4
Wednesday, November 5, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The voice of democracy
One of the dirtiest, hardest-fought campaign seasons ever came to a close last night and a new U.S. political face emerged from the mud.
And Kansans decided to celebrate with a drink.
An exciting and tension-filled off-year election drew voters into the cold and rain to cast their votes. But, it was an unfortunate day for the Democrats as they were swept in the top state races.
Kansas governor-elect Mike Hayden made a dramatic surge late in the evening and overtook Democrat Tom Docking, who had been sitting on a tenuous lead most of the night. Attorney General Bob Stephan succeeded in his attempt for an unprecedented third term in an election many doubted he could win.
Our new state leaders face
large and difficult problems. We need new industries and jobs, not just promises. The campaign was the easy part, now it's time to follow up. It will be an easier task though, since the overwhelming ratification of the "sin amendments" will drop millions into state coffers.
The Republicans may have come away ahead in Kansas, but in Washington, the GOP must return to its minority status in Congress. For the first time since 1980, the Reagan mandate has faded and, finally, the president's policies will receive scrutiny on the Senate floor instead of tacit approval.
In the end, we have all come out ahead. The democratic process was tested and it prevailed.
A faulty interpretation
Never mind that it is difficult to take seriously the opinions of people who think their children's minds will be polluted if they read "The Wizard of Oz" or Shakespeare's "Macbeth." The implications of a ruling issued recently by a U.S. district judge in Tennessee, allowing parents to demand school books that don't offend their strict religious beliefs, could be seriously detrimental to public education in this country.
The judge ruled that schools in Hawkins County, Tenn., had violated the rights of fundamentalist Christian students by not excusing them from reading assignments they found objectionable. The fundamentalist parents claimed that the assigned readings advocated feminism, the occult, magic, pacifism, evolution, unified world government, eastern religions and secular humanism.
The outcome of the case is bad from a practical standpoint and is based on a faulty
interpretation of the Constitution. If the ruling is applied consistently to children of all faiths, it will lead to chaos. Each child would have the right to his or her own textbooks. Classrooms would need revolving doors, with each pupil selecting which lessons were acceptable.
The parents contended that the textbooks contained secular humanist ideas and therefore violated the First Amendment, which bars the state from establishing any particular religious doctrine. But secular humanism, a nebulous concept at best, is by definition not a religion. What the parents in fact were saying was that the books were religiously neutral — which is exactly what they ought to be.
The ruling reveals a shockingly unenlightened view of education. It gives encouragement to those who want only to be exposed to ideas that fit within the narrow parameters of their closed-minded world view. Schools should challenge children's intellects, not foster belief based on ignorance.
Opinions
Chink in the armor
Every now and then, life does imitate art.
The students of Purdy, Mo., pop. 1,000, are not snickering.
In the movie "Footloose," a group of high school students went up against the town council to protest a local ban on dancing. Several in the audience snickered at the seemingly absurd premise of the plot,
The students and their parents in that town want to have a prom, the earnings from which will go to Students Against Drunk Driving. Standing in their way is the school board, which says bans on school dances are tradition in Purdy, and religious groups that believe dancing promotes alcohol and drug abuse, and illicit sex.
One letter to the editor of the local newspaper called those who favored the dance "Godhating Communists." The outraged resident even went so far as to say that, because the
Baptists outnumbered all other religious groups, in Purdy the church was also the state.
If a town of 1,000 can forbid a harmless social custom such as a high school dance, it provides a chink in the armor of the First Amendment.
Whether or not the students will get their dance may be of little concern to anyone outside Purdy. It should serve, however, as a reminder to everyone that not all First Amendment battles are fought by newspapers, magazines and network television. Purdy's county prosecutor has agreed to handle the case for the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing that the school board's ban essentially promotes one group's religious views over another's.
The First Amendment must be defended constantly if we are to have access to the books we want to read, the music we want to listen to, and the news we need to hear.
The pain and frustration of tradition
Preserving a tradition that goes back to 1918, the Boston Red Sox once again managed to snatch defeat from victory. It isn't getting any gasser.
This year it looked almost impossible. But the Bosox did it, though it took seven games and some of the most improbable sequences this side of a Dickens novel. At the end, though some thought the end would never happen, the series caught intact: The Red Sox now have not won a World Series in 68 years.
It was a razor-close shave this year, and an immense relief to anyone with a sense of tragedy or nobility — which often go together in baseball and other classics. As one Red Sox fan pointed out, "They haven't won since 1960" just doesn't have the cachet of "They haven't won since 1918."
If the Mets are the team of the future, in those gaudy multi-colored and pin-striped uniforms, then the past, as simple and dignified as the gray uniform of the visiting team, never looked so good.
Defeat has consolations that victory can never know. Would the Southern character be the same without the Lost Cause? Would King Lear be a more satisfying play with a happy ending? Would this be a better
Paul Greenberg
Columnist
country if the new Coke had proved a success and the classic old formula discarded? Would it have been an elevating sight to see champagne poured over John McNamara's gray hair and gray visage?
Victory in the modern world, it has been understood in Boston at least since Henry Adams, is undignified. It does not offer the solitude that the development of character requires. Everybody loves a winner; a loser gets to meditate in peace and quiet.
Red Sox fans will begin anticipating spring training any day now, recollecting almost with relish not the home runs but the time the Sox had men in scoring position with none out yet resisted all temptation, or that wondrous sixth game when they were within one out of victory
No more than they would deign to steal bases, a form of petty larceny better left to the likes of the Mets. Baseball, like spring, is a thing not only of anticipation but of memory
with nobody on, but would not stoop,
or catch, to conquer.
If baseball were not so American it would surely be Greek. Is there any clearer warning against hubris? Aeschylus would have been right at home in the press box and Aristophanes couldn't have found better material than the worldly, up-to-date Met
"Baseball is Greek," Jacques Barzun once said, because it is "national, heroic, and broken up in the rivalries of city-states." And each of those politics, one might add, has its own unique feature, style and outfield.
The Red Sox and the old Brooklyn Dodgers bear a poignant gallantry in defeat, but what was comic about the Dodgers is tragic in the Red Sox. It's the difference between Babe Herman and Bruce Hurst, Leo Durocher and John McNamara, Ebbets Field and Fenway Park.
Cornelius Vermute, curator of classical art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, put Fenway Park in proper historical perspective when he called it "the Masada of sports."
David Margolick captured the chronic anxiety of the Red Sox afficionado when he wrote that nothing less than a five-run lead could ever ease his anxiety when watching the Sox play — "only because Sox relievers haven't figured out a way to yield a six-run homer."
Anyone with courage to follow the Red Sox knows that baseball, whatever its illusions, is not afflicted with the illusion called finality. There is always another game, another season.
In baseball there is a grand acceptance of fate. Red Sox fans, like many a veteran of middle age looking back on youth, can testify that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Those who follow outfits like the Cubs and the Red Sox have a loyalty that goes beyond the box scores and into acceptance and eternal anticipation. Some in this world wait fitfully for Godot; the luckier wait for another DiMaggio.
"I like to watch college football and I can get emotional about it." Heywood Broun once wrote, "but when I want moral stimulus and confirmation for my faith in the fundamental romanticism of man, I go to see professional baseball."
Unfinished business for next Congress
The 99th Congress has been rightly praised for passing landmark bills dealing with tax reform, immigration. Superfund and illegal drugs, but other troublesome issues were not
Robert Shepard UPI Commentary
resolved and will be around to bedevil the lawmakers next year.
Among the bills not passed are ones that affect just about every American — banking reform, an ombibus housing measure, and the highway authorization bill. But there is no guarantee the 100th Congress will have any better luck trying to resolve the many conflicts involved in those measures.
In the final hours before Congress adjourned Oct. 18, various banking bills were up for negotiation between
Items within the banking legislation include better supervision of banks and savings and loans. The legislation would allow banks to enter new markets, limit bank holds on checks and require clear and uniform disclosure of interest rates and conditions on savings and on credit cards.
the House and Senate. The chairman of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee. Rep. Fernand St Germain, D-R.I., accused the Senate of stalling, but said he hoped next year's Senate would be more responsive to the public interest!
Another bill that passed through St Germain's committee on its way to doom was a comprehensive housing measure that would have revamped federal housing programs. The measure proposed a big policy shift toward renovation of existing public housing rather than construction of new units.
Congress has not been able to
agree on a housing authorization bill since 1980. The basic programs continue under old policy and at current financing levels by virtue of the catch-all money bills passed at the end of each session. However, that does not allow action on the kinds of reforms that have been discussed in Congress for several years.
Rep. Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas, chairman of the housing subcommittee, said the failure of Congress to set a clear housing policy has created a growing crisis.
On the final day of the session, the House and Senate were close to an agreement on the highway authorization bill, but ran out of time before they could settle remaining differences.
Housing for first-time buyers is increasingly unaffordable and rental units are becoming scarce and costly. Gonzalez warned after the bill died in the Senate.
"We will try again early next
year" said Rep. James Howard, D.N.J., chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee.
As a result of the failure to pass an authorization bill for the 1987 fiscal year, money for highway programs is limited to $6.3 billion, about half the level that would have been available had the bill passed.
Another bill that received less public attention, but likely will come up next year, is the pesticide control measure that died in the final hours of the session. The measure would have reauthorized and dramatically strengthened the nation's pesticide law
A dispute over proposals to relax
its mpg limits law was one of the
biggest powers in the country.
Included was a provision that would have set a schedule for pesticide companies to test most of their products to see if they are a threat to human health, something not required under current law
News staff
News staff
Lauretta McMillen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editor
Kady McMaster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Managing editor
Tad Clarke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . News editor
David Silverman . . . . . . . . . . . Editorial editor
John Hanna . . . . . . . . . . . Campus editor
Frank Hansel . . . . . . . . . Sports editor
Jack Kelly . . . . . . . . Photo editor
Tom Eblen . . . . . . . General manager, news adviser
Business staff
David Nixon . . . . . . . Business manager
Gregory Kaul . . . . Retail sales manager
Denise Stephens . . . . Campus sales manager
Sally Depew . . . . . . . Classified manager
Jake Weimann . . . . Product manager
Duncan Calhoun . National sales manager
Beverly Kastens . . Traffic manager
Letters should be typeed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words and should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position.
Guest shots should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The
The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters and guest photos. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansson newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Fint Hall.
The University Daily Kansan (USPS 650-640) is published at the University of Kansas; 118 Stuffer-Finn Hall, Lawen, Kan. 66045, daily during the regular school year, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods, and on Wednesday during the summer session. Second-class postage paid at Kansas City Post Office and $25 at Douglas County and $18 for six months and $35 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 and are paid through the student activity fee.
writer will be photographed. The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters and guest shots. They can
POSTMASTER Send address changes to the University Daily Kansan, 118 Staufer-Fint Hall, Lawrence, Kan. 60405
They may be soliciting pledges for the Great American Smokeout, scheduled for Nov 20.
When high school students ban cigarettes they aren't necessarily about to sneak a few puffs.
Dick West
November is the time to light up for life
High school students in Westchester County, N.Y., will receive credit for each pack containing up to 30 capsules of liquiditons to a bottle in Robbies Ferr.
UPI Commentary
I'm told the first "Positive Burnout" is limited to high schoolers in that area, but you know how teenagers are. Highly imitative.
The burnout, I predict, will be duplicated at other schools and the first thing you know none of the teachers in your class using breaks to visit smoking areas.
Instead, they'll be shoot baskets or whatever young people do these
days to kill time when they aren't smoking.
A publicist says the Nov. 15 burning of the cigarette packs will be held at Mercy College to kick off this year's Smokeout.
Speaking of kicking off, what will a group of George Mason University students in nearby Fairfax, Va., be sitting Saturday afternoon?
Not watching football, I can tell you. According to a news release prepared by the Muscular Dystrophy Association, they will be participating in the first annual Midium Sit* to raise money for MDA.
The students, it was explained, will move from seat to seat in order to sit in as many as possible during a three-hour period on Nov. 8.
They will seek pledges from contributors every time they change their position.
"It's great that the students of George Mason will be using their strong leg muscles to help those with crippling muscle diseases," he said.
But maybe that's the way young scholars of the future will be spending their time giving up smoking and staging stadium sits.
But maybe that's the way young
Yes, and it might also be pointed out that more than strong leg muscles will be involved in the stadium sit.
It also might be pointed out that students don't have to seek MDA pledges every time they leave their seats. Going after hotdogs, as I discovered the last time I attended a college football game, will do it.
scholars of the future will be spending their time — giving up smoking and staging stadium sits. It makes one wonder what else they might be willing to do for charity.
Would they, for instance, swallow goldfish to help the handcapped? Or try to set a new world's record for the number of human bodies crammed into a single telephone booth?
I don't know what the current records are in those two fields of endeavor. Neither is recognized in my edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.
Guinness includes the marks for gold panning, flute playing, kissing, knitting, kite flying and Conga dancing among the several dozen feats it lists. But on goldfish swallowing and phone booth packing, the book is strangely silent.
Does this mean scholars of today no longer swallow goldfish or pack themselves into phone booths?
Charity is bound to suffer, even if Congress repeals the new tax reform legislation.