OPINION
University Daily Kansan, March 28, 1984 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daykan Kami (USP$ 606-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Fell Hall, Lawrence, KS. 60643. daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer session, excursion trips are $15 for each trip. Daily registration fee aawre. Kan. 60644. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $27 in Douglas County and $18 for six months. Student subscriptions are a $14 semester guild through the student activity file. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to uspster@kamu.edu.
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
DON KNOX
Managing Editor
SARA KEMPIN
Editorial Editor
PAUL JESS
JEFF TAYLOR ANDREW HARTLEY Campus Editor News Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER Business Manager
COR GORMAN JILL MICHELLI
Retail Sales Manager National Sales Manager
General Manager and News Adviser
JANCE PHILIPS    DUNCAN CALIHUO
Campus Sales Manager    Classified Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
A shaky first step
A large number of people in El Salvador went to the polls on Sunday to elect the first civilian president in 50 years.
A large number did not.
By law, everyone in El Salvador who is eligible to vote must cast a ballot. The trouble is that to be eligible to vote in the nation, a person must possess a certain amount of verifiable wealth.
If Salvadorans met this requirement they could vote last weekend — maybe.
They voted if the leftists allowed them to leave their villages or if they were fortunate enough to live in an area of the embattled country where ballot boxes were assigned.
They voted if the ballot box made it to the assigned polling place or they were able to wait long enough until it finally arrived.
They voted if their names were not left off the official government voting list.
They sometimes voted on a
confusing new computer system that might not have actually counted their vote.
Their ballot-box votes were counted if the ballot box actually made it to a counting station after the polls closed.
Clearly, the elections in El Salvador, financed and supported by the United States, were not a thing of electoral beauty. But, regardless of the ambiguities, the Reagan administration will use the results to further its Central American cause.
Even those who question the administration's policies in the nation cannot ignore that many of the Salvadorans who voted did so as a demonstration of their faith in democracy.
However, maybe next time the United States pushes our kind of democracy on another country they had better insure that, at least mechanically, the election is more workable.
Recognizing a legend
New York at the turn of the century gave itself to an immigrant mass from Ireland.
And in spite of the strife and confusion, the times bore a child that became a legend. That child was James Cagney, the epitome of the tough guy.
Although the times of public enemies — when Cagney was at his height — has faded, we can still see many an Irish gangster in those 84-year-old eyes.
With such movies as "The Public Enemy," "Angels with Dirty Faces" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy," Cagney got a chance to
President Reagan realizes Cagney's importance in American history, and he recognized Cagney formally this week by bestowing upon him the nation's highest civilian honor — the presidential Medal of Freedom.
cuss, die and dance his way into the American conscience.
Cagney may seem dwarfed by some of his contemporaries, such as Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda and Clark Gable. He has earned no Oscar's and only one Academy Award, for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in "Yankee Doodle Dandy."
But few can refute the contributions of this man, who showed that America could not shoot its way out of the Depression. None can argue that he does not deserve high recognition.
Cagney is entertainment, melodrama and excitement. But most of all, he is the message that good will prevail, regardless of the caliber of pistol or tone of voice.
For that message, thank you, Jimmy Cagney.
New ring to phone calls
The casual, everyday telephone call has become the latest casualty in the war between an individual's right to privacy and the advancement of modern technology.
The concept of a normal phone call — which until now could only be legally tapped with a warrant — is not dead; it has only been wounded.
The Kansas Supreme Court's recent decision to allow the radio transmissions from cordless phones to be recorded without a warrant is the first skirmish in a long fight to redefine social mores that have been uprooted by technological advancements.
The ruling says that people who own cordless phones should realize that their calls will be broadcast on the public airwaves.
Thus, police officials can tape-
The court, perhaps wisely, avoided trying to answer any further questions, saying that its decision did not include a person who does not know that he is calling someone who owns a cordless phone.
The fight will continue about whether, in all instances, phone calls made with cordless phones can be legally taped. Battles will be fought in the courts, and both sides will suffer casualties.
record broadcasts from cordless phones, and use the tapes in court as evidence against the owner.
Individual privacy may become scarred from a few injuries, but it must ultimately emerge as the victor. Technology must be used to advance rather than hinder the freedom of mankind.
The University Daily Kan萨 welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-space and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kan萨 also invites individ-uals to be addressed in columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kan萨 office, 111 Stauffer Flint Hall. The Kan萨 reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
Carnations in the toilets
A fascinating tidbit about Washington high society caught my eye the other day.
It had to do with a spectacular weekend of fancy balls, black-tie dinners, parties and a
fashion-show lunchon that were attended by the Reagans, top people in government and hundreds of wealthy industrialists, tycoons and movie stars — sort of a Republican rainbow coalition.
Is Ty-D-bol too classy for some hotel guests?
Some of them wore such heavy gold objects that they set the Secret Service's metal detectors to howling.
They paid $5,000 a person to attend all the events — less if they wanted to be choosy. But it went to a worthy cause — the Princess Grace foundation, which will provide arts scholarships.
LETTERS POLICY
Actually, this is routine recreation for rich Washington Republicans. They don't go in much for Saturday night bingo. But one fact struck me as unusual. It was tucked down in a story in the Washington Post.
It said that at the fashion-show luncheon, carnations were sprinkled in the toilet bowls in the ladies' room.
When the ladies came in and used the toilet bowls and flushed them, a maid (presumably a Democrat) littered more carnations in the toilet box.
Naturally, this item set my social conscience to quivering with thoughts of poverty, the jobs, homelessness and cutbacks in our programs.
In the midst of this suffering,
there were all these Republican
ladies having flowers scattered, not
feel well, but at their
rural, well you know
And what Republican ladies there were. The guest list included Mr. and Mrs. James Baker of the White House; Clare Blore Luce; Mr. and Mrs. Caspar Weinberger; Margaret Heckler, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (flowers in the can are some human service) and about 120 others.
So I decided to track down the full
Carnations go for a buck each.
With that many people at the luncheon, if they had weak kidneys and deplete an entire floral nursery.
story and find out why they put carnations in the toilets. I mean, I entertain, too, and I've always thought that Ty-D-bol, that blue stuff, is pretty classy — and much cheaper.
Well, it turns out that things are not always as they appear. A call to the Princess Grace Foundation
MIKE
ROYKO
Syndicated
Columnist
brought a response from a spokesperson who was almost trembling with indignation.
She said. "Neither the foundation nor the White House had anything to do with the carnations being put in the toilet bowls."
Then who did it? A volunteer?
"It was the hotel's idea. They thought it was a gracious thing to do. But the Washington Post didn't mention that, Oh. I could kill the reporter who wrote about the report. But that's off the record, of course."
Of course. By the way, have you any idea how many carnations were used?
"How would I know that? You'll have to ask the hotel."
The manager of the Leow's L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, where the luncheon was held, was also oozing indignation.
When asked about the flowers, he said, "you mean my overkill?
Hummph. That's what the reporter from the Washington Post called it.
were not chopped. We used only the petals. We pulled the petals off and dropped them in."
"They were also inaccurate. They said we put chopped carnations in the toilet bowls. They
GOOD GRADE, that poetry is irresponsible journalism. But what was the idea in the first place? What's wrong with 'To Dye?'
"It is not new. It is a practice we have used for VIPs long before this. We have been doing this for four years. We did it for a reception for the mayor of Washington and for many others."
He was also miffed that the Post mention that the hotel answered its phones by saying 'bonjour' and 'bonsoir.'
"This hotel has been here for 14 years, and we have always answered the phones by saying bonjour to 5 p.m. and bonjour after 5 p.m."
Of course. Who doesn't? But to get back to the flowers. How many did you use?
"Oh, I doubt if we used any more than a dozen for that event."
The luncheon lasted three hours, so those Republican ladies must have the bladders of camels.
"By the way," he added, "we normally use roses, but carnations were Princess Grace's favorite, so we used them instead."
So that's the story. Flowers in toilet bowls is definitely not a regular part of gracious living among Washington Republicans.
What a beautiful tribute.
But even at one hotel, it does raise a question about sexual discrimination.
If you are going to sprinkle carnation petals in the ladies' toilets, in the spirit of fairness and modesty, they were also sometimes put in the toilet.
The trouble is, I can't think of anything appropriate for a men's urinal.
Well, maybe there is something.
For all those rich Republicans, how about a $5 cigar?
KU whistle is a real scream
Does this story ring a bell?
It's one of the first warm days of spring, and for the first time in a couple of days you feel like yourself. That damn exam is finally behind you, and you're fairly certain that you've passed it.
You just handed in the midterm sociology paper that's been hanging over your head since the semester began, and you're walking between
Watson Library and Stauffer-Flint Hall on your way to lunch with a friend on Wescoe Beach
GARY
SMITH
Staff Columnist
Your mind is filled with visions of graduation or summer break, when BAM, the bloody shriek of the blasting 20-after steam whistle smashes through your body and mind like a 110-mph locomotive whizbing through a corrugated metal shed.
You gaze south, out over the 23rd Street urban sprawl, toward Welles Overlook and the rolling hills of eastern Kansas. You can see Clinton Reservoir off to the southwest, calmly reflect the glorious day.
Your body shakes, almost bring.
Four painful seconds later, it's over. And your nerves have once again been transformed into a hard jumble of strung-out Silly Putty.
ing you to your knees, and your mind, thinking it's the big one, begins to take desperate measures, flashing urgent messages to your trembling body that it may have only milliseconds to live.
You've bitten your tongue, and as you walk the last few feet to Wesco Beach you realize the blood trickling between your tongue and cheek will serve only as a reminder of how the blasted whistle got the better of you
You begin to daydream and figure out that if ever they gave you the opportunity to be chancellor of the University, your first directive would be to dismantle the hourly holocaust, melt the thing down and turn the waste into hearing aids for all ex-KU students.
Dykes had the whistle turned off after being subjected to a loud blast during a journalism faculty meeting in April 1976 in the old Flint Hall library.
Actually, the steam whistle was once turned off for a few weeks by Chancellor Archey梁。Because it rained, however, it was turned back on.
After the folks at the meeting, who were sitting only 90 feet from a whistle that can be heard for 15 minutes, came up with a surprising explosion of sound, a
journism faculty member suggested to the chancellor that maybe the blasted whistle should be shut down.
The horn's voice was silenced, but, although obnoxious, the horn was severely missed.
Professors overextended their classes, and students lost track of time. Town folks missed the whistle called the chancellor to complain
They realized that they reacted to the sound in the same way Pavlov's dog reacted to the ringing bell.
But hardly a complaint was heard from the folks who worked in the buildings nearest the whistle. In fact, during those weeks of nerve-stringing, she actually celebrated, each hour, the mercy that had been shown them.
Some folks still remember that silence. However, if there was a moral to the events of that fateful autumn day when the 20-after whistle didn't响, it was the futility of fighting a tradition.
Perhaps a two-second-warning device could be installed for the benefit of those who each day get caught by the horn.
Clearly, another such attempt to silence this disarming tradition would end in similar failure. How much more much to ask for a small represe
Who knows, Chancellor Budig. . the tongue you save may be your own.
Pornography is degrading to everyone
Over the weekend, the University Film Society sponsored a pornographic film titled "Emmanuelle."
The film was said to include several sexually explicit scenes, including a rape.
. . . designed to intimidate and inspire fear."
As Susan Brownmiller says in her book "Against Our Will, Men, Women and Rape," rape is not a crime of impulsive lust, but a "deliberate, hostile, violence act of deprivation and possession
"Emmannelle" was called "artsy" and "soft-port". Rape is not art. Pornography is not art. Glorifying the sexual abuse of a woman — or a man, for that matter — is not art.
People are free to do, see and say what they so desire. This freedom is guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution as long as their
I deplore the violence against women depicted in X-rated movies such as "Emmanuelle", and I protest the showing of such exploitative material on the KU campus.
actions and words do not infringe upon the rights of others.
Pornography, which is sometimes defined as the glorification of rape and sexual exploitation, upon the rights of women
Consider this: What if films were shown on campus that glorified the sadistic "pleasures" of gassing Jews or lynching blacks? Brownmiller draws an analogy between this grotesque concept and the sexual abuse of women found in pornography.
If Jews or blacks were depicted in a sadistic manner, the academic community would be in an uproar. When women are depicted in sadistic ways, there is no uproar.
This must change. The analogy between this grotesque concept and sexual abuse is valid if you are "conscious of the everpresent threat of rape and the proliferation of a cultural ideology that makes rape sound like 'liberated fun.'"
This industry degrades humanity and objectifies humans while dehumanizing sex. The characters in pornographic films are reduced to body parts; they are not whole beings.
In porn movies, women are displayed as meat and as chastel. They serve one purpose to serve men sexually. They are not displayed by any intellect or character. They are represented as objects.
Movies such as "Emmanuelle" often glorify the rape of a human being — a female industry. Money is the main reason to maintain the porn industry.
This is not art. This is exploitation, and exploitation stunts the growth of humanity. We do not want an artificial suffocation on our campus.
Saturday evening, a group of about 15 women and men did voice their objections to "Emmanuelle." The group gathered in a hall with posters and a commitment to let their opinions be heard.
They were met with the taunts of some apparently drunken males declaring that "only ugly women hate porn" and other fallacies. But some prospective voters had turned away or join the protest.
And perhaps the movie-goer will consider what the protestors were saying — maybe not today, but someday.
Individuals should use their educated judgment in considering whether films such as "Emmanuelle" are worthy of their time and money. Please give consideration to how the film "Emmanuelle" and other similar works reflect human relationships. Consider how this reflects upon our culture and our campus.
V
Denitta D. Ascue, Lawrence junior, is majoring in women's studies and political science.
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