OPINION
November 28,1984
Page 4
The University, Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
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Cocaine war
The United States and Colombia must stand firm in their efforts to crack down on the cocaine traffic between the two countries.
countries. The problem has been out of hand for some time, and the situation has created grave economic problems for the South American country.
American country. Millions of dollars in profits from the illegal trade have been deposited in other countries instead of Colombia. Although the Colombians who make money from their cocaine business purchase some big items in their country, they often pay cash and avoid paying taxes. These taxes could do wonders for the country's economy and take some of the burden off honest people, who are carrying more than their fair share of the tax load.
In the past few months, leaders of both countries have made efforts to stop the flow of cocaine from South to North America.
The task, however, is not an easy one.
The task, however, is to allow the United States to extradite Colombians to face drug charges. Colombian drug traffickers have threatened to retaliate by killing five Americans for each Colombian extradited to the United States.
United States A bomb that went off near the U.S. Embassy in Bogota on Monday was thought to have been placed by the drug traffickers.
It is a tragedy that the person killed and those wounded probably had little to do with the drug traffic.
Even worse is that there are no guarantees that similar incidents won't occur in the days ahead.
Such a situation puts the Colombian government in a difficult position, but the government must meet the matter head on.
Should Colombian officials decide that the threats by the drug traffickers are too great and therefore back down on their extradition agreement with the United States, both countries will lose.
could es will rose. The Colombian government must stand firm to show the drug traffickers that government officials, and not the cocaine business, rule the country.
Employee rights
Congress possesses constitutional protection against scrutiny of its legislative actions. Citizens, however, possess legal protection against job discrimination. The Supreme Court struck a blow for the rights of employees in a ruling Monday.
Monday. The Court declined to review a ruling by a federal appeals court that the Constitution's speech and debate clause does not shield a congressman from being sued for the firing of the manager of the House of Representative's restaurant system. The Court issued no opinion on the merits of the former manager's suit.
The manager was fired by Rep. Ed Jones, D-Tenn., in June 1982. Jones said publicly that the fired manager, Anne Walker, had misused appropriated funds. Walker has said Jones told others that Walker was overpaid for a woman.
A man was hired to replace Walker in the overseeing of cafeterias and carryouts used by congressmen and their staffs and Walker sued.
status.
Jones argued that his firing of Walker was a function of Congress, and thus immune from judicial scrutiny.
Unfortunately, the idea of the freedom and independence of Congress has been abused in recent years. For example, a senator successfully escaped payment of a speeding ticket when he said he was rushing to congressional duties.
when he said he was rushing to Congress. Now a congressman wants to extend constitutional protection to a cafeteria line. Fortunately the Supreme Court has a better perspective on the proper priorities of the legal system.
Mission to Moscow
So John Hinckley wants to go to the Soviet Union in a trade for Andrei Sakharov.
Does anyone have a patient at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., and proposed the trade in a letter to Newsweek magazine.
Do anyone have a red carpet?
"I'd be glad to live in the Soviet Union if I'm exchanged for Andrei Sakharov," Hinckley wrote. In the letter he said that both he and Sakharov were political prisoners.
Sakharov, however, is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who has spoken out against the cruelty perpetrated by the Soviet system. He has been put in exile by that system, which hates open discussion. Hinkelck carried a gun with the intention of killing a fellow human being. He was put in a hospital — not political exile — based on a judgment by a jury of his peers. There's a difference between the two men.
Despite the attractiveness of Hinckley's proposal, the Reagan administration should reject it. Soviet leadership has experienced enough changes in recent years without turning Hinckley loose in the Kremlin.
Ghost of president past gives counsel
Election review
It was the dead of the night before his coronation as leader of the Free World and all Christian soldiers and Commibuster, and Ronald Reagan was in the Oval office globbing Brvlecreem on his pompadour.
The office door groaned. A ghost chewing on a jaunty tilted cigarette holder peeked into the office.
"Well, who?" said the president and future emperor impatiently.
"Who youself," the ghost said matter-of-factly, "Nothing to fear. Just seeing my way about the old ranch. It seems to have changed a lot since I've been heath, in moah ways than one."
"Since you've been here?" Reagan uttered, confused. The鬼 rolled its wheelchair through the door and into the office.
"My friend," the ghost said, conveniently ignoring Reagan's astonishment. "I want to talk with you about landslides."
Reagan put his hand over his heart. "It was Victory for Red, White and Blue Americas coast to coast, border to border, Mexico to Canada, across the great wheat fields and in the textile mills and for free enterprise and corporate mergers and apple pie and children and basset hounds and old men and deep in the red clay of the South. Flag-waving victory" Tears trickled down his cheeks.
"We're gonna leave the Evil Empire and Tip and Teddy and all those goddess liberals and the ghost of their sapted FDR all sucking their Socialist thumbs. Serves 'em right. Star-spangled glory, in the name of our holy Republican savior Amen."
soothing syrup floods those star-spangled wheat fields.
The ghost mashed out its cigarette, leaned backward and fiddled with its pince-nez. 'Look, Mis-tah President and leadaah of the fuh-ree world, don't get too cocky. You haven't been coronated yet. You've got a far piece to travel before your Republican
"I got 523 electoral votes and within two years I had Hitler in Czechoslovakia and isolationists up to my yazoo and the worst recession since the banks failed. And on top of all that, I messed myself up in Congress and in the South by trying
The ghost trapped its eyes, "God," it said wearily. "I'm glad this isn't a girl."
BRUCE F.
HONOMICHL
Staff Columnist
misuse the name of our savior and call that leadership."
to eliminate some of our more, shall we say, conservative party members. And then the damn Supreme Court thing, Damm conservatives. And the damn polls were lower than we ever thought they could go.
The ghost shook its finger at the future emperor. "The post-election applause is dangerous. Johnson and Nixon were coronated, same as you shall be. I warned them. But they were crucified, same as you shall be. The poor shall stay with you, and the shooting shall grow louder."
"Some of this may start to sound a bit familiar to you in a couple of years. Listen to me."
"For God's sake," the ghost said. "I've crossed party lines to warn you of what's going on. Not to mention that the trip down from Hyde Park gets hard when a ghost turns 102.
reagan scrunched his eyes. His face looked like a road map of New Jersey. The moonlight bounced off his hair. "Ghosts don't get electoral votes," he said condescendingly. "Nancy tells me so. You're a month late for the ballots, but if you go two floors, the nice lady at the desk should have something left for you. That's a very cute costume, young man."
"Get your head out of the champagne and smell the coffee." The ghost gazed at Reagan for a time, then faded and vanished.
Reagan squeezed out another length of Brylcreem and buffed his hair.
"Damn neighborhood vagrants," he muttered "Better send Meese over to Lafayette with a broom and a dustpan to clear them out."
All the world's a stage in U.S. system
Cynicism about the theatrics of the 1984 election does have value, but it can be overdone. We cannot simply berate Ronald Reagan and 59 percent of the U.S. public.
The problem is not Reagan; he is just a creation of the problem, and that problem is the U.S. political system. Politics has unfortunately become a form of entertainment for most Americans. Politics is something we see on TV and heard on television of political action have been relegated to an alternative Hollywood. In U.S. politics, all the world's a stage
Look at the last act and the dramatis personae. For the past four years, Reagan's men have put on a terribly interesting show. We had pageantry, high oratory, fiery rhetoric between adversaries, strategic mind games, high comedy (such as James Watt), patriotism, death, peace and war. The most important officer is that Reagan and Company allowed us to have more money to come back and see the sequel.
Television depersonalized politics. During the Vietnam War, television helped bring the conflict to an end by bringing death in the jungles to the evening dinner table. Americans are often accustomed to visual shock. The television is a magic box; political events do not seem very real, very personal. Those
really weren't dead Marines being carried out of Beirut, were they? Do not criticize Reagan for the exploitation of television and do not feel sorry for Mondale because he could not do so. Focus your criticism and sympathy on what has happened to the U.S. political system.
Oh! But the characters! In the study of what we Americans call
DAVID PAUL FIDLER
Guest Columnist
political science, the term "political actor" is used to describe each person in the political process. The growing influence of media-based politics, however, is separating the actors from the audience.
Americans, believe it or not, have the ability to contemplate, but our political system caters to image and sensation. Therefore, we see more of the Reagan who is fit, healthy and strong in leadership than the Reagan who has a scarred and limping foreign policy. We see more of the Mondale who is uncomfortable before the camera lights than the Mondale who has proposals to heal the wounds caused by Reagan's foreign policy. Part of the result is a Reagan landslide.
I say "part" because, frankly, the
Democrats failed to put together a good show, in either image or substance. The primaries were Mondale's limelight, as the Hotspur Hart nearly overtook the old guard Mondale in a dramatic race.
After the convention, things fell apart. The Ferraro choice turned out to be politically stupid. A Portia she was not. Jessie Jackson seemed to disappear and take the Rainbow with him. The Democrat were never really sure who was supposed to be talking and why.
The Republicans, however, put on a wonderful piece of political entertainment. Reagan was made out to be a Henry VII, America's hope, riding to rescue the welfare state and the U.S. world image with Uncle Sam as his squire. The Republican performers knew their lines and when to speak them. The Republicans edited political reality to allow Reagan's armor to shine in the brilliance of the television spotlight.
When America reacted on Nov. 6, the applause was rousing for Reagan and meager for Mondale.
Americans, it seems, no longer go to politics for issues of serious consequence but instead for entertainment. Politics is a play world brought alive in two dimensions on television. A disturbing problem is that political power is not a fiction.
I am sure that many U.S. voters swallowed hard as rumors of a war
with Nicaragua broke out only shortly after the election. But were the rumors real or part of the play world, enhanced by the media and administration to stimulate audience response? At what point do we know reality from appearance? At what point does Reagan the actor become Reagan the political leader? The two are now inseparable.
are how perception.
When we consider who is to blame,
we must ask: Who applauds or bores
on reaction? Who switches off
political reality when the television is
turned off?
Another disturbing thing is that citizens interested in issues are forced to view a ceremonial pageant that obscures the vital meaning of political choice. These are the caring citizens who remain in their seats, in a darkened theatre, looking at the empty stage, pondering what they have just seen. Is it any wonder they are disillusioned? They do not simply wish to be "one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two." They would prefer "to force the moment" of political reality.
Political reality now, however, is but appearance, and appearance but an image, and an image but decaying sense, which is a fearful thing on which to base political action, unless, of course, all the world's a stage.
David Paul Fidler, Salina junior, is an exchange student at the University of Exeter in England.
Sexual misdeeds draw split decision
WASHINGTON — A cursory examination of the election results could lead to a conclusion that it is permissible for a congressman to hop in the sack with a teen-age boy — but not a teen-age girl
However, as the saying goes, figures never lie, and the presumption must be that this applies as well to elections, except sometimes in Chicago.
Now, it is much too early for the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other fulltime moralists to become alarmed. Certainly, one election does not indicate a trend.
The case, at least on the surface, is there:
On the one hand, Rep. Gerry Studds, D.Mass., was re-elected to a sixth term from the 10th District though he had been censured by the House in 1983 for the seduction of a teenage page - a boy.
On the other hand, Rep. Daniel Crane, R-III, was defeated in his attempt to win a fourth term from the 19th District after he had been censured by the House in 1983 for the seduction of a teenage page — a girl,
As a result, Studds comes back to the House in January, chastised by
his peers but accepted by the voters of his district in the party primary and in the general election.
Crane, chastised equally by his peers, was deemed unfit to serve his constituents and will return to the practice of dentistry, his political career at an end
Crane and Studds were censured not so much for what they had done
vative " Crane's political philosophy, though not his fling with the page, fits that mold.
STEVE GERSTEL
United Press International
but for who the two not-so-unwilling "victims". The girl and boy in question were, respectively, 18 and 17, and more damaging, they were pages entrusted by their families to the keeping of the House.
Another factor in the censures might have been that the House Ethics Committee had already spent about $1 million on an investigation and needed to come up with something, even though the dalliances of the congressmen were about a decade old.
One could presume that the voters of Massachusetts's 10th District accept homosexual conduct on the part of their congressman and that the voters of Illinois' 19th reject the idea of their congressman in an extramarital affair with a girl.
The reasons for the constituents' difference in voting, however, go deeper than that.
Although Illinois' 19th District is not the heart of the Bible Belt, it is considered "traditionally conser-
Crane, unfortunately for him, was not blessed with the same kind of district nor with the same kind of record in the House.
Studds' district certainly is not Greenwich Village or San Francisco, where homosexuality is an accepted way of life, though taboos against seduction of an impressionable teen-ager probably exist in those communities.
It evidently is a district liberal enough in its thinking that it can forgive one transgression when, as in Studds case, that act can be balanced against 10 years of admirable service to the constitutency
It is doubtful whether the voters of the 10th District would have forgiven Crane his indiscretion in any case. The district was by a pedestrian record in the House.
4
Other differences could have played a role in the results of the election
Studds acknowledged that he had made a mistake, admitted that he was homosexual and pretty much disposed of the issue in the primary to the point that his action was not an open factor in the general election.
Crane took a more traditional approach. He tearfully wrapped himself in the bosom of his family and begged forgiveness from the voters. The issue stayed alive and resisted until he realized that should have, under any other circumstances, returned Crane to the House.
Both congressmen gambled; one won, one lost.