the name of the street. "I think that is a very extreme thing to do," said state librarian Kevin Starr. "While his treatment of Native Americans by our standard today is appalling, it was no better and no worse than the treatment of his day. Very few of the founders of California can pass muster today."

KIDS VS. KIDS

As the case of Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education demonstrates, the Justice Department might be handling a mammoth new job of disciplining school children. This would extend the mandate of Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments, which bars sex discrimination for student-on-student sexual harassment. At issue is the case of Georgia fifth grader LaShonda Davis, who is demanding $500,000, claiming that a classmate sexually harassed her on eight different occasions while school officials, in effect, turned their backs on the situation. Not surprisingly, feminist groups are rallying to support this case.

While sexual misconduct, even by schoolchildren, can reach the level of assault, its victims are protected by criminal and civil tort law. But in these politically correct times where studies show that harassment can be interpreted as jokes, gestures or looks, it seems that 65% of students believe that they have been victims of harassment. That adds up to some seven million potential complainants — and we’re only talking about middle school.

MORAL BANKRUPTCY

You’ve got to hand it to the Oakland, California public school system. Two years ago, it made headlines by pushing the need to teach "ebonics." This year, the decision to run a day long teach-in on capital punishment has catapulted Oakland back onto the front page.

According to Dr. Thomas Sowell, this mindset exemplifies what’s wrong with the nation’s public schools. "Instead of being dedicated to the education of children, schools have become places that exist to provide jobs and jollies to adults." The question is, how can "educators" get away with using children as lab experiments geared toward non-educational ends? Sowell lays most of the blame on teachers’ unions and ironclad tenure. Add to that the arrogant disregard for children and a propensity for throwing money at the education problem, and you have a prescription for the current disaster.

Dr. Sowell points to California Gov. Gray Davis’ recent vow to make education a "top priority" and his call for "higher standards" as an example of continuing political hypocrisy. Those who can crack the code realize that this pious rhetoric only means that liberals will spend more tax money and that the "standards" of education schools and departments (which draw from the bottom half of college students) will be fiercely defended. Efforts to reform the curriculum in Massachusetts and Virginia drew heavy fire from the education establishment. Concerning Gov. Davis’ call for "peer review" among teachers, does anyone doubt that these unqualified teachers will give their fellow educators high marks?

GRAPHIC NOVELS, 101

If historian N.C. Christopher Couch had his way, every campus in America "would offer courses in the history and aesthetics of comics," according to a recent piece in the Boston Globe. Couch, who teaches courses in "Comic Art" and "The Graphic Novel" at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, routinely decries the difficulty in getting people to take his subject matter seriously. For example, instead of being included as offerings in the humanities area, the subject of comics has become "ghettoized" in communications and journalism departments. Couch’s message to cave dwellers in art history departments and elsewhere who claim that nothing matters besides the Italian Renaissance and classical Greece is that other countries, including Japan and Mexico, take comics much more seriously.

Even in America, someone named Art Spiegelman earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his complex "graphic novel," about his father’s experience in the Holocaust. Couch owes a debt of gratitude to Bill Moebius, chairman of the comparative lierature department, who found the funds for his part-time teaching stint at UMass. Students seeking a "gut" course are weeded out after discovering that language facility in French and German is required to understand the foreign language comics included in the course. Although Couch admits that during the ’90s the number of retail outlets offering comics has fallen from 6,000 to 3,000, he believes this occurred because of comics’ similarity to poetry—both appeal to a niche market and require special attention from the reader.

In his opinion, the future of comics "could depend on their ability to copy the survival techniques of poetry, whereby dedicated artists produce works for a core group of readers with little regard for the marketplace."