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University Daily Kansan, February 28, 1983
Opinion
Weeping again in India
For those of us who are feeling inspired and exhilarated by a recent viewing of the movie "Gandhi," and are quietly and warmly reveling in the goodness of humanity, the following first paragraph from a recent news story should bring us back to earth:
"GAUHATI, India — Thousands of terrified Bengalis are fleeing the state of Assam, where officials Thursday reported a new massacre and said the death toll from 24 days of violence had risen to 3,554."
And these later words should eradicate that warm feeling forever and turn our blood cold:
"Some 2,000 terrified survivors of Monday's carnage Thursday fled their homes on foot, clutching a few belongings. Some carried babies and old people unable to walk. The refugees joined 26,000 others made homeless by the worst wave of ethnic violence since India gained independence from Britain in 1947."
Gandhi was, admittedly, a great
man who almost singlehandedly brought about the independence of India. But as the movie pointed out: "Everyone is not a Gandhi."
Gandhi is dead. There does not seem to be another to take his place. There does not seem to be another even willing to try.
how they are being being Minister Gandhi is Indira, not Mahatma. No one can expect her to perform a miracle.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to her credit, refused to prevent the Bengali immigrants from voting in the elections of India's Parliament held last week. Native Assamese demanded the Bengalis be stripped of their voting rights and expelled from the overcrowded state. The Bengalis voted, so now they are being butchered.
Yet actions by both Gandhi have led to their country's worst instances of bloodshed and horror. Perhaps, after all, we should not wait for another Gandhi. Perhaps a Ghandi — and human kindness in India — are things of the past.
Schultz's quiet style poses dilemmas in communication
PR JIM ANDERSON
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State George Shultz's style is so low-key that it is practically no-key.
European diplomats love the relaxed, paternal manner that is somehow reminiscent of a phenomenon from another age, the family doctor on a house call.
For approximately the same reasons, Shultz drives newsmen to despair. The qualities that make him such a reassuring, comforting father figure to other diplomats make him lousy news copy and worse television footage.
Television correspondents at the State Department have even turned his name into a verb. To be shultzed is to be cut off the evening news, as in:
"Are you going to be on the show tonight?"
"Nice. We been shushed — again."
Nope. I've been skimmed.
One such correspondent, who set a new world's record by being shultzed 12 nights in a row while on a European trip with the secretary of state, said that his wife back home filed a missing person's report on him.
But Shultz tries to be responsive to newsmen's needs and has had fairly frequent meetings with them. One of them not long ago turned out to be almost surreal.
Shuffz added to the puzzlement by saying that he had never attended such a summit, that the agenda for Williamsburg was not complete, and that the administration wanted to keep the meeting informal and unstructured without the glare of publicity and public statements to reporters.
With the usual fanfare given to a public appearance by a secretary of state, an announcement was made that Shultz would give a briefing in the White House press room on the annual economic summit of the seven leading Western nations. The timing was, itself, unusual because the summit was not scheduled to take place for another three months.
In effect, he was calling a news conference to announce that he preferred reporters not write any stories about the summit.
One baffled newsman finally asked him, "Why are we here?"
Shultz, with no visible change of expression,
answered, "That's not a bad question."
answered. The real answer to the question, according to a member of Shultz's staff, is that the White House wanted to begin the process of deflating
expectations about the Williamsburg summit meeting, to avoid a disaster like last year's get-together at Versailles, which was full of pomp, ceremony and -- finally -- misunderstandings that severely damaged the cohesiveness of the Western alliance.
snitz was being a good soldier, having a news conference when he knew he had no information to impart. The blame for the puzzling non-news conference lay with the White House communication staff, which, at the very least, has a faulty sense of timing.
When the nomination was first announced, it was made clear that Adelman was being chosen as a sort of an assistant to Shultz, who would be groomed to assume the mantle of chief arms negotiator, as Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance did when they had his job.
The White House and the State Department must share the blame for another communications flasco, in which the administration sent to the Senate the nomination of Kenneth Adelman as director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
Adelman's chief qualification for his role in the arrangement was precisely that he was not a heavyweight, and that there would be no role confusion between him and Shultz (as there had been with the past arms control director, Eugene Bostrow).
That was never successfully explained to liberal members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who turned on Adelman in fury and scorn when he threatened a desultory appearance in hearings.
The administration meant to signal that it was finally getting serious about the arms negotiations and Shultz was taking charge. The message that arrived at Capitol Hill — and in European capitals — was that the administration was contemptuous of arms control negotiations and that Adelman's lack of substance and experience was proof of that.
It appears that Adelman will finally be confirmed and that Shultz will take on his new role as super-negotiator in the arms control talks. It also appears that the Williamsburg economic summit will be more informal and more useful than the Versailles affair.
But the administration made things unnecessarily difficult for itself in both cases and further damaged its own credibility as a government that appears to know what it is doing.
As the prison warden said to Cool Hand Luke (in the movie of the same name) as he threw him into solitary confinement, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."
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Cultural, moral void swelling
Perhaps the most serious lesson, and by far the most frightening one, man has ever learned from writers involves the lack of any moral message in contemporary literature.
As I was jealously browsing through my bookshelves the other day and mulling over the moral messages that different authors delivered to me, I stumbled upon the authors now living, tend to shy from any statement.
A moral message is what distinguishes a great story from a nice one. As I passed from Hemingway to Ibsen in 1925, decided that I would pre-1905 authors from post-1900 authors.
I feel the most accurate representation of the coming author is John Irving. What does he say? Sorrows float? All you need to get by in life is a good bear? Basically nothing. Irvings takes on the most pressing issues of our time and makes no statement. He deals with rape (even the possibility that a woman might enjoy it), intent, murder, maternal sex in such a casual manner that it reminds me of offering another chocolate to a friend. His characters exist in a seamy, amoral world and, as long as they continue to get their kicks out of life, enjoy it. Why?
captured our age of cultural void better than any other author of our age. He is writing about the world he lives in. He may exaggerate a bit — but not much. The lack of a statement from within his work is made up for by the aura of the world he creates.
We are the inhabitants of an immoral, or amoral, age and society. We live in a time of rapidly dwindling values. We have placed more and more emphasis on the rights of the
Because Irving is observant.
Whether intentionally or not, Irving has
MATT SCHOFIELD
individual to be free, on the right of "Me" to act in whatever manner is necessary to best serve "Me" needs, and we have lost any idea of what community, or social good, is.
Our egocentricity is amazing. At a time of very high unemployment and dwindling social welfare programs we retreat to the comfortable, womblike confines of arcades and pump quarters into video games. It might not seem like much, but this act demonstrates an
apathetic attitude towards others and a self-serving, pleasure-seeking attitude in ourselves
Television has gone from a vast wasteland in the 1960s to the lowest possible form of culture in the present, and yet we support it more than ever before.
Nuclear weapons arsenals are stocked, and a large percentage of almost every industrial nation's budget is spent on the production of more weapons, weapons which were designed for the destruction of entire nations. If we considered the lives of others to be as important as our own, would we be able to justify the production of such weapons?
We are in the second decade of "finding ourselves" at the expense of others. We are still fighting for our right to personal space. And in that space we are doing what feels good. Our standard is to criticize it as that we should not childhood and can't be held responsible for our actions.
We have decided that crime is the police's business and that putting an end to violence is not our business.
Our world is not pretty, and it is getting uglier. But it is our responsibility. We'll all go to die anyway. The question is whether we live in moral squalor, or fight to improve the world. And whether we die alone or together.
Time is right for generic politicians
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON - Consumers and other illness-prone groups seeking cheaper medication long have lobbed for legislation to make it easier for doctors to prescribe drugs by generic, or chemical, nomenclature rather than brand name.
and now makers of generic, or no-name,
cigarettes report a booming business. Filters,
kings, lights and regulars sold in packages
labeled simply as "cigarettes" captured nearly
1 percent of the market in 1982. That, as one
industry official commented, amounts to "big
bucks."
There is more to the rising popularity of generic products than the fact that they generally are cheaper than brand-name goods. We've seen the reverse "nose up appeal" by some social critics.
Injection of the ego element into unbranded merchandise makes me wonder where the trend will strike next. Generic T-shirts may be one possibility.
Everywhere you look these days you see T-shirts imprinted with political messages, personal statements of life style preferences and myriad pictorial graphics.
hybrid pictorial graphics.
What about skivies with the word "t-shirt" spelled out across the chest? Might they not be heavy sellers? Particularly if the price is right?
Bob
Also in brief demand would be generic bumper stickers. Be the first on your block to plaster your auto with placards bearing the word "bumper sticker."
Speaking of autos, a generic motor vehicle might not be a bad idea, either. It could run Japanese cars right off the road.
The greatest potential for no-name products, however, probably lies in the field of generic politicians.
U. S. political archives fairly team with jokes about "the best senator money can buy." But buying a member of Congress isn't what it used to be.
Common Cause, the "citizen's lobby" that keeps track of campaign funds contributed by political action committees, has just isolated and identified the Senate's first "million-dollar PAC man."
The lobby says one of the successful candidates in the 1982 campaign received $1,101,951 in PAC contributions.
A prime reason the price is going up is the
Politicians might be labeled generically liberal, generically conservative or generically moderate. Whatever your ideology, some of them should be in tune with your brand of politics. That they are also cheap is an added plus.
There is a lot of difference between "independent" and "generic". The former, theoretically, is politically autonomous. The latter is descriptive of an entire political school.
Minor parties have brand names, too. Socialist, Libertarian, etc., but they really field winning candidates. They're off from the major parties call themselves "independents."
minstance on brand-name politicians. PAC contributors generally go for candidates who are affiliated with one of the leading parties, which, in turn, were brand-named Republican and Democrat.
the next time you mark your ballot, and none of the name-brand candidates suits your fancy, trying voting generic. It could be the next best thing to "none of the above."
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