This is the story of your red right ankle

Because a factory in Britain screwed up, you won't be getting an inexpensive flu shot from the Student Health Center that will keep you from getting sick during finals. Neither will tens of thousands of high-risk patients like nursing home residents, children and cancer patients. If you needed any more proof that what goes on overseas actually affects us, there it is - one less needle stick this year, and a lot more miserable days in bed.

However, instead of just being a nuisance during the final weeks of "The Most Important Presidential Election of Our Lifetimes," the flu vaccine shortage reveals a lot about our misplaced priorities as Americans.

Authorities in Florida promised to prosecute a company that was selling the vaccine for a price that was well above the going rate before the shortage. Pharmacies and public health officials expressed outrage that anyone would be so inhuman and cruel to profit from people's misfortune. Personally, I don't see what was so wrong with the company making more dollars off a product that is both hard to find and for which the demand is high. Isn't that how economics works?

Isn't this why gas is hovering around $2 a gallon? Lower production in the Middle East, plus unrest in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and more people driving SUVs has contributed to crude oil breaking the $55-a-barrel price. Fuel prices like this make everything more expensive, from fruit at the grocery store to shipping your mom a birthday package via UPS. It's reasonable to be angry about having to donate a kidney to be able to afford gas. It's equally unforgivable that our government hasn't taken steps to ensure that another health crisis like the flu shot shortage never happens again.

After all, we have historically put tariffs on steel imports from overseas to protect American manufactures because having a domestic industry is critical to national security. Extreme fuel shortages are equally dangerous to our economic well-being, hence why the national reserves will be tapped if oil prices continue to wander higher. We've been told repeatedly that in this new post-9/11 world, terrorists are likely to exploit our weaknesses, especially when it comes to an epidemic like smallpox. Yet, we aren't even prepared for the flu. I don't feel any safer, and I think I know why.

Economics isn't the answer to all our problems, any more than simply killing every terrorist is. Violence and hatred breed more of the same, and trying to get cheaper gas without reducing our dependence and use of it will never work.

If we are to follow the law of supply and demand, which in America we've been implicitly taught is the new Golden Rule, all we get is $900 flu shots. This is just as wrong as gouging Florida residents for water and bread after a hurricane, and yet this is the environment in which most of our businesses operate.

You see, in this election I don't believe that simply casting a vote and doing one's civic duty will suffice. No matter which candidate is chosen, we each must choose if we will allow our nation to slide further down the slope of disinterested consumerism or if we will, like our grandparents, see ourselves as members of our communities.

It is time for us to cease being duplicitous in our rhetoric while supporting profit as the ultimate goal and acting offended when companies like Enron take this philosophy to its logical conclusion. No one in need should be forced to choose to pay the price of tuition to keep from catching the flu.

And I almost love this town when I'm by your side . . .

This week's column:

America's politicians fail to show leadership

Voters ought to demand more of their elected officials

I've said it before and I'll say it again: America is suffering from a lack of leadership by those in so-called leadership positions. We send men in dark suits and red ties to Washington with the hope they'll make better decisions, even though we have the sinking suspicion they'll disappoint us at nearly every turn. After all, we want decision-makers that have insight that we lack, even though no such person exists in this world. Sure, they have access to better research and might have more policy experience, but they still lack the ability to transcend the crippling bounds of human uncertainty. Where have all the Kennedys gone?

Nowhere was this crisis in leadership more clear than in Thursday's debate between Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush. Both candidates spent the 90-minute debate attacking the other's record and arguing past decisions instead of articulating a future vision for America. Because we are a democracy guided in part by the people's will, we want an executive with the ability to inspire the nation to become a better version of itself over four years. The apathy that is increasing in the electorate is a direct result of a lack of passionate visionaries at the reigns of government.

America has for too long contented itself with taking baby steps toward its goals, and the internal conflict between where we want to be and where we find ourselves is manifested in our increasing individualism. While the Founding Fathers understood our country to be a community of dissidents committed to a better life free from intrusion but not responsibility, we have evolved into a loosely connected group of people more interested in their own desires instead of collective ability.

So we end up with leaders who are arrogant enough to believe that we can change the global community without its help or assent, leaders who think that the United States is safest when we kill civilians instead of addressing the root causes of crime and terror. John Kerry has been to busy explaining why the Iraq war was a bad idea, something most of us already know, instead of telling us what he would do to help people inside our own borders who can't pay their medical bills.

Our current president uses the attacks on New York as justification for all sorts of ludicrous interventions around the world and on our civil rights. We're choosing between two backward-looking men who will double-talk us into voting what they've either already done or failed to do.

I think we are disillusioned with what our nation has become, and this sentiment is manifested in many aspects of our generation's culture. It's why we listen to music that's too loud and noisy, and why we love movies that depict human isolation like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The world is a confusing place, and if Mr. Bush can't tell us what's going on in the world and make it orderly again, then why should we be able to? More tax cuts for the middle class and cheaper oil aren't a vision for the future that's any different from the one that's gotten us in this mess.

There's a big difference between the ideologies of Sen. Kerry and Mr. Bush, so it's still a wise thing to go out and vote on Nov. 2 - are you registered? However, we need to hold our officials to a higher standard if we are to get anything other than more of the same in future campaigns.

Is no choice really a choice?

I'm posting this column by my friend and satirist Graham Culbertson because The Gamecock wouldn't print it. It should be read, not censored. Here you go:

The Rich Guys Don't Care About You - by Graham Culbertson

In case you haven’t noticed, I have one simple policy in my columns. I don’t deal with issues. Everyone else writes about issues. Everyone writes about social issues, economic issues, and, most of all, political issues. Everyone writes about Republicans and Democrats, Kerry and Bush, pork barrel politics and the welfare state. The mistake that they all make is that they care.

Nowadays, everyone, from MTV to MoveOn.org to Puff Diddy to The Gamecock, is telling all young people to get out and vote. Rock the vote. Care about the vote. Vote for someone, vote for anyone. And this issue offends me so much that I’m gonna have to break my only rule to attack it.

Put simply, voting really is for old people. It seriously is. The AARP has tremendous political clout because they all vote. Does that mean that I should vote? Doesn’t that just mean that the AARP is made up of a bunch of people who don’t have jobs anymore but think that Kerry instead of Bush, or Bush instead of Kerry, is actually going to change something? Does their tremendous political clout result in anything?

I’ve got some news for you, AARP members and “young people should vote” activists. Voting doesn’t matter. Bush is a multimillionaire, and so is Cheney. John Edwards is worth more than both of them combined. Senator Kerry-Heinz is worth almost ten times as much as the other three. And Puff Daddy thinks that me voting for Mr. Billionaire and his super millionaire partner is better than voting for a pair of super millionaires? Does the American President even do anything? Because if I remember my civics lessons, he can’t declare war, doesn’t levy taxes, and can’t even pass laws. But oh yeah, if I don’t get out this November and pick super-rich Yale graduate A or super-rich Yale graduate B, I’m losing my all-important right to make a difference. Thanks, but I’ll take Option C, which is cut class, lay around watching sports, and then mug a College Republican for his “I Voted” sticker and show it to my professors.

In case anyone out there has missed the last 230 years, here’s how America works: Everybody here has more money than everyone else in the world (except for Luxembourgians or Luxembourgites. Whatever.). Everybody has a car, a TV, and free public education. Corporations run the country (and the world), but we insist on pretending that a few hundred grumpy rich white men in Washington are really running the country (and the world). And now Puff Daddy says that if we’re not involved in picking the next rich old white figurehead, we’re doing something wrong. Thanks Puffy, but I think you and the rest of the old people are doing a pretty good job pretending that the political process matters. You don’t need me.

So please, Don’t Vote. If you vote, then you think it matters, and if you think it matters, then the AARP has won. Think about it. You’re a student at a university who is definitely not paying for college out of your own pocket. You’ll graduate, get a job, get a house in the suburbs, and buy a Lexus. You get to go to movies and buy CDs and watch football in HDTV. Is something wrong here? Do we want Ralph Nader running the world instead of BMW? Just do me this one favor, and don’t vote. Your good life is coming to you either way. Don’t waste a Tuesday in November now. Save that up for when you’re old and you finally think it matters.