UC Irvine announced on Sept. 6 that it's again tied for 10th place among the nation's best public universities in U.S. News & World Report's annual ranking of America's leading institutions of higher learning. However, UCI was mute on the school earning a spot on the annual “Dirty Dozen” list of politically correct classes. The conservative educational group Young America Foundation (YAF)—not to be confused with the conservative hate group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)—gave UCI the nod for “Sexism and Power,” which one of those YAFs accuses of teaching “feminist propaganda” and asserting that “males and females are objects constructed in powered language dominated and controlled by males to their positional and distributional advantage.” Don't know what that means, but it makes us hot.
LET FREEDOM RING Orange County Superior Court Judge Daniel J. Didier on Sept. 7 ordered the immediate release of George Lopez, the Garden Grove teen who has spent two years in prison for an armed robbery another man has since confessed to committing. The district attorney's office—stung by a string of overturned convictions well documented in these pages—could retry Lopez or drop all charges. We'd advise the latter, as two robbery victims signed statements saying they're positive Lopez did not commit the crime, while the third and final victim swears he saw only the gun. We'd also advise Lopez not to hold his breath.
Photo by Matt Coker
FLAG WAVING Bill Harvey woke up to the news of devastating attacks on New York and the nation's capital on Sept. 11, and like most Americans, he was overcome with numb. But rather than going off to work in a zombie-like state like the rest of us, the Costa Mesa resident pulled the American flag out of his garage and headed for the nearest busy street corner. For the next several hours, he waved the flag from side to side, doing a nimble little hop with each pass. He'd never done anything like this before, but this was a day like none before.
“I'm 47 years old, and when I saw what was going on, I knew it was time,” Harvey said as motorists whizzed through the Harbor Boulevard and Baker Street intersection.
He works as a “private consultant” out of his home in the upscale Mesa Verde section of town, and he told his wife he'd be back in a minute when he left with flag in hand about 10 a.m. Harvey was still out there waving it as late as 3 p.m.
“We need to be together now more than any time in our history,” he explained. “We're fighting an enemy without a face.”
He's not a war veteran, but he said he lost two friends in Vietnam, that his father fought in two wars. “So I understand what this means,” Harvey said as a guy honked his Volvo's horn and waved excitedly.
Looking at his flag, Harvey said, “It's one of the few symbols left. It's a rallying cry. People of all colors have been honking, yelling their support, giving me the thumbs-up. It's time to link arms, take the muskets out of the attic and meet at the town hall.”
Shows of support from youths particularly touched him. “Young people are amazing,” he said. “College-age students especially have been showing a real passion when they see the flag flying. It gives me hope.”
He also witnessed another form of passion. “There is so much anger in a lot of these people driving by over what happened.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.