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Friday, August 28, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Fear and loathing seem to go hand in hand, even when what is feared is a family of three small boys.
Threat of hysteria
The Florida AIDS case concerning Randy, Robert and Ricky Ray (8, 9, and 10 years old), has captured national attention. They were banned from school last year and have recently been reinstated by a federal court.
The boys in Florida are carriers of the AIDS virus. They are not sick with the disease but are contagious. To spread the disease, they would have to have sexual contact with another person or have blood contact — open wound to open wound — for a considerable period of time.
Hysteria in the face of an international medical crisis only increases the already formidable challenge set before mankind. Ignorance is no excuse, and yet it is the reason for the fear.
The fact that the Rays are in school this fall has caused outrageous behavior on the part of their classmates' parents who fear that their own children will be exposed to the virus. The Rays have received threatening phone calls and condemnations. Before school started, a boycott rally attracted 500 people, and on the first day of school only 53 percent of the children attended.
America, expend your fearful energies by learning the truth about the threat of AIDS, rather than by threatening the victims who have contracted it.
For mankind
According to a recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court, men-only clubs are an idea whose time has passed. Unfortunately, it may be a while before this judicial guarantee of equality is translated into actual gains for women.
Since their inception, the Optimists Club, the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club and others have unfairly barred women from their ranks. In the wake of the new ruling, these groups have scrambled to rewrite their charters, but the reality of the situation lags woefully behind the promise.
stitution ages widely used. Although Lawrence area chapters have technically opened their memberships to women, neither the Optimists nor the Kiwanians who the Rotarians have a single woman member.
Since the by-laws of these organizations require nomination and sponsorship of prospective members by current members, the good ol'boy network is able to perpetuate itself without resorting to outright discrimination.
Many of the functions of these service clubs are praiseworthy, even exemplary. Nevertheless, mankind would better be served by a genuine effort to end sexually discriminatory membership practices.
The stated good intentions of clubs is not enough; the bottom line should be measured by results, not rhetoric.
Sawing off a ladder
A tax on those who are trying to gain an education would seem to be a senseless thing.
but that is what the Federal Tax Reform Act of 1986 has done. According to the act, scholarship money in excess of tuition, fees and the costs of books and supplies required for the course of study is considered taxable income.
story is common. A scholarship is a valued tool to attain an education, which is an invaluable resource. A government that taxes those trying to improve themselves has its priorities confused.
"Supplies" required for study could mean anything from a pack of pensels to a candy bar for a study break.
pack of pennants to a student Scholarships awarded before Aug. 17, 1986, are exempt from the regulation, but it is unclear whether renewable scholarships that were awarded before that date are taxable.
that were awarded to the University of Kansas and the student, should become more clear in a set of instructions from the Internal Revenue Service for reporting scholarships. This will be available in November, according to the IRS.
We hope they can explain it.
In the meantime, keep your receipts
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board
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Jennifer Benjamin...Editor
Juli Warren...Managing editor
John Benner...News editor
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Democrats can't woo feminists
Neither the bosses of organized labor nor the militant feminist leaders of the National Organization for Women are much impressed by the seven Democratic presidential campaigners. And that is good news for the Democrats.
Bv DONALD M. ROTHBERG
Associated Press
that is good. Walter Mondale campaigned hard in 1884 for endorsements by the AFL-CIO and NOW. He got the backing of both groups and handed President Reagan an issue the Democratic nominee was unable to shake.
Nothing so muddled Monday's futile presidential campaign than the allegation that he just couldn't say no to special interest groups like labor and feminists.
In their hearts, not even the most partisan Democrats expected Mondale to upset Reagan's drive toward a second term, but the 1988 campaign is another matter.
With Reagan heading into retirement, the Democrats have begun thinking they have a realistic chance of electing a president in 1988 — that is, if they can heal some of their self-inflicted wounds and do away with the "special interest" label.
AFL-CIO president Lane Kirkland huffily brushed aside Democratic chairman Paul G. Kirk's appeal to labor to delay, if not forge, its endorsement of a candidate for president. But when the labor federation's executive council met in mid-August, Kirkland had to concede defeat for his endorsement strategy.
"There is no consensus within our ranks at the local or national level," Kirkland said, and he said. "I don't expect a convention endorsement in October."
Kirkland's announcement reflected opinion surveys showing that labor's rank and file displayed little enthusiasm for any of the seven Democratic contenders.
So, the AFL-ClO freed its members to work for
Yard and Smeal said they were yet to see any presidential candidates who were going to lead the country any differently than it had been led in the last few of years. They said that they were not going to spend their substance, energy and time to elect someone who again would not pay attention to what they thought was important.
Similarly, the declaration by NOW President Molly Yard and her predecessor, Eleanor Smeal, that they were inclined to sit out the 1988 campaign should send waves of relief through much of the Democratic Party.
Analysis
candidates of their choice and become delegates in the Democratic National Convention.
Just as New Right leaders like to claim they were responsible for nominating and electing Reagan in 1980, the NOW leadership often exaggerates its electoral influence.
Lynn Cutler, a deputy chairman on the Democratic Party, says NOW volunteers bring a valuable, smart, experienced level of involvement to a campaign.
But she also reacted sharply to the suggestion that there was little difference between the Democratic contenders and the Reagan administration on matters of interest to feminists.
"It's nuts to say our guys are going to carry the same agenda as Ronald Reagan," she said.
The AFL-CIO and NOW aren't the only folks apparently unimpressed by the current Democratic field. There have been recent hints that the party's fallen front-runner, Gary Hart, thinks the same way.
While Hart vacationed in Ireland, his former campaign manager speculated about his possible return to the race. The prospect was raised by Bill Dixon, who managed the Hart campaign before it collapsed after disclosure of the former senator's relationship with Donna Rice, a Miami model.
Eleanor Smeal
Another former campaign aide swiftly relayed word from Hart that no such comeback was contemplated. Dixon insisted he still thought Hart would decide to wage a non-traditional campaign to raise issues the current contenders weren't discussing.
but the toster campaign manager went on to say he thought that if Hart got back into the fray, he would have to make a statement about his "intolerable behavior" and he "would be torn apart."
Bork's foes spout irrational rhetoric
Donald M. Rothberg is chief political writer for The Associated Press.
President Reagan, after the retirement of Justice Lewis Powell from the Supreme Court this summer, nominated the well-qualified Federal Appeals Judge Robert Bork to take Powell's seat on the bench.
Various special-interest groups such as the NAACP, NOW, ACLU and NEA now huddle to make strategy in opposition to Reagan's choice because he is considered, of all the terrible things, a conservative.
Led by none other than our friend from Massachusetts, Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People leader Benjamin Hooks, and presidential hopeful, as well as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), some of the ultra-liberal elements of this nation have mobilized to fight the Bork nomination.
The rhetoric has been emotional and, at times, irrational. To get an idea of what I mean, here's Kennedy's view of the nominee.
Next came Hooks, who said the confirmation of Bork "would in effect wipe out all of our civil
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would be forced to sit at segregated lunch counters, (and) rogue police would break down citizens' doors in midnight raids."
Come on, Ted, you don't really think he's that bad, do you? And you say Bork is the type of person this country should worry about?
rights) gains of the past 30 years."
If Bork is so evil, why is it that during his five years as a federal appeals court judge, the prospective justice has written more than 100 decisions and not once has the Supreme Court overturned his rulings?
Bork is a man who thinks that lawmakers, not judges, should make the laws and that judges should interpret the laws enacted by legislators and present in the Constitution. This philosophy is one that goes in a direct line with the principles of democracy where elected officials, not appointed ones, are entrusted by the people to carry out their wishes.
their wishes.
"If the judiciary really is supreme, if it is able to rule when and as it sees fit, then society is not democratic." Bork has said. He also stresses that he thinks judges are "unlected and unrepresentative" and should perform with that in mind.
in the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, the Supreme Court struck down anti-abortion laws in 40 states.
Justice Byron White said that the decision was a prime example of "raw judicial power" and that the decision was the type of judicial activism to which Bork was very much opposed.
There is little question that Bork is opposed to abortion, but his main premise is that the Supreme Court, in the case of Roe vs. Wade, should not overrule the 40 states with anti-abortion laws, just as they should not condemn the 10 states with legalized abortion.
Sen. Biden said, after the confirmation of Justice Antonin Scalia, that Bork was the type of conservative he would have no problem supporting. Biden said, "I'd have to vote for him (Bork). And if the groups (special-interest) tear me apart, that's the medicine I'll have to take." Now he has changed his tune. Bink said recently that he had "serious doubts" about Bork and made it clear he would fight the nomination.
Let's not fool ourselves. The ultra-left of this nation is getting hysterical about Reagan's nomeni simply because he is conservative and, of course, doesn't think the way they do.
To pass judgment on a prospective justice solely on the basis of his or her ideology is ridiculous because for Bork's, or any justice's opinion to become a majority, four other well-qualified and intelligent people on the high court must agree — not to mention the dangerous precedent a heated fight would set for the screening of future nominees.
A hair in the head's worth 2 in the brush
It's really great to be back in college! There's only one drawback; while most of the male students have full heads of hair, I find myself going bald. I should have been going to college back in the late 1960s. Instead, I let my hair grow and tuned in, turned on, and dropped out as the saying went.
I was the lead singer in a rock group called Silent Noise playing gigs in Hollywood. There seemed to be too much going on to sit in a classroom all day. One set we played was at a club called the Galaxy. Just two buildings down the Sunset Strip at the Whiskey, Jim Morrison and The Doors were starting to make music history.
I just knew I didn't want to be in college then. Long hair, Vietnam protests; LSD, speed — who had time for college?
None of our recordings made it into the Top 10. And 20 years later, I'm at the University of Kansas — less my hair. Somewhere along the way, nature forced me to part company with the one badge of the youth revolution of the 60s with a trick of genetic coding.
What's a guy to do? Hair pieces tend to look like a dead animal on my head, and hair transplantes have the appearance of rows of corn. The Bald is Beautiful slogan must be something that influenced Hare Krishna fashion designers, as I have yet to hear someone comment on the attractiveness of my scalp. What a dower!
Anyway, to deal with what fate has bestowed upon me, I've been forced to come up with a set of
Van
Jenerette
Guest Shot
guidelines to follow. These may be helpful to any old geezers here at KU who find themselves in a similar predicament or to some younger students in the future.
"H
'Hair pieces tend to look like a dead animal on my head; and in my opinion hair transplants have the appearance of rows of cornropout quote.'
Van Jenerette Graduate student
If your scalp is beginning to show through what is left of your hair, especially on bright sunny days, grow it long on one side and carefully cover the sparsely vegetated areas. Never turn the head quickly though, as the disguise may choose to move about on its own without regard to the
wearer's intention.
If possible, wear a hat at all times, except when taking a shower or when sleeping. Remove the hat at the last moment before turning in for the night to ensure that no light illions. All anliance can be made with darkness.
If your girlfriend or wife enjoys running her fingers through your hair, skillfully aim the part of the head with the most hair in the direction of her hand.
When in class, attempt to select a seat in the classroom where lighting is poor and the best side of the head is exposed to classroom scrutiny. Never sit in the front row in lecture halls, as the top of your head may be the object of amusement for those behind you.
Finally, laugh loudly about going bald whenever the occasion permits, even though under your breath you curse every bald-headed ancestor that lost his hair before you.
Van Jenrette is a Lawrence graduate student studying journalism.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed