Monday, February 2, 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 7
Court prepares to grill Winfrey
Host's popularity still high despite beefy legal battle
The Associated Press
AMARILLO, Texas — Roadhouse waitress Gretchen Cotter's smile rivaled the glitter of the neon lights outside. Her easy drawl strained to be heard over the noise of a jukebox, a pinball machine and three television sets.
"Hamburger, cheeseburger or rib eye steak?" she asked, reciting the entire menu of the Lone Star Bar & Grill.
"And," she purred, "we serve only mad cows — REALLY mad cows."
While lawyers in this Panhandle beef basket haggle over whether Oprah Winfrey labeled a hamburger, everyday folks are abuzz about the talk show queen's visit to answer a cattlemen's lawsuit and tape Texas-flavored episodes for her show.
Two weeks into her trial, Winfrey remains the hottest ticket in town as reporters from all over the country fill courtroom seats to hear her defense against claims
she cost the beef business millions with a 1996 show on mad cow disease.
"The only mad cow in Texas is Oprah," read inscriptions on flashy caps and T-shirts that Gretchen and her pals are peddling at the Lone Star.
But despite the undeniable fact that city residents are devoted to eating beef, far more popular souvenirs are shirts, caps and bumper stickers proclaiming "Amarillo Loves Oprah."
Winfrey's stay in town, which stretched to include her 44th birthday last week, is the biggest media event in the city's history, said Garet von Netzer, publisher of the Amarillo newspapers.
"Amarillo's been very receptive to her," said lawyer Dee Miller. "Generally speaking, even people in the cattle industry have been very positive toward her."
That says a lot for Winfrey and for local tolerance in a city of 165,000, where airport arrivals are welcomed by a sign declaring that the area supplies 25 percent of the beef sold in America every year.
Driving into town, motorists encounter a bright yellow building guarded by a 12-foot-tall Plexiglas bull. This is the World
Famous Big Texan Steak Ranch, which ballyhoos a free 72-ounce steak and trimming to anyone who can wolf it all down in one hour.
Steak and barbecue emporiums flourish all around town:
Wintrey:Popular in Amarillo despite lawsuit
Legend's Black Angus, Beef Rigger, Hoffbrau, Cattleman's, Cattle Call, Country Barn, Fat-Boys, David's and Dyer's. And that's not counting the chain restaurants like Outback.
At the courthouse where Winfrey may soon be grilled, a lobby mural depicts cowboys herding cattle into a railway car.
Heavily hyped presidential sex questions failed to curtail news media interest in the Winfrey case, as TV and newspaper reporters stood in line for courtroom seats.
And nothing has eroded the demand for tickets to Winfrey's taping sessions. Calls to the show's reservation lines were so heavy one day they overloaded phone
And she also has managed — indirectly — to help silence the city's loudest citizen.
company circuitry and disrupted service citywide.
"This is awful. Just terrible," he said of the gag order. "I've never experienced a muzzle like this before. No conversation is complete without my 51 percent."
Millionaire Stanley Marsh III, the Panhandle's prince of pranks, is a limited partner in one of the cattle companies suing Winfrey and therefore was among those silenced by U.S. Judge Mary Lou Robinson's gag order.
"I don't know a Hereford from a heifer," grumbled Marsh, 59, who put Amarillo on the map years ago by burying a fleet of antique Cadillacs nose down and fins up along old Route 66, now Interstate 40. It's been likened to Stonehenge.
Although he has been rendered judicially silent, Marsh's local presence remains overwhelming—if often wacky. His latest effort is a batch of roughly 3,000 pseudo-traffic signs set up around town, each with an oblique message such as:
"Bring Back Public Hanging."
Road Does Not End. "Steal This Sign."
Culinary union cuts contract after strike
Where could be a better place for
Winfrey to debate mad cow issues?
The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Kathleen Hahn's eyes grew moist as she watched hundreds of loudly chanting union members, led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, converge on the entrance to the Frontier Hotel-Casino.
"It's been a long, hard fight, but we made it," she said of the strike against the Frontier that started on Sept. 21, 1991.
Hahn was one of 550 Culinary Union members who walked out when the resort refused to match a contract offered by most hotels in the gambling capital.
The workers' new contract calls for a starting wage of $7.50 for food servers, $9.50 for hotel maids and $12 for cooks. Striking workers were averaging $2 an hour less before the strike.
The bitter and sometimes violent strike ended at 12:01 a.m. Saturday when the new owner, Phillip Ruffin, joined by Jackson and Nevada Gov. Bob Miller, snipped a red ribbon and were swept inside the hotel by hundreds of union members.
Ruffin, a Wichita businessman who bought the hotel in October 1997 for $167 million, took control of the property Sunday with the promise of a union contract. He said 280 of the original workers are coming back, while more than 100 workers are being laid off.
"We think these people will make good employees. We think we can bring the hotel back to what it once was." Ruffin said.
Ruffin said last month he had agreed to pay the union $3.5 million in back pay and benefits for the strik
"Only in America could you be on the picket line six years and come back to win."
ers. Outgoing Frontier owner Margaret Elardi is picking up half of that tab, he said. Ruffin also pledged to pump at least $20 million into remodeling the resort, which he is renaming the New Frontier.
Culinary Union officials said it was the nation's longest present-day labor walkout. The nation's longest walkout, according to the Guinness
Local and state officials had pressed for a sale of the property. The strikers had said their goal was a "S-MAP"—all, sign or shut down.
Kathleen Hahn
Culinary Union member
Book of Records, the United Auto Workers' strike against plumbing fixtures maker Kohler Co. in Sheboygan, Wis., which ran from April 1946 to October 1962.
Hahn, a 50-year old cocktail server,
said she and other Frontier workers
had all but given up hope.
"Only in America could you be on the picket line six years and come back to win," said Hahn, who worked at other resorts during the strike and is among those returning to the Frontier.
No butts about it: Tobacco companies still market to kids
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Lara Coyne said she started smoking in the 10th grade for one simple reason: It was the thing to do. Then she did something a little less cool: She quit and promised her mother that she'd never touch cigarettes again.
"It's kind of tempting, when you get stuff in the mail, to start up again." Lara said.
Philip Morris said it got Lara's name from someone else who filled out the survey, even though it specifies names of smokers age 21 or older. Lara is a high school senior in Rocky Mount, Va.
Tara Carraro, a Philip Morris representative, said the company sent surveys to people named by other smokers to verify that recipients are adults.
So both mother and daughter were dismayed that Philip Morris sent Lara a smoking survey offering free lighters and promising cigarette coupons for answering it. Along with her preferred brand and purchasing practices, the survey requested names of other smokers who might appreciate cigarette coupons.
"The mailing was our attempt to verify her age and status as a smoker," Carraro said. "She is not an adult. We have immediately removed her name from our database, and she will not receive any mailings from us."
Still, as policymakers struggle to stop teen smoking, ant-smoking advocates said the incident showed how difficult it was to keep cigarettes away from teen-agers so long as tobacco companies market to adults.
"We do know through strong anecdotal evidence that kids receive these materials all the
time all over the country. This girl is a typical example of what happens every day," said Cliff Douglas, an attorney in Ann Arbor, Mich., who has fought tobacco companies in court.
Lara's story reinforces the view that tobacco companies are marketing to teen-agers. In documents dated between 1975 and 1988 and released last month, a Philip Morris executive discussed the importance of the teen-age market. "Today's teen-ager is tomorrow's potential regular customer." one document said.
Lara said this was not the first time that she received cigarette coupons or other smoking offers, although her mother usually snagged them from the mail before she could consider using them.
Quitting smoking wasn't easy, she said.
"It it was very easy to get addicted to it," Lara said, saying she once had a half-pack-a-day habit despite her mother's disapproval. "I had to hide."
About six months later, she quit.
"I woke up one morning, and I coughed and I coughed, and I decided I wanted to breathe," Lara said. "Plus, Mom caught me."
Her mother, Barbara Turner,
said she was proud that her
daughter was able to quit smoking
but was angry that she had
to sort through her mail, looking
for cigarette marketing.
"We were throwing them away. Finally this one came, and I just hit the ceiling," Barbara Turner said. She contacted the American Cancer Society in Virginia but found it couldn't do much to help her.
"Joe Camel was off the billboards," she said, "and I really believed it was against the law for them to do this."
The Libraries?
What's new this month in
Workshops
Searching Library Databases II: Exploring Networked Resources
Science/Technology
Thursday, February 5 1:30-3:00 Clark Lab
Friday, February 6 1:30-3:00 Clark Lab
Humanities/Social Sciences
Tuesday, February 3 1:30-3:00 Clark Lab
Wednesday, February 11 10:30-12:00 Clark Lab
Social Sciences
Saturday, February 7 2:00-3:30 Regents Center*
Finding Information on the World Wide Web
Tuesday, February 17 9:00 - 11:00 Clark Lab
Wednesday, February 25 9:00 - 11:00 Clark Lab
Tracking the Kansas Legislature on the Information Network of Kansas (INK)
Monday, February 2 2:30-4:00 Clark Lab
Finding Full-Text Articles Online
Saturday, February 7 9:00-10:30 Regents Center*
KU UnCover
Thursday, February 5 9:00 - 10:30 Clark Lab
Saturday, February 7 4:00-5:00 Regents Center*
Tuesday, February 10 9:00 - 10:30 Clark Lab
Wednesday, February 18 1:00 - 2:30 Clark Lab
Statistics on the Internet
Thursday, February 12 10:00-12:00 Clark Lab
*Regents Center Library: Computer Lab A
To Register, call 864-8998, or email workshop@ukans.edu.
Both Arts and Humanities Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index are now available on the public CD-ROM menu of library workstations. A&HCI covers 1975 to the present; SSCI covers 1981 to the present. Both are listed under the "Humanities and Social Sciences" portion of the menu. Both of these new databases operate with a Windows searching interface, different from the old DOS character-based interface still used for Science Citation Index.
New on KUILS
Exhibits
*Kansas Collection: Championing Archives: The Legacy of Donald R. McCoy; and 129 Years of Serving God and Community: 1$^{st}$ Regular Baptist Church, Lawrence, Kansas, 1868-1997
*Special Collections: Britannia In Kansas
*University Archives: Naismith to Williams
Watson Library: African Americans in Business: The Path Towards Empowerment *Located on the $ 2^{nd} $ , $ 3^{rd} $ , and $ 4^{th} $ floors of Kenneth Spencer Research Library
The University of Kansas Libraries * Publications Office * 350 Watson Library * 864-3378
When you pick up the
Kansan ...
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