Baseball still America’s pastime
Having just finished Mr. Curt Kemp’s baseball primer in the April 3 issue of The North Wind, I would like to congratulate him on a well written article. Baseball has been and always will be America’s sport. Other sports, such as football and basketball, have grown in popularity over the last couple decades, and may have delusions of being the new “national pastime,” but baseball will always be as welcoming as a warm apple pie.

For starters, baseball’s 2007 attendance was slightly fewer than 80,000,000 people for the year. This equals 10,000,000 more than combined attendance of football, basketball, hockey and soccer.

Baseball is the only sport where you have to count on your teammates to win a game. If one or two athletes have an outstanding game, they still are required to sit and watch their teammates and hope they can produce something as well. The one-on-one aspect of a pitcher-batter duel is the purest moment in all of sports. Like two gunslingers in the old west, they both bring their skills to the table. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but regardless of the outcome, the fan is screaming, sobbing or dancing. The baseball fan is never let down.

Mr. Kemp did a wonderful write-up of conveying the emotion we should all feel when the snow thaws and the best season of all starts — baseball season.

Cody Fleming,
Graduate Administrative Assistant

Coulter is shock-jock
America. This country is known for free speech. And it is a great thing to have free speech. But, do some people take the idea of free speech too far? It is highly possible. I believe Ann Coulter takes her views a little too far.

One of my biggest problems with Ann Coulter is her views on women’s right to vote. A quote from Coulter: “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine…” I have two major problems with this quotation. No. 1 being that Ann Coulter is trying to silence the views of the liberals in this country. Sure, Ann may be expressing her freedom of speech, but the cost of this view is that she is robbing many people of their freedom of speech.

This leads me into the second problem with the quotation. She is trying to rob people of their right to vote. The Constitution guarantees that everyone has the right to vote in this country regardless of sex. If Coulter succeeds in this, she will be robbing the Constitutional rights of many Americans. It only fascinates me more that Coulter, an American woman herself, feels that women should have their right to vote taken away.

A few people have been going around saying that those who feel Coulter should not be allowed on campus do not believe in Constitutional rights. But how am I not supporting Constitutional rights if Coulter is running around trying to spread her beliefs that women should not be allowed to vote? Coulter is trying to single-handedly silence the rights of liberals and women in this country, leaving only the conservatives with any Constitutional rights. I feel this is wrong and it needs to be stood up to.

Perhaps Coulter is trying to express many of her views for shock value. You present something that will grab the audience’s attention, such as denying women the right to vote, people will pay attention to you. And this may be what she is striving to do.

Sure, Coulter may have freedom of speech just like the rest of us. But she should not try to use her freedom of speech to silence the freedoms of others. Based on all of my views, I will be boycotting Coulter’s speech here at Northern Michigan University and I urge anyone who shares similar views to join me.

James Simmons
Senior

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