This is just a sample of the stuff I used to write for The Point News at St. Mary's College of Maryland. I had a nearly weekly Commentary column in the paper. This article was published on October 5, 1993. At that point I was living in a hotel room ten miles from campus with Alex Collery. Why you may ask? We were there because the college forgot to finish our townhouse over the summer. We had three things to entertain ourselves. The bar with the pool table next door, dodging traffic on Route 4, and watching cable. This became a major influence on my writing that semester. Maybe some day I will post my Diplomatic History Paper comparing the Spanish American War with old Hill Street repeats. This is a look back at the days of NAFTA, a pre-Monica Nation, and a little bit too much television. I call it:

Well history was made last issue of The Point News. The words "testicular cancer" were used in two different articles. Both that of yours truly and Dana Fehlberg wanted to educate you about this dreadful disease. Men, if you do not know how to perform a self-exam, go to the health center and get the free pamphlet from the National Cancer Society. You'll be glad that you did. Now, onward and upward to this week's world issue. Today, we will be looking at a less depressing subject. The subject is the cartoons of our youth.

"Here he comes! Here comes Speed Racer! He's a demon on wheels! And he's going to be chasing after someone!" Those are the lyrics that I and millions of other children, of the seventies and the eighties would come home to every day after those seven and one half-hours of hell known as elementary school. We all remember Chim-chim and Spridle. We all knew that the mysterious Racer X was actually Speed's older brother Rex, who had run away at age 18 when Pops told him that he was too young to race. I'm sure some of you had a crush on that sexy girlfriend of Speed's, Trixie. What was it about poorly done Japanese animation that appealed to us all when we were children?

And don't think I simply mean Speed Racer. What about Voltron? And I mean both the version with the lions and the one with the vehicles. Or how many of you remember the bat eared guy from Battle of the Planets? These are all part of our cultural identity.

These poorly dubbed, low budget, and at times rather silly cartoons were gold to us as children. The way the colors blended together and the way all the young male and female characters seemed to have the same face. The lousy plot lines that usually involved a very evil character stealing something like a million tons of gold or all the crown jewels of a peaceful natives, who decided it would be a good idea to have a hundred foreign race car drivers in their country for the weekend. The way the Japanese writers would place something in Niagara Falls, New York and then have Speed drive for a couple hours and end up at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

And what about those giant robot cartoons like Voltron or Battle of the Planets? Remember the way they would be attacked by the other robots and almost lose every week, but would always fight back and win in the last five minutes. If those bad guys had been at all smart they would simply have sent another killer robot right after the last commercial break and been done with the whole thing. Those lions would have had their butts handed to them every week.

Now I am going to speak to a certain group of you who still enjoy this Japanese animation. For these people, titles like Fist of the North Star and Akira bring them to near orgasm. I am talking about you "Japanimaniacs." You know who you are and I just saw that twitch when you read the word Akira, so now I know who you are. I will say for those of you who haven't watched Japanese animation since you were twelve, the little that I have seen leads me to believe that the animation has improved. But the people still have the same face and the dubbing over in English is still worse than the dubbing in a Spaghetti Western. The point is that so many of you enjoy what you enjoyed as children. You enjoy watching cartoons. Specifically, you enjoy watching Japanese cartoons.

This is where I start the big moral lesson, so hold on tight. We are Americans, God love us, salute the flag and everything, and we enjoyed and some of us still enjoy something that was created in Japan. It was ingrained in our little psyche. It has been happening all your life and all of my life and for the better part of our parent's lives. From your Sony Walkman to that Honda parked in your neighbor's driveway. The Japanese created our trade deficit, I hear over and over again. To that I say, WRONG. We created our own trade deficit. It isn't some insane plot of the Asian mind that has made us dependent on Japanese goods, as I read in a right wing news paper the other day. It's our desire for the good things in life that has put us in this unique situation, not some insane attempt by the Japanese to be the final victors of World War II. We have to look to our own shortcomings and focus on our greatest strengths. As Americans, we enjoy the greatest freedom in the world, including the freedom to choose which product we want to buy.

We have had the power to save the American working class all the time, the power of our money and our ability to consume. If we begin to build up or sustain artificial barriers to free trade, we will lose that freedom to choose that we hold so dear and that we have spent the last two centuries trying to export to the rest of the world. We would only be shooting ourselves in the same foot that we have just put in the door. We would be sacrificing a great deal by not taking a serious look at the importance of free trade. Not simply for the Japanese, but in the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada and Mexico. If there had been trade barriers during the seventies we would never have gotten submerged in top quality Japanese Animation.

One final thought about Speed Racer. MTV has been showing old Speed Racer episode for the last year now and they have been bringing joy to thousands of young adults. MTV has just started broadcasting in 11 countries in Latin America, and already has stations in Europe, Asia, Brazil, and Japan. Wouldn't it be a shame if people could get their MTV all around the world but couldn't get anything else American because of the trade walls we refuse to tear down.