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Wednesday, October 8. 1986 / University Daily Kansan
Concert on shaky ground
Once again a campus concert to benefit Vietnam veterans stands on shaky - maybe crumbling - ground.
The Student Senate Finance Committee last week killed a bill asking the Senate to make a $45,301 no-interest loan to Youth for Vietnam Veterans, a student group that is trying to sponsor the concert.
But the treasurer of the group says the concert is still scheduled for Nov. 11 at Allen Field House. And, for now, he is still saying that George Thorogood and the Destroyers and two other bands will perform.
In fact, Youth for Vietnam Veterans has been trying to get this benefit concert off the ground for about a year. Twice before the concert has been scheduled, and twice before it has been canceled.
But without the working capital, it will be hard to pull off such an extravaganza. The group members should know. They've tried before.
In the meantime, organizers have spent a lot of time and money to learn a tough lesson about trying to be an amateur promoter in the hardball entertainment industry.
But this time around, it looked as if the concert might really happen. A large talent had given enough confirmation so that his name could be released, and the benefit group had latched onto a successful promoter.
Armed with hundreds of letters of support from everyone from President Reagan to veterans and their families, the group decided to try once more.
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All they need, group members say, is a chance.
They say that there will be no problem filling Allen Field House and that the loan will be paid back in full.
Without a doubt, it would be risky and unprecedented for the Student Senate to approve the loan. If the concert fails,
the Senators will be called foolish. Will if it succeeds, they will be heralded as brave and innovative.
But the benefit group also could have helped in the process by making a few minor adjustments.
First, Nov. 11 is Veterans Day, which makes a nice symbolic tie. But it also makes for much higher operating costs because any classified employees, including security, would have to be paid holiday rates.
Second, the biggest griep of the Finance Committee seemed to be that the group members at the meeting could not release the names of the other two bands who they say will perform at the concert. That makes sense, as responsible senators should be interested in where their money is going.
the benefit group should either have gotten confirmation from the bands before they had to defend their bill or found a way to do a little lobbying prior to the meeting. Maybe they weren't ready to release the names to the public, but the committee members necessarily felt a need to be informed.
Organizers say they have learned a lot in the last year as they have struggled to try to get their dream concert to become a reality. But what it all boils down to is that, once again, an attempt to bring a big-name concert to Lawrence has been, at the very least, slowed down considerably.
Even that summation disregards the real issue here. Coming to the aid of Vietnam veterans is a noble and often neglected cause. This concert is a chance to bring national attention to this campus and to the serious problems facing Vietnam veterans
But somehow, a good effort for an even-better cause failed to get the support of the students who govern us.
Every little bit helps
Because federal funding to the United Way was cut this year, the organization has increased this year's goal by 20 percent to $600,000. Last year's goal of $500,000 was met.
Jeanne Doering, secretary-bookkeeper for the Lawrence chapter of the United Way, said local businesses and KU faculty members have been contacted, and so far, the response from the faculty has been good. Faculty and
All money collected will go to 22 local agencies, including such groups as Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Ballard Community Center, Douglas County Rape Victim Support, Hospice Care, Douglas County Legal Aid Society, Consumer Affairs, Douglas County Association for Retarded Citizens and Douglas County Child Development Association. Donors can designate all or part of their pledge to go to a certain agency.
businesses contributed most of the amount raised last year.
Apparently, there never has been an attempt to launch a student drive. Most KU students aren't permanent residents of Lawrence, and those who are usually have parents who give to the fund, Doering said. Another reason is the problem of reaching 28,000 individual students, and the assumption that students don't have much disposable income.
For nine months of the year, Lawrence is home to KU students, long enough for them to become a part of the community, and, it is hoped, long enough for them to care about what happens here. Students don't have to be independently wealthy to make a difference; even setting aside the week's pizza and beer money can help a lot of worthwhile organizations.
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News staff
Lauretta McMillen ... Editor
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Tad Clarke ... News editor
David Silverman ... Editorial editor
John Hanna ... Campus editor
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Jack Kelly ... Photo editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
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Sull Dewey ... Classified manager
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Media.accuracy split on Vietnam
I get a lot of junk mail. But one piece of mail caught my eye.
It seems that Walter Cronkite, a former CBS news anchor, is selling his version of the war in Vietnam on videocassette.
Great. Just what we need — "The Vietnam War According to Uncle Walter."
Cronkite did a poor job of reporting what went on during the Vietnam War. What makes him think he can do a better job now?
The first videocassette Cronkite is offering is on the Tet Offensive in 1968
By coincidence, another group also has a documentary out on the Tet offensive, but the focus is quite different.
Accuracy In Media, a media watchdog group, produced a documentary called "Vietnam: The Impact of the Media." The documentary focuses on the reporting of the Tet Offensive, especially television, and how the media portrayed Tet as a victory for the communists, when in fact the communists suffered a terrible defeat.
AIM has tried repeatedly to get PBS to show the documentary, but PBS steadfastly refuses. This is not surprising, PBS has a history of showing left-wing "documentaries." In 1983, PBS aired a 13-part series called "Vietnam: A Television History."
Last year, PBS did air a one-hour rebuttal by AIM with a documentary called "Television's Vietnam: The Real Story." But PBS refuses to show the second documentary.
A former professor of psychology at Suffolk County Community College in Long Island, N.Y., Leonard Magruder, has been working for more than six years with Vietnam veterans organizations. He's also spending thousands of dollars to get the AIM documentary shown.
America will learn the truth.
Victor Goodpasture
However, there is hope that
Columnist
Since PBS refuses to broadcast it, Magruder has gone to individual PBS stations. He says that so far, 140 out of the 230 PBS stations have or are in the process of showing the documentary.
President Reagan wrote a letter to Charlton Heston, the narrator of the documentary, saying the documentary was "just great and is something all Americans should see — but then we know T.V. will never help them see it."
So what's this got to do with Cronkite?
Cronkite and the rest of his media brethren told the American people that the Americans and the South Vietnamese had lost the Tet Offensive.
Consider this - American losses during Tet were around 1,200. South Vietnamese around 3,500; but Viet Cong (communist) losses were around 45,000.
In fact, the defeat was so devastating that the Viet Cong never played a major role in the war. After Tei 68, Americans fought North Vietnamese regulars.
Cronkite called the battle a "stalemate" and urged the United States to get out of Vietnam. With such a prestigious news reporter making such statements, it's no wonder that others followed suit.
While the media reported the "defeat" of U.S. troops, intelligence reports told the opposite. Unfortunately, President Johnson's advisers either ignored or failed to read the reports. Instead, they concentrated on what the media were saying. Johnson was getting the wrong information.
Remember the photo of the Viet Cong prisoner getting shot in the head on a Saigon street? The media didn't report the whole story. In fact, the NBC camera man filming the incident didn't have his sound turned on, so when the film reached New York, journalists used a sound effects record to get the sound of the gunshot — to heighten the drama.
This is how the media treated Vietnam - as the ultimate melodia. The photo had a tremendous impact on public opinion of the war.
Everyone has heard of the My Lai massacre, where American soldiers killed 300 civilians. But how about the Hue massacre? There, the communists murdered 3,000 civilians, but it was never reported on network television. How's that for accuracy and fairness. Walter?
the documentary goes through point after point of massive errors and biases on the part of the media,
especially television. The documentary draws several lessons of television's role in Vietnam and in future wars.
For example, it points out that Americans are dangerously dependent on picture stories for their understanding of foreign affairs. This can mislead people because television is focused more often on the dramatic images rather than the representative ones.
It also notes that reporters need more background in the culture, history and ideology of the country they cover.
Since any of the United State's future wars will be "television wars," it's very important that the media understand its importance in reporting accurately and not just go after "images."
The documentary ought to be shown to all journalism students at the University of Kansas and then discussed. How many journalism professors would be willing to show the documentary to their students?
The documentary was shown on campus last semester and on Lawrence cable television. By having these types of showings it is hoped that the media will 'less up to their biased reporting of the war.' It is this type of reporting that changed U.S. attitudes toward the war and eventually led to a communist victory in South Vietnam.
No Walter, I don't want your videocassettes. I don't want to hear your simplistic journalistic answers to a complex war.
The media did a disservice to the American soldier and the American people — and that's the way it is.
Shadow has fallen on City of Lights
the last time I saw Paris, her heart was old and afraid.
The pictures on the television screen were anything but full of sang-froid. Wounded men and women lay on the littered sidewalk of the Rue de Rennes waiting for the ambulances to take them away. Others would need hearses. Some victims were too
Paul Greenberg
Columna1
oady hurt to be moved and had to be treated on the spot.
The Place du 18 Juin was being used as a landing pad for helicopters to move the wounded. "I saw people dying," a man told a reporter. "It was a horrible sight." another witness was saying. "There were a lot of women and children. There was blood all over." A cab driver in the snarled traffic could only shake his head. "My God," he said. "It looked like Beirut. Beirut on the Seine."
nags are checked at Le Drugsstore, which used to be the place to go. A salesgris is heard sighing, "I want to go home. Nothing is safe anymore."
The explosion came at 5:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, when schools are closed and mothers tend to take the kids along while shopping. It was as if the terrorists had chosen the time and place — right outside Tati's Department Store — to do the most damage to the most innocent. The department store is on one of the city's busiest throughfares not far from Montpassasse rail station
The politicians are issuing their usual statements. The president of the Republic, on a state visit to Indonesia when the Rue de Rennes was turned into a channel house, says terrorism must be fought "without mercy," and warns that if it isn't, "that would be an intolerable dereliction of duty by those who are in charge of security." As if the politicians weren't.
terrorist groups. It is possible that these groups got into the habit of expecting France to cede, and, if it did not cede, that it would do so in the face of pressure." That is more than possible; it is highly probable. Terrorists seek out governments with the least resistance the way bulldies seek weaklings.
To quote one French official whose words are much too accurate to let his name be used: "It is true that in the 1970s successive governments tried to extract France from difficulties by making concessions from
in a district crowned with terror. The purpose of terrorism is, after all, to terrorize
In Paris, the terrorists may be succeeding. The blast was the fifth in 10 days, and at last count the toll stood at eight dead, 170 wounded, and maybe the spirit of a city. People aren't going to cinemas on the Champs Elysees any more; they're avoiding Metro stations and cafes — the scenes of earlier bombings. All
The resurgent right in France seems to understand the danger. And by now there has been enough blood-shed so that even the left is beginning to catch on. After the last attack, Liberation, a left-wing daily, asked: "If all the bomber networks and hostage-takers attack us so fiercely, isn't it because all governments since the 1970s negotiated . . . with terrorists and those who manipulated them?"
France's leaders thought they could buy peace by tolerating a little terrorism against others. Now Beirut has spread to the Seine. Did anyone think it wouldn't? The world is smaller than ever and fires spread faster. Yet at least since 1938, the French have had trouble recognizing the sheer, unappeasable rapacity of evil in this century.
An old lesson is being taught almost daily on the streets of Paris, as it was taught of late in a synagogue in Istanbul and an airport in Karachi. Between those who seek only to live and let others live, and those who would either force others into their own vision of the world or destroy it, there is no bargaining. It is a hard lesson, and it is increasingly hard to ignore. Anywhere.
Lawmakers take heed
This admitted leadfoot just doesn't drive 55
They finally got me. After 12 years of blatantly exceeding the national 55 miles an hour limit on highways between Chicago and New York, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and dozens of other destinations, I was slapped with a speeding ticket by a trooper in Kentucky.
Mike Royko
Chicago
Tribune
Although it cost me a few dollars, I accepted it cheerfully. That's because my heavy right foot has saved me countless hours of traveling time, thus letting me avoid dozens of nights in drab motels and potentially fatal meals in roadside diners.
When the trooper pulled me over, I was doing 68. Upon reading that, some biddy is going to cluck: "You terrible man, menacing the life and limb of the innocent. You should have been thrown in jail."
Nonsense. It was a clear day and the wide, straight interstate pavement was dry and almost devoid of traffic. My tires are almost new, my
car had just been tuned, and I was wide awake.
When those are the conditions, I always do 60 to 70. So do the majority of drivers on the rural interstates.
And in all the thousands of miles I've driven, this was the first time I was ever stopped.
it wasn't luck. Nor do I own a radar-detector or even a CB radio, both of which can alert you to a lurking cop.
I get away with it because 1) I make sure that somebody else is going a little faster, so that if anybody is nailed, it will be him, and 2) in most of the United States, the cops aren't enforcing the 55 limit.
The only people who don't ignore it are the bureaucrats and congressmen in Washington who still insist that it remain the law.
Depending on the state, you can do a steady 65 and not worry about a ticket. I've driven across Georgia at a steady 70, with cars passing me, and haven't seen anybody pulled over.
over. So what happened in this country since the 55 limit was imposed is that the vast majority of drivers have decided that the limit is stupid, and they ignore it. So have local authorities.
Most of them, I'm sure, travel by air. If they didn't, they'd know that just about the only people who creep along at 55 are guys from Indiana wearing farm implement caps and driving RVs. Or an occasional cop who wants to see how big a traffic jam he can cause.
Please, don't send me any statistics on how many lives the 55 limit has saved. I don't believe them.
For every study showing that lives have been saved by lower speeds, there are studies that say the increased use of seat belts might be the biggest reason for the lower highway death rate. Or the national crackdown on boozy drivers. Or modern tires that don't blow out.
On a rural interstate, though, holding to the limit is comparable to taking a slow walk on a jogging track.
I'm not talking about driving that fast in cities. In any metropolitan area, 55 is probably too much.
But most people on interstates are doing 60 to 75 because they know that it's a reasonable and safe speed.
Since then, even the big gas
most people forget that the 55 limit was born in 1974, during the OPEC-inspired oil shortage, with the goal of saying fuel.
guzzlers like mine have become economical The car I drive today gives me 22 miles a gallon on the highway. In 1974, it would have been half that. So fuel economy is no longer a valid excuse.
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The U.S. Senate recently approved a proposed law that would let states decide if they want to raise the limit on rural interstates to 65.
The law makes sense, especially in the Western states, where you can drive all day without seeing more than a few dozen other cars.
One of the loudest opponents of this proposal was Sen. William Proxmire of Wisconsin, who wailed about all the lives that would be lost.
This from a guy who represents a state that only recently, and very grudgingly, stopped allowing the sale of booze to 19-year-olds.
Now the new limit is being kicked around the U.S. House, where there is considerable opposition. I don't know why, considering the number of congressmen who are pinched each year for drunk driving.
Instead of insisting that we keep the 55 speed limit, they should pass a law prohibiting congressmen from ever sitting in the front seat, and we'd all be safer.
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