Berkeley Observer writes

Let's be fair to the 'Shady Cal' (an interesting choice of words, I might add, considering the accusation is that it's "too white"): it's what the students make of it. Whose fault is it that there are "0 ties" between the Daily Cal and minority communities, anyways? The Daily Cal certainly isn't in the business of turning away writers, ethnic or otherwise, so long as they write well. It's ridiculous for the minority poo-bahs on campus to level these charges when they have every opportunity for reform. If there are really no ties between the DC and Cal's minority communities (which isn't even true, but there is room for improvement), then I suggest that they show up to 6th floor Eshleman and start making some. I doubt that they would be turned away.

But they don't, and I think this is telling. For this is The Berkeley Way(TM). With so much of their identity invested in a persecution complex literally decades in the making, it would be near-fatal for their detractors to suddenly become amenable to them. What would half the "movements" on this campus be if they could not measure themselves by and channel their wrath against the perennial, antinomic specters of the UC, the Daily Cal, the "system"? Nothing, I say, nothing at all.

Why win the war when you can prolong the battle? Clearly, if the means, not the ends, is what interests you (e.g. you came to Berkeley to fight, which many did), then you're not going to want to stop the "movement" anytime soon. Which is why one can expect to (and does!) encounter a large disconnect between rhetoric (to wit, "Shady Cal"; or when the Cal Patriot calls the DC "a national joke" in their March, 2001 issue; or when Hard Boiled 5.1 (October, 2001) runs an article cryptically titled, "Daily Cal : Thriving on Ignorance"; or when La Voz de Aztlan, in a September, 18, 2001 dispatch calls the paper racist; or my God, where to even begin with the ASUC; or for that matter, much of calstuff.blogspot.com) and action in this community. To my knowledge (I could be incorrect here), no one in MeChA, BCR, or APA--or you--writes for the Daily Cal, or has even tried to in recently memory. One would think that the pervasive, egregious, and overt shoddiness of the DC, which so many proclaim so frequently with such alacrity, might spur one--just one!--person to try to right these wrongs. Maybe we should be asking ourselves why this does not happen.

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