OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
February 17, 1984
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
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DOUG CUNNINGHAM
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Exception to rule
President Reagan's recent decision to relax governmental censorship is an important victory for the public and for the affected government officials.
Reagan rescinded two key parts of a national security directive that will be issued to more than 128,000 government officials who handle classified information.
Provisions that would have imposed lifelong censorship and increased the use of polygraph machines were suspended.
The original directive, which met widespread criticism in Congress last year, was postponed until April 15 this year.
Some administration officials said Reagan wanted to delete key parts of the original directive "to remove it as a sore spot, a source of controversy" in an election year.
America can learn from the past. Recent books by ex-CIA agents, which were censored by the agency, revealed how and why the CIA, and its agents, performed overt and covert operations.
The government has a right to make sure employees who handle classified information remain honest and trustworthy, but the results of polygraph tests are not always conclusive. The polygraph cannot be depended on to determine the truth.
The president has made an exception to his hard-nosed effort to eradicate internal security leaks. The exception appears to have been made to sweeten his re-election chances.
Administrations, both present and future should remain dedicated to protecting an individual's freedoms. Advancements must be continued when the election year is over.
Soap opera not a mirror of real life
The wedding invitation didn't come in the mail. As a result, I wasn't sure I was invited. But once I learned that thousands of others would also be in attendance, I decided to put in an appearance.
1 am sure Jenny Gardner and Greg Nelson, the for-now-happily-married couple on "All My Chil-pleased that I was able to make it.
I tried to share some of the enthusiasm that many in the television congregation apparently felt for Jenny and Greg. But my lack of close association with the couple diminished any possible affinity.
Not so for the students who scheduled the television wedding into their day with as much foreground as in the real events in which they have a role.
Manv of Greg and Jennv's television family had looked forward to the day with joyful anticipation. They had waited for the marriage for months, sticking with the couple through the ups and downs of courtship.
MARGARET
SAFRANEK
Staff Columnist
The television soap opera, which comes in a nice tidy package, provides a chance to intimately describe the lives of characters in the show.
How convenient, to be able to share in this couple's life for an hour Monday through Friday.
Their situations sometimes seem exaggerated but most of us at one
time or another have probably commented that our own life reminds us of a soap opera.
Soap opera viewers make a mistake if they let their hour with the likes of Greg and Jenny serve as a substitute for emotional involvement with families, roommates or friends.
One theory is that people sometimes relate to the soap operas because the television characters are part of the community missing from their own lives.
Another theory is that people lacking the romance and drama that the soap operas offer get their fill by turning on the television.
What a wonderful contribution to the American way of life. Not only are we able to find supplements for our families, but we also help the help of the television industry, we
are able to fulfill some of our emotional needs as well.
It's just that the soap opera, with all of its similarities to real life, is so far from reality.
Although in real life we sometimes have commercial breaks — those welcomed pauses which ease a tense situation or heighten our anticipation, the differences between soap operas and reality is significant.
Real life does not offer the option of a break because someone has just been rushed to the hospital.
So opera operas try to emulate life with all of its burdens and dreams. In a given time slot, the television play out many of our experiences
Nor does a pause always come our way so we can catch our breath before taking some big step.
We cannot schedule our commercial breaks — making sure that timing matches need.
But we cannot schedule the course of human events. Life doesn't
happen in a tidy fashion. It refuses to fit into any sort of schedule.
Unlike a soap opera, the death of a loved one doesn't fit into a convenient spot between lunch and a physics class. A desperate phone call in the middle of the night can mean two hours of missed sleep. And the crisis doesn't offer the choice of skipping that particular scene because we find it too depressing.
But soap operas package it all.
They give us the human emotion without interrupting our schedule.
We can plan our day, our week or our semester around the lives of Greg and Kenny or Luke and Laura and still get around to everything else.
Yet despite the most realistic scripts written, the soap opera misses a critical element of real life. Life leads us where it will, when it will, and so on. In vision, we cannot choose life in hopes of fitting it into our schedule.
Curing Medicare's ills
A recent proposal by two congressmen offers a reasonable, positive antidote to the illness that is racking the Medicare program in the United States.
In a move to ensure that elderly people can afford health care, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., want the government to force physicians to keep costs down.
tee also has recommended raising the age of Medicare recipients from 65 to 67.
The new idea, which differs a great deal from a recent proposal by the Reagan administration, would be a more humane and effective cure for the ailing Medicare program.
A government advisory commit-
Such action would be unfair to elderly people who are entitled to more security in their old age — not less.
The Reagan administration proposal would curb the costs of Medicare by increasing the size of premiums that some beneficiaries pay and also by reducing some benefits.
In contrast, under the Kennedy-Gephardt proposal, benefits for the elderly would stay where they now are. Hospitals and doctors would be forced to use stricter cost control measures.
Medicare must be cured of its financial ailments. The cure can best be effected by forcing physicians to keep costs down so that elderly people can afford health care.
Senior citizen groups and several labor organizations have endorsed the new proposal. They call the proposal more positive and thoughtful than the Reagan plan.
A well-earned thanks
This one is for the ordinary folks.
For the people who do their jobs every day without complaining. And for the people who somehow still have a good word for others.
One of those people is Curtis White, a 61-year-old janitor at Lewis Hall. Residents surprised White on Tuesday morning with Valentine's Day wishes, streamers and cards.
White, who plans to retire in July, spoke highly of the hall residents, and he spoke cheerfully about his job.
But White is hardly the only employee of the University who goes about his job with a quiet certainty.
The world needs more people such as White. People who do their job and do it well.
Some ceremonies throughout the year recognize the steady accomplishments of University staff and faculty. But many others continue about their work, expecting little recognition yet pushing themselves to do a good job.
Too often, such people fail to receive the recognition they deserve.
Despite these problems, it is refreshing to find people such as White and others at the University who want to do a good job for the school and its students. They deserve more of our thanks.
Of course, things aren't all roses. Even the Valentine's Day bouquets must be fading by now. Problems with the state payroll plan and budget reductions in University spending are sure to take their toll on morale.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced 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 Kansan also invites individuals to submit their columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
LETTERS POLICY
Dead painter imitated art in life
Tom Keating may not have demolished art auction houses such as Sotheby and Christie's, but he did manage to crack a few windows.
Keating, who died Sunday in London at age 66, was a masterly painter. By his estimate, he created 1,000 to 3,000 paintings, usually successfully on the styles and techniques of other more famous artists.
He relied on his predecessors more than most painters do. But what shook the auction houses, dealers and buyers in 1976 was that Keating also signed the other names. He was a master fortor.
One name Keating showed a particular penchant for signing was Samuel Palmer, Palmer, an English romanticist who died in 1881, painted about 80 landscapes of Shoreham, England.
Keating is credited with another 80, which are called "Keating Palmers." He culed elements from different works by Palmer and combined them in his own paintings.
Until his 1976 confession and subsequent autobiography, titled "The Fake's Progress," the Palmer that brought the highest price,
$34,500, was "The Horse Chestnut Tree" — a Keating-Palmer.
When Keating washed out his brushes at the end of his 25-year career, he had imitated more than his peers and styles including Constant Depth, Faronard, Gainsborough, Gaugin, Goyan, Manet, Matisse, Munch.
Staff Columnist
Rembrandt, Rubens and Toulouse-Lautrec.
The copied masters had only one thing in common. They were all dead.
T. S. Eliot wrote: "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his mastery and its adaptation to the dead poets and artists."
Keating appreciated his sources of inspiration a little more than most
artists. His appreciations led to his arrest in 1977 on charges of conspiracy and criminal deception.
Keating considered his forgeries a protest against the world of auction houses and art dealers. "I have so much contemp for the dealers who prostitute the art of genuine painters and the art of genuine sellers to sell them any old rubbish."
But Keating's paintings were not rubbish. The materials he used duplicated the masters' originals as closely as their availability per-
To create the appearance of the proper historical period, he then splashed on a brown varnish that had been diluted to indicate the painting's age. He was a great artist. But his work passed the examinations of experts.
True, Keating's Palmers and Rembrandts did not possess lineages traceable to an artist and his that yield what dealers call "aura."
Keating was able to assume the style of any master he chose to a degree that fooled the experts — it was his art. As Aristophanes, a dead Greek, said, "Let each man exercise the art he knows."
Auras produce prestige, and
prices go up. Dead painters can't flood the market with more of their work, scarcity pushes prices up. And prices go up when critics notice that only those who can experience originals can fully appreciate art.
Many of Keating's expressions of appreciation were copied from texts and catalogs. He worked from few originals.
He demonstrated that what is important is not the work, but the name in the corner. After 25 years of providing proof, he brought his thumb to his nose and waved at the men in their ivory auction houses.
Keating understood that regardless of his talent or versatility, he could never ask the price his caliber deserved. He could paint the best Palmer in existence, but he couldn't demand a Palmer price.
So Keating forged ahead for 25 years. His fakes now hang in museums and galleries. In 1983, Christie's sold 135 of his paintings
The opening quote of "The Fake's Progress" is from Alexander Pope, and it concludes, "Whatever is, is right."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
To the editor:
Two important journalistic principles, verification and fairness, were overlooked in the Feb. 13 University Daily Kansas.
In their hurried quest to provide all the news that's fit to print at the University of Kansas, the editors forgot to check the story of a letter to the editor contributor.
The opinion page carried a letter supporting the Khomeini regime in Iran signed by a Domenchsjo Josma Mossi and an Persian means "a Muslim student."
In the 11-paragraph composition he ranted and raved a biased version of the Islamic Republic regime's accomplishments.
The publication of this letter has caught the editors of the Kansan with their pants down and political colors showing.
Although a conservative with trite Khomeini propaganda can waltz into the Kansan office and drop off a disingenuous and misleading letter containing questions be asked, not every person is treated that way at the Kansan.
Any anti-Khomeini activist, or liberal or radical American for that matter prove and double check his or her evidence and documentation. Others appara-
were the pro-Khomeini "Muslim student" if they to take a different position, say, advocating armed struggle to overthrow the Khomeini regime in Iran, would the letter get printed without the slightest effort to verify who wrote it and for what reasons?
ntly are relieved of this respon sibility by a few editors.
This lack of fairness to truth and to the objective facts is a slap in the face of all iranians at KU and all activists who want to consider the press as objective.
As for the fake Mosalman's (Muslim student's) unconfirmed statements regarding Islamic Republic accomplishments such as less crime and corruption and more "social modifications" such as decreased illiteracy, increased water and electric power in remote areas and pensions for elderly rural citizens, let's see the proof, and please, please don't show us the slick-gloss, made-for-dummies publications from Khomeini's government printing office.
"I'd venture to say the "Muslim student" offers no facts because there are none to support his claims. They are as fictitious as he is. If they are not taking us lies, then why are they lying about their names?"
As for facts — recently published accounts of Iran's turmoil suggest
and not to protect someone who dares to point out the facts.
Time, Newsweek, Foreign Affair,
In These Times and the World Press
Review are some sources that
support these claims.
there is growing opposition to the Kohmeini regime and that because of a ruined economy, an unpopular war, competition among the ruling factions and the murderous suppression of dissidents, the regime is facing more and more dissatisfaction among the masses of people.
The Iran-Iraq war, which Mosulan (Muslim student) seems proud to support, has produced skyrocketing inflation rates, massive unemployment, shortages and rationing of the most basic commodities such as food and medicines, and has produced millions of refugees. That certainly is a Khomenei accomplishment.
Finally, I have requested that my name be withheld from publication. This is because some pro-Khomeini students have a record of stabbing their opponents as they apparently captured, on 12, 1981 at the Kansas Union.
How contradictory to protect the identity of a knife-pulling Khomeini
The Kansan editors did not give me the same luxury of anonymity afforded the pro-Khomeini guest letter-writer. I was not given the same consideration by the Kansan editors, who were somewhat embarrassed by their mistake and decided to start enforcing the rules with me.
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To the editor:
Rhonda Neugebauer Lawrence resident
Music not boring
In response to Mary Coffey's letter about boredom in Kansas. In her letter, Mary says Kansas radio stations play nothing but "medicore makeout music such as Air Supply or Christopher Cross."
She says she wants to hear some Prince, U-2, Dawid Bowie, The Who and early Stones. Well Mary, if you'd just twist your little wrist a little more and travel to the end of the dial, not only would you hear all the Prince, U-2, and David Bowie your little heart desired, but you could also hear much more exciting artists such as Jason & The Scorchers, R.E.M., X.T.C., The English Beat, Elvis Costello, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, The Replacements — shall I continue?
All of these artists and many more are played daily on a boring Kansas radio station run by boring students right here at this boring University. So open your ears Mary and tune to KJHK FM 91, the "medicare makeup music alternative." Now that you know where it is, there's no excuse. By the way, KJHK plays no
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Rob Leichter Leawood Senior