4
Monday, December 8, 1975
University Daily Kansan
TV ads health hazard
ONE MIGHT INFER from these reports that the distribution of television advertising leaves something to be desired. No inference is necessary. The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory Committee Television and Social Behavior has contended that a definite correlation exists between learning and viewing television.
America's youngsters are besieged daily by commercials that tell them about food that is "neat" to eat, beverages that will quench their thirsts and drugs that will give them rapid relief from their pains. These messages are repeated over and over. What is needed, however, is fast and dramatic relief from the commercials themselves.
THE NATIONAL OBSERVER recently reported that one four-hour block of viewing time it studied on an average Saturday morning included 59 commercials, 32 of which were advertisements for "junk" foods. The Christian Science Monitor also has reported that recent studies of the Children, Media and Merchandising shows that 67 commercials for nonprescription drugs were observed during the viewing of the 40 television shows that children watch most. In fact, the study shows, one in every eight of the commercials shown on television is an advertisement for a nonprescription drug.
Rearing children hasn't been solely the parent's responsibility for some time now. The government has increasingly become more active in promoting minimum health standards, education and welfare measures. The good this governmental influence has brought has more than outweighed the bad.
NOW WE ARE CONFORTED with mass dissemination of potentially harmful messages about dietary habits and drugs. Impressionable children are being permitted to grow up with skewed notions of what is best for them to eat
and what their reliance on drugs should be.
In view of the evidence that suggests rather strongly that children learn from television, it would seem wise to restrict the advertising that can be shown during the youngsters' prime viewing time. But such action could mean a dramatic loss in advertising revenues and quite possibly could be an instance of treating the symptoms rather than the cause, as is argued by the advertising industry. Its spokesman say that some people see a ban on advertising as a solution to a whole host of society's problems.
"One has to wonder whether life is really that simple," one spokesman said.
IN THE ABSENCE OF hard evidence that shows how drug and food habits of children are molded by television, parents can only appeal to the moral perceptions of the advertising and broadcasting executives, men and women whose perceptions are distorted by their positions with their companies. Likewise, the executives find it difficult to express their point of view to parents who fear that their children may be in some way damaged by what they watch.
Consequently, studies of television's influence on children are of the highest priority. The nation's best social scientists should be immediately given the task of finding out what is the actual correlation between television and food consumption in children study should include an analysis of the use and abuse of food and drugs in the subjects' adult lives.
IT WOULDN'T BE too much to ask that advertisers justify publicly why they use the ads that they do in the numbers and times that they do. With public scrutiny and personal soul searching, the advertisers might only make milder adjustments in their advertising format. The strong argument for giving the people what they want.
Dennis Ellsworth Editor
"AINT THIS GREAT? NEW YORK'S WENT BROKE, THE DERN BOND MARKET CAME IN ALL THE BANKS FOLDED UP CHICAGO WENT, DETROIT WENT, LOS ANGELES WENT---HELL, EARL, THIS MAKES US THE CULTURAL CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES!"
Mary McGrory
Pentagon outranks NYC
WASHINGTON — Many a Bowyer burn has gotten a few bucks from a passing stranger with a lot less lip.
Gerald Ford finally and reluctantly reached into his pocket for a little something for him, but he was back, with interest. And he expects the city to get a shave and a haircut, take the pledge, repeat its sins, join the choir, and put the arm on him again.
Oh, yes, another thing. When New Yorkers pay their new price which he insisted on the price of their jobs they must be grateful to Gerald
Ford for demanding reforms, but they are to blame their courageous governor, Hugh Carey, author of the package.
The President was quite surprised, he said frankly, that China would be the derelict city were able to vouch for all this. Obviously he thinks that anybody who keeps a watch on Gotham is apt to be unreliable.
It was quite a lecture, but easier to take than the one they got on Oct. 28, when the message memorably summarized New York Daily News headline, "Ford to City: Drop Dead."
In his lengthy discourse on why New York was in the gutter, financially speaking, the man from Grand Rapids made reference to the city's "past political errors."
Surely one of them, a study of this administration's spending habits reveals, wasn't being a small country threatening to go to the Soviets for money if Washington didn't cough up. That's a gambit that never fails to unlock the Treasury.
A TENDENCY TO VOTE Democratic is another, of course, the hard sewn seem in most war political. The New York committed was to slide to
the edge of default during the administration of a conservative Republican president who is being challenged by an even more conservative Republican contender.
Conservative Republicans are of the opinion that money spent for welfare, day-care centers, free hospitals and universities is wild spending, always spent for militant hardware of any description isn't really money at all.
Man 'absorbed'
UFO sightings turn eyes skyward
Immediately, there was a rash of UFO sightings, including one in Lawrence. The police were unable to investigate, however, for the man who was being the flying saucer refused to give his name.
Those little green men in those flashing red spaceships have returned to earth- or at least
For a time, it seemed that the controversy regarding the existence of UFOs had died down. Then, recently, three men in Indiana reported that they and a fourth man were out hunting when a helicopter landed on their property and then them. The three said the fourth man was absorbed by the beam and carried up to the spaceship.
Are there extraterrestrial travelers flying through space and observing the earth? Why?
sightings are eventually explained, there are a few that even the experts admit might be spaceships
The flying saucer phenomenon has fascinated man for centuries. As early as 218 B.C., the early Romans described waves emitted from a strange, flying object. In the Bible, Ezekiel described a
The 20th century also, has been full of UFO
sightings. Several World War Ii aliens, a
magnificent globus, flying saucers.
alongside their planes. In 1946, there were several thousand UFO sightings reported in Sweden.
THE PRESIDENT IS FIRMLY of this mind, and Ronald Reagan is even more so. He suggested at his campaign announcement that a mere 800 million probably wasn't enough for the stout hearts at the Pentagon.
Jain Penner Silks
strange craft descending from the sky and landing by the Chebair River in Chaldea. Drawings dating back to 1561 depict strange objects hovering in the sky over Nuremberg.
been frugal with its municipal workers and it hasn't been exactly lion-hearted toward its workers. They're money on a lot of people it never invited within its borders, and the city fathers can hardly be for deciding against putting them on the streets to starve.
When a pilot reported seeing nine disk-like objects flying over Mount Rainer in 1947, the U.S. Air Force started "Project Blue Book" to log and investigate UFO sightings.
Most of the events were eventually determined to be satellites, balloons, meteors, stars, flocks of birds or the aurora borealis. Some other events were merely hoaxes. Photos of sunscribes turned out to be Frisbee or garbage can lids and one "spaceman" was actually a shaved monkey.
Although scientists have discredited most of the UFO reports, about six per cent have never been seen. The most plausible case of these is an incident that occurred Nov. 2, 1967, when a glowing object more than 200 feet long
hovered over the highway, terrifying motorists and causing their car's ignition and lights to fall.
Man has always had a fearful fascination with the unknown. What lies beyond our world is still unknown and subject to question. One of the main questions scientists are asking about UFOs is: why they observe us, but we obviously must be, are they observing the remote desert areas of our country rather than the civilization of our large cities? Why would they abandon us if we lack credibility, instead of nationalism?
Perhaps this failure to communicate openly with earth is acutely a sign of the spacemen's intelligence, however. After all, would you land in America, walk up to the nearest earthling and demand, "Take me to your leader?" if you knew you would be taken to President Ford?
Your true conservative will turn purple at the thought of a welfare mother buying a color television set. But a $2.5 billion cost overrun a C5A airplane will be greeted with a little indulgent admonition to try something New York's mistake isn't having something the Soviets might have more of.
WEAPONS THAT DON'T fire, tanks for midsize, airplanes that can’t take off—these are million-dollar trifles that all somehow contribute to our sense of national security. But let a poor kid from the Bronx tuition from a city university be imposing an intolerable drain on the American taxpayer.
THE PENTAGON NEVER gets lectures on "fiscal responsibility. You never know where to work." Lord Kennett's stringent conditions on the fat purse he has just handed him. But New York is supposed to put its藏 recepticents to work in the office and off thousands from city jobs.
New York certainly hasn't
This past week, New Yorkers read in the New York Times about a $5 billion mistake of the Pentagon. That was the sum of an $80 million investment in 1970 over the furious objections of American scientists, who said it was useless. We had to have it, two administrations told us, first to fend off the attack and then to counteract the Chinese missile threat. Finally, it was pressed as a bargaining chip in the disarmament talks.
FIVE BILLION DOLLARS
is a rather large sum to spend for
a poker chip, but nobody
would expect it to be paid,
certainly not the President.
If New York has to ask for more money, it should put on a uniform. It will get a bundle, a pat on the back, and the only reason you are going to say "Are you sure that's enough?" (c) 1973 Washington Star Syndicate Inc.
Readers Respond
To the Editor:
I would like to protest the editorial written by David Olson, a contributing writer for the Kansan, concerning Clyde
Walker not to blame for band's plight
Like many other editorials directed toward Walker in the Kansan, Olson has taken the easy way out in forming his
Walker and the KU band department.
comment. It seems he wrote his remarks off the top of his head without talking to athletic or band officials involved.
departments are working together to produce more funds. Furthermore the Director of Bands, Robert Foster, said that he didn't think that the lack of travel funds to
If Olson had, he would have found that the band and athletic
the Sun Bowl was anyone's fault. He said last Thursday that because the Sun Bowl ranks last in revenue allocated money, it doesn't matter money wasn't there. Simple as that. The money wasn't there!
When Foster said that he didn't think it was anyone's fault, he was including Clyde Walker. Foster said that Walker would have supported that he possibly could. If Olson didn't know, and I am
They're still talking
. . . It is a shame Shockley receives the attention he does whether it be from supporters, antagonists, neutralists or opponents. The school who offer Shockley a forum other than the laboratory to present his theories—all serve to advertise his position and some do a disservice to individual liberty. Finally, I have heard of someone who asks Shockley isn't in the laboratory instead of on the podium.
Mike Bond
Shawnee, unlou
Shawnee junior
... Even though the demonstrators were probably aware that disruption protest would engender considerable sympathetic publicity for Shockley, it was as a last resort the only viable alternative. One wrong decision could end the black community by allowing Shockley to come to KU; let prevent a second wrong and see that disruption charges are not filed against student protestors.
Lawrence graduate student
... Even Shockley admits to the courage of the black students of the February First Movement. But letter writers and administrators begin to talk sternly of law and order. The black students might well apply to them the famous lines of Jonathan Swift: "indifference clad in wisdom's guise, All fortitude of mind supplies." For how can stony bows melt, in this who never pity felt; When We are lash'd. They kiss the rod;/ Resigning to the will of God."
Fred Whitehead 822 Alabama
Dian Lee
Lawrence special student
... those people who were able to learn of Shockley's secret appearance and who disrupted his speech may have done us a favor. Their attempt to undermine his credibility by keeping him from speaking here is important to us all.
If Olson had talked to Walker personally, he also would have found that Walker wanted the band to go to the Sun Bowel as much as any one of the 240 band members.
sure he didn't the KUAC allocated $18,000 in funds to the band to use any way they wanted. The band took the money and travelled to Iowa State, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
According to Tom Stidham, assistant band professor, the Pittsburgh band is flying to the game. Olson was correct on that point. But again he stopped there. He didn't find out that the Pitt band has only 94 members, not 240 like the KU band, I'm
sure he could figure that there would be a slight cost difference in travel expenses.
Because Olson is a new-editorial major at the William Allen White School of Journalism, I would have thought that he would have learned to write thoroughly before writing something like the article that appeared in the Kansas Thursday.
I'm sure W. A. White would've frowned on Olson for the lack of responsibility he received in his commentary.
Corkv Trewin
Redmond, Wash., junior
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas workdays
publication website. Second-class postage paid at Law-
rence period. Second-class postage paid at Law-
rence period or $1 a year in Douglas County and $1 a
year in Wichita County. Subscriptions are
subscriptions are $1.35 a semester paid through the
Editor
Dennis Ellsworth
Associate Campus Editor
Associate Campus Editor
Debbie Gumb
Carl Young
Associate Campus Editor
Betty Hageman
Assistant Campus Editor
David S. Smith
Davis
Business Manager Cindy Long
Assistant Business Manager * Advertising Manager
Advertising Assistant Manager
Advertising Manager
Lloyd Beckham
Bryce Littleton