Fail

Are you ready for some foot-in-mouth?

Hank Williams Jr., a country singer known best for his introduction to Monday Night Football, made a controversial comparison during a chat on “Fox and Friends.” Williams was commenting on Monday about the golf pairing of President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner. Williams said he thought it was odd the two were playing together and compared it to Adolf Hitler playing golf with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When asked to clarify, Williams said Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were “the enemy.” That evening ESPN pulled the normal introduction, a video of Williams singing the famous song “Are you ready for some football?”, from its telecast of Monday Night Football. Williams later issued a statement trying to explain the matter. Nonetheless, there’s no going back on comparing the U.S. president to a Nazi, especially not Hitler. Say what you want about Obama’s policies, but you show only insensitivity and ignorance by making such comparisons. It is absolutely disrespectful to the memories of those who suffered at the hands of the Holocaust to toss around comparisons like this. This inexcusable, ill-mannered and exaggerated rhetoric is unforgivable and stomps on the severity of the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jewish people. Williams gets the fail, but everyone who just writes this off as a case of another loudmouth who didn’t think before speaking also gets a failing grade. This is seriously unacceptable.

Pass

Fulbright for the win

The UA has turned out 16 Fulbright Scholars, and established an all-time high for the university. While the pool of applicants also grew last year, the school expects high volume of applications this year as well. The Fulbright scholarship provides an excellent opportunity for students to take a year off from school to go out into the “real world” and travel to a foreign country to conduct research or a project. These are some of the university’s, and the country’s, brightest and best-prepared students. This scholarship provides an opportunity to have an impact on the world, even if it’s only on a small scale. No matter the impact, you can’t devalue the experience and the influence it will have on those students. The Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships, the UA and, of course, all the applicants and award recipients have earned a pass for continuing the excellence that is expected and fostered at the UA.

Incomplete

The economy is still bad, just not as bad

The economy managed to pull off some growth in the last quarter, and it was more growth than expected, but not by much. The economy grew at a rate of 1.3 percent, which narrowly bests the expected rate of 1 percent, and jobless claims fell to their lowest total in the past five months. Unemployment claims dropped by 37,000 to their lowest total since April. According to the McClatchy Tribune, economists say any unemployment insurance claims that come in under 400,000 are good news. Phew! The claims are resting at 391,000, so that means we’re good there too. While the numbers are promising, they don’t really tell us much. Unemployment was still at a cripplingly high total as recently as August and another recession could still come and plague the U.S. Ultimately though, growth is good, but who deserves the credit? If you ask Republicans, they would undoubtedly say they stopped the Democrats from further wasteful spending. If you ask the Democrats, they would certainly tell you this growth is the best they could muster with those incorrigible Republicans, and we could be doing far better without the Republican meddling. Either way, you can’t get too hyped up about the limited growth. Until consistent and noticeable growth is achieved, this calls for an incomplete. We just wish we knew who to give the grade to.

— Editorials are determined by the Daily Wildcat editorial board and written by one of its members. They are Kristina Bui, Storm Byrd, Nicole Dimtsios and Steven Kwan. They can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.