September 5,1984
Page 4
OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University, Daily Kalmuan (UNPS 604-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall, Lawen. Kanun 6004 daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second class postage paid at Lawen. Kanun 6004 Subscriptions by mail are $1 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $1 for six months or $3 a year in Laramie County. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the University, Daily Kalmuan, 118 Staffer Flint Hall, Lawen. Kanun 6004
DON KNOX
Editor
PAUL SEVART VINCE HESS Managing Editor Editorial Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM Campus Editor
DAVE WANAMAKER
Business Manager
SUSANNE SHAW General Manager and News Advisor
LYNNE STARK MARY BERNICA Retail Sales National Sales Manager Manager
JILL GOLDBLATT
Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Sales and Marketing Adviser
Saving lives
Louis Washkansky's heartbeat in December 1967 was board, around the world.
heard around the world. Christianian Barnard, aided by a surgical team, performed the world's first heart transplant on him in Cape Town, South Africa.
In the years since that historical, life-giving operation, the technique has been improved, refined and performed repeatedly.
The research that has gone on around the world was put to use at the University of Kansas Medical Center five weeks ago.
Medical advances have meant transplants of both heart and lungs into patients. Bypass surgery has given many others a new lease on life without a transplant.
Over the weekend, 43-year-old James Hale of Wichita walked out of the hospital with a new heart.
others a few days or weeks, such brief success did little to dampen enthusiasm for the operation.
Doctors attempted to use the heart of a baboon as a substitute for the human heart in 1977, and five years later. Barney Clark lived for several months with an artificial heart.
In the years since Barnard had the pulses of the world quickening with news of the first successful transplant, hundreds of other people have been the beneficiaries of a new heart and additional years of life.
The Med Center estimates that the total cost of a heart transplant operation is $80,000.
Whatever the cost, medicine continues to make great strides, and much of that progress has resulted from operations initially considered experimental and costing millions of dollars with few guarantees for success.
Hale's operation was an example of the advancements made in heart surgery. A surgical team of 30 assisted Barnard during the first heart transplant; a team of only 15 was needed for Hale's.
was needed for Trade's Innovative medical operations soon become routine procedures. Somehow, the cost of the very first operation becomes worth the money.
Going bananas
U. S. policy on Nicaragua seems to be in a bunch of confusion these days.
Not only has Congress questioned aid to counter-revolutionaries (contras) in that country, but a recent report indicates that U.S. banana imports from Nicaragua rose sixfold in the first half of 1984. Figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that banana imports from Nicaragua were 42.8 million metric tons through May of this year; in the same period last year, the figure was 7.4 million tons.
Meanwhile, banana imports from the Honduras have dropped by 15 percent this year.
o dropped by 15 percent. The problem is that the Honduran government is supposed to be an ally of the United States. The Nicaraguan government, on the other hand, is battling the contras, who have allegedly received support from Uncle Sam.
Despite its backing for the contras, the Reagan administration has failed to restrict trade with Nicaragua. A spokesman for a banana importing company speculates that the Nicaraguans have been dumping their produce on the U.S. market; the Sandinista government says it merely is taking advantage of the free market.
What monkey business! A Marxist country follows a capitalist dictum, while the U.S. government trips as it tries to coordinate its relations with a hostile country.
Reagan: fiend or friend?
Fable tells story about leadership
For those who may have forgotten, 1984 is an election year, and that makes it a good time to recall lessons of the past.
1 ms lesson is in the form of a fable about a nation of not too long ago, in a place not far from here.
The nation in the fable had recently lost a long, costly, demoralizing war. The economy was turning sour as unemployment rose and inflation soared. Popular discontent was crippling the government.
When the Olympic Games came to his country, The Leader turned the event into a forum for nationalism and patriotism.
From the midst of this discontent, one man sought and attained the nation's highest office. We'll call this man The Leader.
The Leader was popular because he had made the nation strong again and he had made his government respected in the world and at home. He gave the people the kind of confidence and pride that they had once lost and thought they would never regain.
The Leader's biggest political asset was his ability to mobilize the support of the people. He could break everything down into terms the masses could understand, and his gift quickly began to pay off.
When he took charge, the mood of the nation was grim, and people were pessimistic about their country's future in world affairs. But such was his enthusiasm, and his ability to communicate it, that in a few years, The Leader turned that around.
He complained that the military was in poor shape and warned of the communist threat. And through his efforts, army morale, equipment and efficiency improved as more money went into better weapons.
So his stock continued to rise.
Even when he engaged his country in military adventurism abroad and lives were lost, he managed to control public opinion by defending his actions in broad terms of the national good.
leader, and they ignored his contradictions and flaws. They chose to discount the excesses that his policies produced, mainly because they didn't care and didn't think they were affected by those excesses.
When minority groups complained that The Leader was bad for their interests, they were either ignored or scorned. When his opponents in government criticized his policies, they were denounced as unpatriotic.
It was only when he led them into another war, a world war, a war they lost, that they began to realize that something was wrong.
Too late, they realized that patriotism was a fine thing, but that a nation drank with patriotism could be an ugly, even evil place. They didn't care how strong, was ordained to control the destines of its neighbors.
The people accepted what The Leader said because he was the
This fable probably sounds familiar to you, and that's because it isn't really a fable. The Leader's nation was Germany, and his name was Hitler.
And they realized the dangers of following leadership that misleads.
The fable may also remind you of some present-day leader or other in some nation closer to home, but any similarity on those counts is purely coincidental.
President shows worth in actions
John Anderson's endorsement last week of Walt Mondale stirred my memories of how I had come to like Ronald Reagan.
My earliest memories stem from 1976, when Reagan opposed President Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination. Good of Jerry had gone through some rough
times; he had replaced Spiro Agnew, and had replaced — and pardoned — Richard Nixon.
Reagan criticized Ford — harshly. I thought — for things such as the proposed Panama Canal treaties. Reagan took the fight — o the convention, in Kansas City, Mo., and For President the general election to Jimmy Carter.
Carter, aided and abetted by
Walter Mondale on-the-Fritz, made bumbling Ford and even "arch-conservative" Reagan look good. If Carter wasn't complaining about national mayonnaise or malaise or whatever, he = a nuclear engineer, cited inspiration from his daughter on the matter of nuclear arms.
Another presidential campaign arrived, a la the cavalry, and brought with it Reagan and the seemingly fresh, new face of John Anderson, then a congressman from Illinois.
Anderson impressed me greatly at first. After all, he looked like a president and sounded like one, too, at least initially. Then I started to listen to him.
Reagan at that time was proposing both cuts in tax rates and limits on government. Plus, he talked tough on defense and national security, told that was refreshing at a time of Afghanistan and hostages in Iran.
As for what Anderson was saying, well, he's endorsed Mondale for 1984.
Around this time my reading about Reagan had persuaded me that he was the man. In an era of professional politicians, he had actually worked for a living as a broadcaster and an actor in his years. Only after that career had faded did he start to run office.
Indeed, during his years as an actor, he had made public tours for General Electric; those tours had put him face to face with the nation and told him of their complaints about government.
Reagan took on the Peanut in a debate shortly before the election and cracked his shell. He had barely begun to implement his policies as president when John Hinckley Jr. shot him.
Roagan displayed his unique sense of perspective during this crisis; as the nation agonized over every word from authorities at the hospital and the White House, the president said to his wife, "Honey. I forgot to duck." And some people worry that he'd lose his head in a nuclear confrontation!
Reagan's policies have generated controversy, yet they certainly contain some good. In domestic matters, for example, critics attack the president for lack of compassion; however as Mondale likely knows as he's elected it is easy to be generous with someone else's money
In the area of defense and foreign affairs, the Reagan administration distinguished itself with a successful freeing of Grenada from a murderous gang of thugs.
Now it's Jellybean against Geraldine.
Do it again. Ron.
Thug sticks to his gun in suit against police
There are different words for it. Gall, Nerve. Cheek. Chutzpah. Take your pick, but Alfred Cosentino has it in abundance.
Cosentino has filed a lawsuit that says his civil rights have been violated.
That's not unusual in itself. At any given moment, about half of America is suing the other half — often for the strangest of reasons.
Criminals now sue their victims for damages and sometimes collect, as in the case of a Minnesota petty theft
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
to the author.
I am writing in response to Chuck Vanasse's letter of Aug. 30. It seems to me that he misunderstands the whole concept of tolerance for homosexuals.
I will never expect religious zealots, Christian fundamentalists like Mr. Vanasse, to understand or tolerate homosexuality. At the same time, I will probably never understand their viewpoints, either. No one expects him or anyone else to do anything but oppose homosexuality. I can never see that not happening, nor can most homosexuals
Homosexuals seek human respect
But the point of tolerance and understanding is not necessarily acceptance of homosexuality as homosexuality Homosexuals want nothing more than to receive the
To the editor:
same respect and opportunities that other human beings receive — and which they deserve. What homosexuals want is really only what everyone else wants (and has); the ability to walk down the street without fear for their physical well-being; to be able to show affection to everyone else; to care for — like everyone else; to have equal opportunities for jobs; to have equal opportunities for housing; to be shown some respect.
Is this sort of tolerance "inconspicuously hurtful" to the hormonal exal? Perhaps Vansase thinks so, I do not. We deal with other types of "simmers" every day, yet we do not treat them with disrespect
Well, I must admit that I agree with him on one point:"We all have a
A guy sued a dogcatcher for locking up his mutil. Municipal workers sue their superiors for not attaching lights to their classrooms for giving them poor grades.
But when it comes to indignation, none can even approach AI Cosentino.
I suppose that we must sometimes tolerate things we think are wrong. I must tolerate Ronald Reagan as president. At least homosexuals did not send troops into Beirut or El Salvador. If no one is hurt, why not tolerate the no accept homosexual i
standard of morality." But what Vanasse does not mention is that everyone's morality differs.
The injury (and the danger) comes when we let our "morality" get in the way of our common humanity. So many people are quick to judge, and so few are quick to forgive.
who persuaded a jury that it was really unnecessary for a farmer to shoot him after he had looted the farmer's car.
Douglas Stallings Lawrence graduate student
Cosentino, 30, is by trade a two-bit criminal. At least that is the way the cops in Omaha, where he is now locked up, describe him. Law enforcement officials tell this story:
A while back Cosentino and an associate were hired by some drug dealers in Florida to track down a man and a woman who were suspected of stealing some of the dealers' cocaine.
Their search led them to a house in an Omaha suburb, where they burst in and found the suspected couple, who were staying with relatives.
This time they kidnapped the woman and told the man that they 'release her when they got the cocaine.
Waving guns and talking tough, they demanded the drugs. Then they ransacked the house, but found nothing. They left, but decided to come back and give it another try.
The man called the cops and from on then it was just like television or the movies. A trap was set up. When the kidnappers phoned with arrangements for the switch, the cops listened in on the phone.
unmarked van near the exchange location, the sidewalk in front of a post office.
A car pulled up in the night. Cosentino sat in the back seat, painting a gun at the woman's head.
Then a SWAT team hid in an
MIKE
ROYKO
Syndicated
Columnist
His partner got out to meet the man who was supposed to produce the drugs.
Cosentino's partner, being a sensible sort, dropped his gun and flung himself to the pavement.
He jumped out of the car and fired of a couple of rounds. So the police started blazing away at him with pistols and shotguns.
After he healed, Cosentino was put in a cell to await trial, and this time evidently gave him time to brood to his failings as a hired mug.
The police then burst out of the van, shouting that everybody should freeze, halt, surrender and other such things that police like to shout at such moments.
But Cosentino, who may have seen too many old James Cagney movies, gave it the old come-and get-it copper routine.
before it was over. Cusentino had in pellet and ballet holes in his hide. The doctors managed to save him, and he was charged with all sorts of misbehavior - kidnapping, as saulting a police officer, and assault with a deadly weapon.
In addition, human nature being what it is, he had time to succumb to those most common of character failings - self pity and blaming others for one's inadequacies.
The result is that Cosentino has filed a federal lawsuit saying that his constitutional rights have been violated. He wants at least $50,000 in damages.
And how did they violate his rights?
He says that the police tried to kill him, and there's probably some truth in that. When the police wound you 19 times, chances are they weren't trying to knock an apple off your head.
He also says that when they came popping out of the van, they didn't adequately identify themselves
An interesting point. But even if they were true, who did he think they were? Bad tempered phone repair men? Camper's irate at having their sleep disturbed?
Finally, he says, the fact that they shot him so many times means that their training was inadequate
I have to concede that he might have a valid point there. When I mentioned this case to a Chicago cop, he asked, "How many times did they hit him?"
Nineteen
"And he's still breathing?"
And he's so That's right
"Well, then, they ought to fire the guy who runs their shooting range."