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Thursday, March 25, 1976
University Dallv Kansan
KANSAN Comment
Opinions on this page reflect only the view of the writer
'SORRY MY DEAR...BUT IT'S A STACKED DECK!'
ERA clash returns
Some bad dreams just won't go away.
TAKE THE ever-present movement in Kansas to rescind the Equal Rights Amendment. After a slight lull in activity, its proponents cropped back into the news this week grinding the same old axe at the Kansas Legislature.
I have no qualms in saying that I strongly support the ERA because I think it serves to clarify and emphasize laws already on the books. I can't be persuaded that there is anything dangerous in its simple statement of purpose: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
YEP, THAT'S it. Nothing in it pertains to homosexual marriage, unisex bathrooms or destruction of Social Security payments. But this is the type of inflamed and irrational argument being used against the amendment.
Few people seem to realize that the ERA is not a recent invention. Soon
after women in the early 1920s saw that the right to vote wasn't going to tear down the bastions of male supremacy, a drive began for an ERA. They saw that there was a real need for a legal affiliation of what other citizens considered to be their rights.
MANY OF THE arguments used against the ERA today are surprisingly similar to those used against the early suffragettes' movement. Now, as then, we are warned that "dristactic" dislalism on this kind will cause a higher incidence of violence, deceit, alcoholism, crime and drug abuse. Now, as then, these arguments are ridiculous.
Just as it took about 60 years of concentrated effort to get the right to vote, so it seems it will take the same amount of time to ratify the ERA. It's strange that in a democratic society women and minorities have had to fight so hard for democratic rights. Let's hope that the battle is almost over.
By Betty Haegelin Associate Editor
NBC creative attempt a costly misadventure
By MARNERINDOM Contributing Writer
NBC, in its never-ending fight to prove that two solid-colored trapezoids can be the most expensive network symbol around it has taken another task. The NBC network has paid a Nebraska network $55,000 to forego the use of the design.
NBC'S PROBLEM arose shortly after they unveiled the abstract "N" at the start of their 50th broadcasting year. It was discovered that the Nebraska Educational Television Network (NETV) had been using the symbol for six months before NBC perfected theirs.
The embarrassing part of it was that NBC had hired a special firm, Lippincott & Co., to develop months to develop the symbol.
Estimated cost was $750,000.
NETV's art director came up with the same design for less than $100.
AFTER SPENDING millions of dollars promoting the symbol and attaching it to everything connected with NBC, the network decided the endeavor was far along to abandon. Hence the payoff to NETV. Now the network has to deal at least until someone else appears with another look-alike symbol.
THERE IS something though that could hamper NETV's development of a new symbol. They've worked with NETV and NBC, NBC offered the advice of its design experts to help design the new logo. With this efficient crew of helpers, NETV could find itself spending the entire $5,000 to reach a suitable decision
NETV is left without a logo, but its doubtful that anyone is to upset about it. For besides its capability, NETV $500,000 worth of used equipment. At the rate of $100 a logo, NETV could develop 550 new logos and still have all the equipment. NETV might need more advanced siding go into the logo-design business. They could develop
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
But, as I am reminded every March, there is more to spring break at home than eating and sleeping. Spring break at home is a time when soldiers reunion, soldier's return from war and class struggle.
SCENE ONE: At the grocery store
AFTER ALL THEN, NBC can display its abstract N composed of a red and a blue trapezoid. And retired to the closet is the character the network had always distinguished the network. The peacock had given NBC many years of valiant service. It was the symbol that caused many a black and whiteatcher to yearn for a color set.
Less than an hour after arriving home, Greg is asked to drive to the nearest grocery store and pick up a carton of milk. At the grocery store, he meets one of his heavier high school crushes, pregnant with her second child.
"Iii," she says, and they both walk on.
YES, I PILED all my dirty clothes into my '68 Mustang, drove blindly into the sunset and ended up in Great Bend. I bought a few snacks at Tacoma, I did expect to eat a lot and sleep at least 10 hours a night.
"Er-Hi," he says.
Published at the University of Kansas weekly
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I went home for spring break.
(Awwb. Poor baby, Elc.)
As he walks on past the camed牛肉 Greg thinks: 1) "God, she sure has aged," 2) "God, she sure was stupid to marry that boy," and 3) "I sure should be remembered what her first name is."
SCENE TWO: At the bar
Editor
Sean Young
Vacation a trip into past
But the peacock is finished,
pushed back into the closet
where it will stay. Unless,
course, a deal could be made.
Maybe with $5,000, NETV or
NBC could work something out.
Janet calls up some old high school friends who are now going to K-State and Wichita and asks them if they'd like to go out and get a beer. It is hard to tell if she wants to say her friends are more willing to go. Maybe they'll see some of the old gang!
Carl Young
Associate Editor
Associate Editor
Bette Helygelin
Yael Aboulakhk
Business Manager
Mary Parris
Assistant Business Manager
Gary Borsh
Advertising Manager
Judith Beckham
At the bar, they sit in a corner booth and watch some vaguely familiar people play pool. Every once in a while they see someone they know. ("Isn't Peter over there? Christ, he hasn't changed at all. What a nerd!" But the beer is cheap and they have a good time comparing schools.
"Hey," says their leader,
"wanna dance?"
**ABOUT 11 P.M.**, the evening comes to a climax. The group of vultures who have been exposed to the sun from across the bar move in.
Janet decides it won't kill her and says yes. She so regrets her decision, because her dance partner not only spends the rest of the evening trying to find out at what area high school she's a
sophomore, but also manages to hustle on her ankle fifteen times.
tripped and Brent and his friends are wallowing deep in nostalgia. Anyone listening to their conversation would think they were not here, but they are the most fabulous and worth-while experiences in life.
SCENE THREE: At the bar II
Brent and two of his friends have also decided that going bar-hopping is a good way to put
These candidates wander on and off our television tubes, through the streets of city and suburb, turning up in all manner of places from broadcasting studios to homes for the mentally retarded like actors in search of a stage upon which to perform a stance. Lost illusionists, there seems to be no setting in which they can perform their dramaturgy.
"Remember that day in old
THEY'VE LOST the power to elicit love or fear. Wallace and
By Jim Bates Contributing Writer
off studying and break the tedium. They enter the bar at 7 p.m. Wednesday to find the bartender watching a tiny portable tvision and an off-road player playing solitaire Football.
"OH WELL," Brent says, and he buys the first pitcher.
Three hours and six pitchers later the crowd in the bar has
voice. He starts to think about the long article he read the other day about how working class people and blacks did all the dying in Vietnam while college kids stayed home and protested—after college deferments were eliminated.
WHY DOENST 'the present group of politicians convey the same impression?' Remarking on Jerry Foley's meager genetic patrimony won't suffice. Some of these contenders are intelligent; their inability to make us imagine them as individuals of galvanic leadership quality isn't owing to stupidity.
HE THINKS THAT it might be interesting to talk to Baxter about it but can't help but notice that he has scopes. He gives in to his old prejudices and says nothing. He had a hard enough time relating to Baxter in high school. It would be impossible
"Well," Baxter says, "I'll be seeing you. Some of us have to work, you know."
Bolinder's class when Watson nailed his gradebook to his desk?" one of the friends asks, and they all remember. They remember funny chemistry experiments and unprintable yearbook photos and persons eyes attempt to focus on the wildly dancing Budweiser posters as the trio trots off
talking about how much better it is to go to college than to stay in this town and learn welding.
SCENE FOUR: On Main Street
Baxter's Barracuda screeches away, running over Chuck's foot in the process.
Chuck is walking along Main Street, looking at the window displays, when he hears a car born.
He turns to see a Barracuda driven by an old high school classmate pull up to the curb and picks up a welding for a local farm equipment manufacturer right after graduation and was still there. Baxter rolls down his car window and leans over.
"How you doing?" he asks.
"OH OK I mess—you?"
Chuck watches the Barracuda disappear down the street and then limps away, anxious to get back to the serious spring break business of eating, sleeping and watching TV.
"Pretty good. Say, I haven't seen you since high school. What are you doing these days anyway?
"I'm going to KU."
"Figured as much," he says. Chuck can't help but note the disparaging tone in Baxter's
They think, for example, that John F. Kennedy was a leader, but his incumbency shows the political leader of the period was Martin Luther King. Kennedy, you may recall, hid from King at first and then began to follow him. Lyndon Johnson was an out-and-out Martin Luther King follower, but both presidents did it in such a way that they appeared to lead. They looked forward to commanding and forceful; they looked like leaders, which is all we have asked of our presidents.
LEADERSHIP, THAT is the power to cut against the grain of history by compelling fellowship, is incompatible with high public office, especially in the presidency. No living American has seen a leader in the White House, although tens of millions think they have.
WASHINGTON-In this succession of primary elections that an obese mass media is dragging us through, the complaints about the caliber of the candidates are noisier than anything people have to say and as a result, we call "the issues". Why, oh why is there so little leadership, is the general lament.
Absence of leadership, issues characterizes presidential race
Reagan on the right, Udall and whoever on the left, are unable to play the ritual role of summing up right and wrong in their persons. Perhaps that will change so that a sizeable portion of the populace will feel it's necessary to stop one of them and get the other elected at all costs. In that case, we will have
tivity has ceased to be persuasive.
**ABORTION** IS a good issue because no matter who triumphs women will continue to have abortions. The ERA is perfect because it is an idea whose time has past. While Phyllis Schlafly warns America that its passage will put females
the catharsis and release of
social tension that our past
elections have conferred on us.
You hear commentators like Eric Severeid observe the candidates lack "good" issues, which means issues that move people toward emotion and But we do have good issues.
A GOOD ISSUE must have an ambiguous clarity. That is to say its importance and its meanings must be vivid to the members of the groups concerned about it, yet it must be couched in such terms that it need not ever be resolved in the practical order. The best a politician can do is look like he's performing a miracle, not perform one.
The anti-Washington-an-bi-government issue is an excellent issue in this sense. Politicans have been using it to get elected for 100 years. Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower rode to office on such language only to preside over and encourage what they had condemned. The electorate was satisfied nonetheless. The man who said he stood for small government; but now more people are demanding to know if the man will do something about it while doubling that anybody can. Just standing for something won't do any more. Such symbolic ac-
in the front lines, the first women cadets at West Point are being fitted with uniforms.
Busing ought to do well also. It is loaded with every sort of symbolic meaning and its resolution will have no practical import to speak of. (If every black child is shipped to Angola or some other place George Wallace designates, most of the
remaining white kids will be subject to forced busing because they were the schools institution and how they are administered. )
NONE OF THESE good issues have symbolic force. How many hope and fear that Wallace will send 'em back to Africa, or that Reagan will succeed in repealing the way the Cambodian Reds depopulated Phnom Penh, or that Udall will turn Orange County, Calif., into a Soviet? Richard Nixon was the last president of the United States. Now we don't believe anything can do anything, good or evil.
We've lost faith in our secular, political religion, but whether that's progress is debatable. We haven't lost our need for religion but only increased our susceptibility to false guru. Think of the fear that grew among grandfathers; were Presbyterian ministers and Jewish rabbis, going to sex clinics and joining the human potential movement.
The candidates, though, are priests in empty temples talking into agostic winds: If I run no worse than fourth in Montana and second or better in Alaska, I think it'll show that my candidacy is a viable one and that should create the momentum to attract the key demographic groups my staff has isolated in the suburban ethnic enclaves. . . .
Letters Policy
The Kannan welcomes letters to the editor, but asks that he type them out. He is unable to write no longer than 400 words. All letters are subject to limitation according to space limitations and the eduator's judge. KU students must provide their name, year in school or degree. KU students must provide their name; and position; others must provide their name and address.
"NO HAD TO LEAVE TO TRAIN CARE OF ANOTHER MATTER!"