The Opinions page has two interesting letters. Mr. Henchman-- my ASUC Dad-- has the 'Hey, wait a minute, this is grossly illegal' one.

The other one is about my column--- he liked it.

I could not agree more with Kevin Deenihan's column "Putting up With It" (Nov. 8). Since coming to Berkeley, my interest in politics of any kind has decreased significantly, and I find myself to be one of the many "apolitical" students on this campus.

I bring this up not only to praise myself but to point out something weird. Lots of the (few) letters I get start something like 'Let this come as an antidote to the mountains of hate mail I'm sure you're receiving.'

Lord knows you'll probably get a huge amount of crap over it (I couldn't imagine being a conservative on that campus -- it's hard enough at the UA), but I admire your courage for putting it out.

You know how many hate mails I've ever gotten?

1

And that one was from a hard-core Conservative, pissed that I dissed BCR in my Ribbons column! He just sent me a nice letter over the Barak column, too.

Question is: why? The 'dreaming Republican' view is that this proves Berkeley is actually turning Conservative, and the vast majority of the campus agrees with my bitching out hard-core Leftists. But we all know this is wrong. First of all, no one reads my column, making widespread adoption of Deenihan-ideology unlikely.

My own opinion is that the Liberals/Progressives that go into the 'Strongly Disagree' category have decided to give up on the 'Shady Cal.' Note how rare it is in general, lately, for the Daily Cal to get a letter that's very far left of center. Having failed to change it after last year's protests, the Progressive element has essentially written the Daily Cal off as a tool of the Overclass, and don't feel any particular need to write disapproving letters to the lowly Friday Columnist. That leaves people outside of Berkeley the only ones who both 1. Read the Daily Cal on Friday and 2. Care enough to write in.



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