Hypocrisy Broadly Construed’ and When Is a Hunger Strike Newsworthy?
Reports about the activities of Chenoweth, Barr, and Burton fell within the boundaries of the norm of hypocrisy. Each had publicly condemned behavior similar to the acts in which each had privately engaged. The case of Henry Hyde was different from these three. This time there was no public display, no abuse of power, no hypocrisy, and no lying, and the behavior had occurred more than Cartier Replica three decades earlier. In the new climate, however, allegations about sexual indiscretions by a leading Republican constituted news.
On September 16, 1998, Salon, an electronic magazine, revealed that Hyde, the 74-year-old chair of the House Judiciary Committee, had had an extended affair with a married woman more than three decades earlier. The source of the story was the tennis partner of the woman’s former husband, who had made the original allegations. Hyde confirmed the story.
In the wake of the Hyde disclosure in September 1998, representatives of both major parties condemned the fact that the information had been made public. The heads of the Democratic and Republican National Congressional Committees both announced that they would withhold campaign funds from any member of their party who engaged in personal attacks against an opponent.
Rick Hoye, a 28-year-old junior majoring in international relations at the University of Minnesota, began a hunger strike June 6, 1980, to dramatize his contention that the university’s Board of Regents ought to reverse its earlier vote and order a boycott of Nestle products on the campus. Before the hunger strike, Hoye headed a campus chapter of the Infant Formula Action Coalition, a group that had worked unsuccessfully for over a year to pass the boycott. Fifty student groups supported the boycott. In February 1980, the university senate, a body composed of faculty and students had passed a resolution advocating a boycott. In June 1980, the board of regents voted 8 to 3 against a boycott. That vote followed the recommendation of university president C. Peter Magrath, who contended that it was inappropriate for a public university to become involved in such a boycott.
The proposed boycott was designed to protest Nestle’s manufacture and promotion of infant formulas in underdeveloped countries. Because these mothers used the formula in unsanitary conditions and diluted it with impure water, they increased the likelihood that their infants would suffer from malnutrition or contract diseases. By breast-feeding the infants instead, mothers could minimize these risks.
To dramatize the hunger strike, Hoye pitched a tent outside Morrill Hall, the building housing both the board of regents meeting room and the office of the university’s president. A large sign at the side of the tent read:
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
NESTLE BOYCOTT
HUNGER STRIKE BY RICK HOYE
DAY WEIGHT
After thirty-four days, Hoye ended his fast when a committee of the board of regents listened to his case. Although the university did not subsequently boycott Nestle products, Hoye’s strike was a qualified success. His dramatic “visualization” of the process of starvation drew more press coverage to his cause than had his two years of previous work. With press attention came attention from the university’s board of regents. One of the regents, who had supported the boycott, learned of Hoye’s hunger strike not through administration channels but by reading about it in a newspaper.
With press attention came access to university officials. The Minneapolis Star noted, for example, that “after a Star reporter Tag Heuer Replica Watches called [President] Magrath’s office Tuesday, he talked to Hoye for the first time since the fast started, and then returned the call.”
With press attention came the opportunity to address a committee of the board of regents.
With press attention came increased public awareness of the issue.
The media could have dismissed Hoye’s strike as a stunt; instead, they treated it sympathetically. “He is not a nut, or a publicity-crazed radical out to topple the university administration–not even the Nestle administration,” wrote Joe Kimball of the Minneapolis Tribune* And the Star’s associate editor Harold Chucker wrote, “Despite their snorts and grunts, the cynics–some of them, anyway– have a grudging admiration for the idealist. They see themselves at a younger age when they, too, believed anything was possible with the right kind of protest or demonstration.”‘
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