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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Thursday, Aug. 29, 1985
7
Reagan's healthy image
President Reagan's resumption of horseback riding last weekend was expected and reported extensively. It looked, and was meant to look, like a sign of health after his surgery for colon cancer in July and removal of a growth from his nose a few weeks later.
The good news is the probability that Reagan is healthy. The bad news is the denial of possible illness by White House spokesmen in both instances. Cancer is no longer an unspeakable horror, but the White House spokesmen hardly advanced a rational approach to it.
The White House apparently miscalculated the political effect of the question of Reagan's health. Straightforward answers would have dispensed with the subject more effectively than hiding one side of the president's nose.
The premise, of course, is that a president cannot afford to look vulnerable in any way. Hence the image of Reagan sitting tall in the saddle on his favorite horse became important to the White House and the media.
Riding a horse connotes authority and power, but curiously, the phrase "man on horseback" has another meaning. It can mean a man who would rally a nation behind him, and it usually carries the added sense that the man on horseback becomes a military dictator.
Reagan's health is a legitimate national concern, but his leadership should be judged by his policies and proposals, not by his health. There should be more public discussion of the man off horseback and less of the man on horseback.
Only such leaders must maintain an image of invulnerability. Only totalitarian states need to hide news of a leader's illness.
For some students who want or need financial aid, a new Lawrence company seems, at first glance, to supply those desired pennies from heaven.
Pennies from heaven
In this case, businesses and other organizations, most of them private, comprise heaven. And Academic Aid Resource Group, 3301 Clinton Parkway Court, will put needy or desiring students in touch with at least five groups.
For a $47 fee.
The company's computer matches student applications with possible sources of aid. According to Tom Taylor, company president, about $135 million in student financial aid goes unused each year.
Taylor said his company's services would supplement those of the University's financial aid office. If a student cannot get federal money, he could search for private funds. A need seems to exist; federal aid to student of the
University of Kansas and other universities have been cut by the Reagan Administration.
But there's one catch, as Jerry Rogers, director of financial aid, points out.
The company does not guarantee that the student will get money, only that he will be given places to look. In other words, a student could end up with a piece of computer paper and an empty book of stamps for his $47.
And this is assuming that the college student can afford to pay $47 for what could be an exercise in chasing gese; the company's product is made for relatively well-to-do young people who can't quite tap federal resources.
That is not to say the new business is illegitimate; indeed it is as honest as any. It will deliver what it promises.
For some students, that may not be enough.
Country-clubbed out
After the keys were passed out, the boxes unpacked and the introductions made, students last week found themselves with a lot of time on their hands — and little to do before classes opened Monday.
To the delight of many, this year's country club week lived up to its name by once again running a full seven days. But across the campus and city, the week proved little more than wasted time.
The University tried to promote activities to fill empty hours, including time-management workshops and Traditions Night on Aug. 20.
Traditions night at Aug. 30.
But most students sought fun elsewhere. Some even return home, where a summer
job and other commitments needed to be wrapped up before the semester began.
For students who stayed in Lawrence, the king-size country club week provided an excuse not to close the tap on the fun. And with so much time to burn, they really couldn't be blamed for doing so.
But now that the experiment is over, one conclusion seems clear: KU administrators should revive last fall's shortened week.
Three or four days next fall would give students ample time to move in, pay fees and have some fun. But the whole ceremony wouldn't drag out any longer than necessary.
A country club half-week would be plenty, thank you.
Rob Karwath
Editor
Duncan Calhoun Business manager
John Hanna Michael Totty
Managing editor Editorial editor
Lauretta McMillen
Campus editor
Susanne Shaw
General manager, news adviser
Brett McCabe Sue Johnson
Retail sales Campus sales
Megan Burke
National/Co-op sales
John Oberzan
Sales and marketing adviser
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Price of transmission includes trust
In one of their ads, the Aamco Transmissions people boast:
"11,000,000 Americans have trusted Aamco. You should too!"
I don't know if the company is including a little old widow named Ruth Quinlan among those 11,000,000 trusting customers.
If so, the number will have to be reduced to 10.999.999
There was a time when Quinlan was trusting. For two years she brought her car to Aamo for routine transmission checkup.
So this year, she again took it to an Aamco shop to be checked. The shop is in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where Quinlan now lives.
She's very fond of the shiny old car, a 1969 Chrysler, and takes good care of it. Her late husband, a Chicago labor leader, bought it new just before he died. And since it runs well, Quinlan has never seen any reason to replace it.
is that right? He said, 'Yes,' and I signed it.
At the age of 83, she can't very well crawl under a car looking for tiny leaks. So she signed the paper. Ah, trust.
That afternoon, she got a phone call from the mechanic.
"He said, 'I have some very sad news. This has to be rebuilt.' He talked about the converter, the
Mike Royko Chicago Tribune
pump," Quinian said. "I don't know what all else. I don't know very much about transmissions.
"I said, 'What's the cost?' He said,
'$789.' I said, 'Oh, my goodness. I can't afford that. It was running perfectly when I brought it in.' He said, 'You didn't know it, but there was a leak. I had to take it apart before I found all those problems.'
"I told him to put it back together and forget about repairing it and I'd come and get it. He said, 'I've got it'
half done already. It'll be ready tomorrow. You owe $828 including tax."
Qinlan called the service manager at a Chrysler agency that had worked on her car.
"He told me that it shouldn't cost me any more that $435 to have that car."
Quinlan called the Aamco mechanic and told him what the Chrysler service manager had said about the price being outrageous.
"My, he said some nasty things to me," she said. "But he said they would drop the price to $640, but they wouldn't give me a lifetime guarantee."
Again she refused to pay. "I've never refused to pay for anything I've had done on my car in my entire life. But this was wrong. So I called their national office in Pennsylvania. But that didn't do any good," she said. "The people at the national office said they believed the mechanic when he said I told him to do the work."
"So I was stuck without a car. I couldn't even go do my food shopping. And they wouldn't give me my
car unless I paid. And they said they were going to start charging me $15 a day for storage. So, I finally gave up and I'd pay them.
After hearing Quinlan's story, I called the manager of the Aarmeshop, which is on State Road in Fort Lauderdale, and asked if he would give his side of it.
He said, "I can't collaborate anything. And if you want to interview me, fly down here. Yeah, get on a plane and fly down here and I'll talk to you. Have a nice day. G'by."
And a spokesperson at Aamco's national headquarters in Philadelphia, Pa., said that they were satisfied that Quinnian had indeed, after 85 years in repairs be done on an 15-year-old car that isn't worth half that price.
There's another piece of Aarmo advertising. A TV commercial. In it a bridegroom's car breaks down and he's late for the wedding. But the Aarmo manager phones the bride and tells her not to worry.
How helpful of him. But I wonder if the sappy groom walks out of there with even the price of a motel room.
Lie detectors also lie to governments
Lie detectors lie, Reps. Stewart McKinney, R-Conn., and Pat Williams, D-Mont., believe.
So strongly do they believe that polygraph tests are unreliable as well as unconstitutional invasions of privacy that they have filed bills banning private industry from using lie detectors to screen potential employees or uncover dishonest workers.
Curiously, though, their bills do not outlaw polygraph use by government.
You don't have to be a hardened cynic to wonder how McKinney and Williams can view die detector tests as unreliable or unconstitutional invasions of privacy when conducted by private industry but acceptable, valuable tools in the hands of government investigators or personnel officers.
Asked how he can justify exempting government when he says that the polygraph machine cannot detect lies, that it is inaccurate, unreliable and intrusive and should be eliminated entirely from the work place, McKinney had a simple reply.
"There's no way that if government wasn't exempted that the bill would pass."
He said that as a result of recent spy scandals, there was a fear in the Congress of spying and traitors within defense and intelligence organizations.
So any offer to deny the Pentagon and the CIA the use of polygraph tests — which those and other government agencies increasingly require of their employees — would be viewed as making it tougher to keep military secrets or crack down on spies.
But if polygraphs are unreliable in detecting whether private industry employees are stealing or lying, they are just as unreliable in determining whether a citizen charged with a
Bud Newman
crime or a government employee suspected of leaking classified information is living.
The courts certainly know that. Polychogram test results are inadmissable as trial evidence because those being tested can manipulate the outcome through drugs or other means.
Williams and McKinney have justifiable and well-documented concerns that too many private employers are abusing employee rights by illegally inquiring during
polygraph tests about workers' personal or sexual habits or their political, religious or union beliefs
It is illogical to assume that government employees are any less likely to be abused by irrelevant personal questions.
Lie detectors either work or they don't. If they only work some of the time, that is not good enough in our legal system, because people who fail have their employment records marred for life, even if they are innocent.
If Congress thinks polygraphs are unreliable and votes to ban them in the workplace, that ban should include government offices and police stations. To do anything else would set up a hypocritical and unacceptable double standard.
Bud Newman is a correspondent for United Press International.
Low-power TV 30 pulls slick MTV's plug
Consider this a commercial for TV 30.
You know, that 24-hour UHF station right here in Lawrence that broadcasts music videos, local news and sports programs. The one with the ads for the KU bookstores to Steppwellen "Born to be Wild" as
Julie Comine Staff columnist
Staff columnist
background music, and the station identifications that look like tie-dyed T-shirts.
Oh. You watch that other music television channel. The one with the endless Hucy Lewis and Phil Collins videos.
Well, next time you're sitting spellbound in front of your MTV, take a closer look: The curly blonde commentary of Nina Blackwood sounds about as profoud as the
words to a Bryan Adams song; peppy little Martha Quinn seems to know more about rock fashion than rock music; and these sneak preview videos rarely come as any surprise.
MTV adheres so strictly to its "Top 20 Video Countdown" play list that you can set your watch by when that new Tina Turner video will return to the screen. (Hint: It's just offer the movie.) But it also offers "The Theme from St. Elmo's Fire" and inevitably followed by an old Journey video.)
So ignore that Dire Straits tune.
After a few hours of watking TV 30,
he had to go back.
Ah, it sounds fun on watching TV 30,
you won't want your MTV anymore.
TV 30 is live. It's fun. And best of all,
it offers a variety of music, much of which you'll never see on MTV:
country videos daily from 6 to 7 a.m., a weekly reggae show; black artists such as the Fat Boys, Rick James and Kashif and plenty of pop by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cabaret Voltaire, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, the Parachute Club and the Pilipinas.
The station does have what it calls a "heavy rotation" for current chart-toppers, but never plays a video more than three times a day. So relax, girls, you can still see Wham! on TV 30, but not to the point of nausea.
And here's more good news: No heavy metal.
However, the station does play a lot of that wimpy "music for bed weteners" — by folks like Dan Fogelberg, Julio Iglesias and Billy Ocean — in the morning and early afternoon. Why? Because TV 30 aims for viewers 18 to 35 years old, not just the keen market, says TV 30 video disc jockey Tienne Terrel. And during the mornings, that means housewives.
Ever try calling MTV?
After midnight, though, the station gets crazy with the Nocturnal Bazaari show. The show's hyperactive host, Mike Chitwood, takes requests until 6 a.m.
When TV-30 went on the air in January, it suffered from a sort of identity crisis. It's not a student-run operation, like campus radio station KJHK-FM; only its news broadcasts are produced by journalism students. In fact, the station is owned by Low Power Technology Inc. in Austin, Texas.
This month, the station began an all-out video assault to attract viewers on and off campus. They've stuffed TV 30 filers in your bookstore bags; they've started the TV 30 Club, where members are eligible to win T-shirts, posters, pizzas and other prizes; and red circular bumpersickers promoting the station — known as TV 30 "hot spots" — are beginning to crop up everywhere.
So, has TV 30 already succumbed to that slack, video commercialism made so famous by MTV? Let's hope not. As long as it keeps the T-shirt giveaways and the Huey Lewis videos to a minimum, we'll be OK