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Thursday, September 25, 1986 / University Daily Kansan
Tripping over a pebble
The Daniiloff-Zakharov affair is undeniably a stickler and one that must be handled with utmost diplomatic delicacy. But it should not stand in the way of President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, sitting down for an evenhanded parley.
The tensions between the superpowers over the development of space-based missile defenses and a nuclear test ban have far-reaching implications and should not be hindered by the dual accusations of espionage. It is a frightening fact that a summit meeting between the leaders of the two most powerful nations on earth can be placed in peril by both sides' inability to come up with a mutually acceptable solution to the Daniloff and Zakharov cases.
The situation is at once childish and frustrating. It is like watching two children squabble over a loaded gun. First one child grabs it, then the other, and if someone with
a clear head does not show up soon, it goes off and one or both of them gets hurt.
The United States does not now, nor might they ever, fully trust the Soviets. Fine, the Soviets have given us little reason to trust them in the past. However, we have improved relations and must continue to do so. This cannot be accomplished until the United States and the Soviet Union stop playing dangerous games with each other and can put aside differences in order to maturely discuss those matters upon which the world's future depends.
The two nations further display their pettiness by tossing accusations at of misuse of the United Nations. Here is an organization whose ideal is to provide a forum for resolving countrys' differences. However, the United States says the Soviet delegation is riddled with spies, and the Soviets say the United States uses the organization to arbitrarily bully the members it does not like.
Imelda, if the shoe fits . . .
Maybe we shouldn't have been so hasty.
Imelda Marcos, wife of deposed Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, now claims that the 3,000 pairs of shoes found on the Marcos estate weren't all hers. In fact, most of them belonged to her relatives and members of her personal staff, she said. She was quite certain that she couldn't possibly have owned that many shoes.
Diane Sawyer, "Sixty Minutes" anchor, pointed out to Imelda in an interview shown Sunday that all the 3,000 shoes were size eight; surely her relatives and staff members didn't all have the same size feet. Imelda said her shoe size had changed recently, so the shoes couldn't all have been hers.
Okay, maybe they weren't. The Marcos regime was kind of unpopular in the Philippines; maybe someone thought that a really neat way to discredit Marcos and his wife would be to plant 3,000
shoes in Imelda's closet.
Think of it: the word would have been spread throughout the country for freedom fighters to buy size eight shoes. The poor conspirators probably didn't have time to get up-to-date reports on Imelda's shoe size, so they just guessed. (How were they to know that "Sixty Minutes" would check that closely?) The shoes would then have been smuggled into the estate, one pair at a time. Imelda, busy hosting government dinners, wouldn't even have noticed.
The well-known coat hanger theory could be applied: given a dark closet and enough room, coat hangers tend to breed and multiply. (There's another theory of teleportation/mutation where the sock that gets lost in the dryer actually teleports to the closet and becomes a coat hanger, but it's usually discredited.) Maybe Imelda's closet was especially dark and the shoes just went crazy.
Or, they could be her shoes after all.
Transport abandonment
Trailways Bus System is leaving us stranded.
The cutback won't help smaller bus companies that might pick up some of the
The company is abandoning all its routes in Colorado next year, and plans to shut down routes in hundreds of Midwestern towns. They're making the cuts, which include most routes in Kansas, because, company officials say, they have been losing money for years in the more sparsely populated states.
The cutback will strand those who depend on the bus service for its inexpensive transport and accessibility to small towns. Companies that use Trailways' delivery services will be forced to find another means of delivery.
abandoned routes, either. The withdrawal could have a domino effect, knocking off small lines that exist solely to carry passengers to and from stops served by Trailways.
All the way around, the company is leaving the Midwest high and dry, as the bus lines provide one of the few alternatives to trains and air travel.
Trailways officials say the rural Midwestern routes haven't made a profit since the Bus Regulatory Reform Act took effect in 1982. Under the act, a company cannot be forced to continue any route on which it is losing money.
So, Trailways closes its door and doesn't look back. It's another example of big business at its best.
News staff
News staff
Lauretta McMillen ... Editor
Kady McMaster ... Managing editor
Ted Clarke ... News editor
David Silverman ... Editorial editor
John Hanna ... Campus editor
Frank Hansel ... Sports editor
Jacki 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
Lisa Wermann ... Production manager
Duncan Calhoun ... National sales manager
Beverly Kastens ... Traffic manager
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Opinions
In 1970, Malcolm Muggeridge, reflecting on his experiences as a journalist in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, called it the "The Great Liberal Death Wish."
Guilt, ignorance lead to blind bias
The British journalist witnessed with great bilarity the endless procession of Western liberals who descended upon Stalin's Russia, con-
Michael E. Chapman
Columnist
vined that they had found the utopia mankind had long sought. He was a spectator to the "tragicomedy of our time" as those "intellectuals" swallowed willingly and ravenously any lie that was thrown at them by the century's greatest mass murderer.
In 1977, Jean-Francois Revel, the French essayist, called it "The Totalitarian Temptation," whereby "the faults of free societies are so magnified that freedom appears to mask an essentially totalitarian
reality, while the faults of totalitarian societies are so minimized that these societies appear to be free." This extraordinary feat has been accomplished by what he calls the "non-Communist left" in Western democracies.
I am speaking, of course, about what has become an inherent, almost innate, tendency on the part of liberal ideologues: to downplay or refuse to admit to the perpetual atrocities committed by the Soviet Union and to find fault in everything concerning the policies of the West.
In 1986, after observing the realities of communist foreign and domestic policy, one might call it "unmitigated naivete."
In essence, the Soviet Union is to be excused from accepting responsibility for any abuse of human rights. The defenders of Soviet policy maintain that "if leaders like Ronald Reagan would stop acting like fascists and increasing tensions, we could all live in peace."
As a student at KU, one need not look far to find examples of this bizarre behavior. Take, for instance, the Daniilo affair. Do we see any
demonstrations on campus against his being held hostage by the KGB in Moscow? I presume the "progressive" elements here have been too busy trying to destroy the South African economy by calling for divestment or providing moral and political support to the totalitarian regime in Nicaragua.
When it comes to outrages on the part of the Soviet Union, the left automatically lapses into a political coma. One is tempted to conclude that leftists have never heard of the Gulag Archipelago, the Berlin Wall, the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the establishment of totalitarianism in Poland in 1981 and the slaughter taking place in Afghanistan.
Actually, they are aware of these acts of barbarism but refuse to acknowledge their significance or level of brutality. Such a realistic observation would confirm the left's worst fears — that the totalitarian system practiced and exported by the Soviet Union is quite possibly the greatest scourge on human history.
specifically college students, consciously overlook, if not defend, the complete failure of communism and accentuate with vicious delight the admitted shortcomings of democracy? I am sure there are several explanations for this phenomenon, among them a latent adolescent desire to rebel against authority. Others are afflicted by the "Vietnam syndrome" which is, unfortunately, like polio and the plague, still with us.
Why is it that some people. more
But for many leftists, the foundations of their politics lie in guilt and ignorance. Guilt, because communism has never lived up to its "goals" or the expectations of its defenders, ignorance, because the clamp of silence that the Soviet Union imposes on its empire permits us to hear only about its most disgusting crimes. The rest are safely hidden behind the walls the Soviets must build to keep people from fleeing.
As Revel once acutely observed; while the left judges communism according to its intentions, it judges democracy and capitalism only by their failures.
The Mimi Herman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
Who's laughing now?
It's time people quit laughing at Ronald Reagan. He's not funny anymore.
Sure, there was a time when he was funny. For instance, the morning after he was first elected in 1800, a banner made of bedsets hung from a building at American University, in Washington. It said, "Okay, I can take a joke."
Gil Chavez
Columnist
I happened to be in Washington then, working as a congressional intern, and I remember congressmen, both Democrats and Republicans, giggling from time to time about the things Reagan said.
Of course, they didn't laugh in public. But who could blame them it, in the privacy of their own offices, they laughed at Reagan's one liners, such as the one about trees causing more air pollution than cars? Or how about the one where he said he had a plan that would cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget. Even the ordinarily humorless George Bush thought that one was funny, calling the plan "voodoo economics."
But that was before Reagan spent a day in the White House. Once he started hanging around the Oval Office, it became clear that he was serious about some of these things he'd said. That's when the "King of Comedy" began to lose his touch.
It's hard to say exactly when Reagan lost his timing — it could have been when it was revealed that his defense buildup consisted of $500 hammers and $1,700 toilet seats. Or maybe it was when he invoked the spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi and started us on a multibillion dollar search for a nuclear umbrella that would leak if, by some chance, it rained warheads.
Now, in the fifth year of his stand-up routine, Reagan has completely lost his touch. Much of it, however, isn't his fault. He mired in circumstances that are too serious for his jovial nature.
He has a hostage crisis in Lebanon; there's nothing humorous about that.
It could have been those instances, but I think it was when he put James Watt in charge of auctioning our natural resources and he set Eddin Meese to chewing on the Bill of Rights.
he would cut government spending has a budget that is running $250 billion in the red - five times what it was when he took office.
His war on drugs is a joke, but it's not funny either, because the federal government doesn't have the money to put up a decent fight. Why? Because the man who said
Reagan is still as sincere as ever; but simple-mindedness, no matter how sincere, doesn't do his act or us much good.
In a desperate attempt to make a comeback, Reagan last week pushed his nomination of William Rehnquist as chief justice through the Senate. I know he was trying hard for a laugh, but it didn't work.
Rehquist is one of Reagan's worst jokes to date. Our new guardian of the Constitution had no qualms about violating the constitutional rights of voters when he was a young lawyer in Arizona.
Of course that was 28 years ago, and people can change. But Rehnquist hasn't it. He still owns property with restrictive convenants and he still has the 19th-century view that women are subordinate to men.
The joke is that we are supposed to believe that Rehnquist will look after the Constitution, protecting our guarantees of freedom and equality
Clearly,
See what I mean? Reagan's jokes are no longer funny. The party's over.
so quit laughing at Ronald Reagan, it only encourages him to make even worse jokes. Besides, his jokes always seem to be at our expense.
Is now the time for guilt by merger?
Say a discouraging word about the campaign to make America drug-free, and you risk being branded as soft on narcotics.
Let me make it clear I have never
Dick West
UPI Commentary
abused drugs. I subscribe to the theory that if you can't make it on gin, you can't make it at all.
Drug experts tell us there's a lot of "confusion, misinformation and ignorance" among drug users. That also applies to a lot of people who try to mix dry martinis.
There once, I'm told, was an attempt at alcohol prohibition. That was when AI Capone and other Mafia gangsters got their start in America.
Will Chicago and other U.S. cities now be overrun with drug-runners? It's something to think about on a early autumn morning.
we will obtain $3 billion in benefits from the anti-drug crusade?
But does anvone seriously believe
The cheapest way would be to legalize the whole thing. Legality likewise is the only sure way of frustrating organized crime.
It's pretty hard to break the law when the law condones what youre doing.
If President Reagan and Congress really want to help citizens who have become addicted, let them finance neighborhood drug treatment centers, where addicts can go to kick the habit, not strengthen smuggling laws.
Anyway, I predict the epidemic of drug-taking will not be as durable as the epidemic of mergermania that has broken out in the economy.
In view of what has happened in the airline business and other industrial segments this year, I would not be surprised to see certain states and cities begin merger proceedings.
Although my personal memory doesn't go back that far, my reading of history convinces me that Civil War issues were the reason some
states came into being.
For example, West Virginia
The statehood movement started when the western counties of Virginia voted against withdrawing from the Union and formed a "restored" government instead. Later, they created a whole new state, originally called Kanawa. I would consider their mergers a logical extension of what's happening now.
Linking, say, North and South Dakota and Carolina might have only minimal impact on the mapping industry. But wait until Cincinnati, say, joins up with, Albaquerque.
New drug laws could hasten that day.
Suppose a city bed with pusher arrests hooked up with a city with extra jail and courtroom space. Would a merger not be more economical than building new jails and courtrooms? Or then having empty cells and idle judges.
I may be soft on narcotics, but I know a good thing when I see it.
Home tongue gets a stamp of approval
Somebody recently walked into a neighborhood post office in Chicago and said to a window clerk: "Deme un sello quarenta y cuatro centavos por favor."
Translated from Spanish, that meant: "Please give me a 44-cent stamp."
The clerk didn't understand. So the customer went to another clerk and said the same thing. Same results. A third clerk didn't understand him, either.
Mike Royko
Chicago Tribune
It turned out that this person was from a publication called the Chicago Reporter, which reports on racial and minority issues.
He was checking to see whether someone who speaks only Spanish will be understood in a Chicago post office.
Office While I have great respect for this fine publication, I think it is a little confused on this issue.
He found that most of the time, he won't be. So this experience, as well as several others, was recently described in the Chicago Reporter under a headline that said: "Quality of service poor at Hispanic Post Offices."
For one thing, they use the words "Hispanic Post Offices." That's not accurate.
While that post office is in a neighborhood with a sizable Hispanic population, it's part of the United States Postal Service, not a Hispanic Postal Service.
That's because the language commonly used in this country is English.
I'm not unsympathetic to the problems of people who don't speak the language of a country in which they choose to live or visit. But there is a simple solution: Learn the language. That's why most of the foreign-born people who came to this country were eventually able to by 44-cent stamps.
It might have sounded like "vorty vor zent shtamp," but it was close enough to get the job done.
But even without knowing the language, there's another short-term solution to the 44-cent stamp problem.
I've used it myself when I found myself not being understood in France, Italy and a few other countries I've visited.
I don't know how to say "44-cent stamp" in French or Italian. But if I wanted such a stamp, all I have to do is look in one of those pocket-sized language dictionaries that are widely available.
It never occurred to me to be offended because the people in those countries didn't speak English, even though millions of Americans travel there every year as tourists, or on business or to fight wars
business of the
All of which reminds me of the old story of the Greek immigrant who couldn't speak English.
His first day here, he went into a diner and heard someone say "apple pie and coffee." So he said, "appa pie and coffee." For days, all he ate was apple pie and coffee.
Finally another Greek told him how to say "ham sandwich."
He eagerly went to a diner and said, "Ham samwich."
The waitress asked, "White or
rye?" and he repeated, "Ham.
13. Confused, he repeated, "Ham samwich."
samwich." She barked, "White or rye?"
He sighed and said, "Apps pie and coffee,"
See? If he'd had one of those little translation books, he could have had the ham on whole wheat with mustard and a slice of onion.
As well as a 44-cent stamp