America’s first transgender model
Tyra Banks struck a welcome blow for inclusiveness when she picked a transgender model for the latest season of “”America’s Next Top Model.”” The model, Isis, has been subjected to verbal abuse by her co-contestants and almost got kicked off on the second episode, but we’re cheering anyway; her presence is a remarkable testament to how far we’ve come in our definition of beauty. For jazzing up America’s favorite fashion reality show, Banks and Isis get a Pass.

Trivial pursuit
With the election less than two months away, neither candidate’s campaign can seem to resist degrading the occasion by focusing on trivia. John McCain’s team jumped on a remark Barack Obama made about McCain’s policies – the now-famous “”lipstick on a pig”” remark ð- and accused him, quite falsely, of smearing Sarah Palin. The Obama campaign, meanwhile, can’t stop mixing legitimate criticisms of McCain with pointless ones, such as the fact that he can’t use a computer ð(understandable in a man with severe war injuries). This year’s election should be a contest of ideas; for reducing it to just another propaganda contest, both campaigns get a Fail.

Now that’s what I call a debate!
Another election, this one a lot closer to home, got an intellectual boost Saturday night when Democratic incumbent Gabrielle Giffords and Republican challenger Tim Bee faced off at the UA Student Memorial Ballroom in what was to be their only debate of the season. Some of the issues – the Iraq war and nationalized health care – weren’t too far from those of the ongoing presidential campaign, and others – the border, mining and energy sources – weren’t, but both candidates did a fine job of telling us where each of them stands. For giving the voters a chance to decide between two clearly defined positions – not to mention encouraging young voters to get interested in the political process by their presence at the UA – Giffords and Bee get a Pass.

Closing time
By now, most freshmen have probably noticed what the rest of us grimly learned when we first got here: almost everything on University Boulevard closes by 11 p.m., and the area’s looking pretty dead most nights by 10. Sure, Frog and Firkin may linger on an hour or two on weekends (unless the crowd grows too sparse, in which case they take in the chairs and lock up), but otherwise the whole street dries up before your grandmother’s bedtime. This is a large campus, with a wealth of heavily populated dorms filled with young adults – who, as everyone knows, crave everything from pancakes to triple cheeseburgers at 1 a.m. Why in the world aren’t more local businesses taking advantage of that fact? For not trying harder to deprive us of our midnight-snack funds, the businesses of University Boulevard get a collective Fail.

Editorials are determined by the Wildcat opinions board and written by one of its members. They are Andi Berlin, Justyn Dillingham, Lauren LePage, Lance Madden and Nick Seibel.