4A
Tuesday, October 11, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
EDITORIAL EDITOR
An emergency lesson: Life's hard for everyone
DONELLA HEARNE
Four hours in a hospital emergency room can make anyone's problems seem unimportant
seem unimportant.
I have problems. Sometimes I think I have big problems.
There are even times I think that there is not a soul on this planet with problems as big as mine.
But a couple of weeks ago reality gave me a kick in the butt. And it all happened in four hours in the emergency room.
I was waiting tables — the least stressful of the three jobs I hold—when I felt a twinge in my side. Within an hour that twinge became a stabbing pain. A half-hour after that I could not breathe and tears rolled down my face. One of my co-workers suggested that the pain might be due to appendicitis, and we decided that I should head to the hospital.
As I rested in my drafty hospital
gown, I could have sworn I was going to die under a knife. To take my morbid mind off the pain, I began observing what was happening around me.
leavesdropped.
The man next to me had experienced pains in his chest. He had been on a hunger strike to protest a greeting card that insulted his culture and religion.
A small girl had gone into convulsions after running a high fever all day. They were bringing her in.
I got up to use the restroom.
The pain lessened. Then an ambulance called.
I returned to my bed after an injured man in another bed told me, "You look pretty cute in your little dress."
In the curtained cubicle next to the restroom, a father watched over his son sleeping fittily. The father's face was full of agony and worry.
Another call from an ambulance.
A young man had been at a party where he was pushed into a pool. His ankle was fractured and dislocated.
And before the man from the party was brought in, another woman arrived.
A mule had kicked her in the stomach.
My pain moved from my abdomen to my foot.
The pain returned to my abdomen.
Then the doctor came again.
After a nurse took blood and urine samples, the young man from the party arrived. He moaned, yelled obscenities and asked for something
The father continued to watch over his sleeping son.
to ease the pain. He was given morpheine
I went to the restroom again.
I called a friend for a ride.
I went back to my bed, and when it was all said and done, there did not seem to be anything wrong with me.
"I would guess it's the onset of a bad flu," the gentle doctor said. "Take it easy for a while and go to Watkins on Tuesday."
Before I left my bed, the protester had been told he would be fine. But the doctor also told him that hunger strikes are hard on the body.
As I waited for my friend, the small girl and her mother sat waiting for someone to get their call and take
them home. I offered them a ride.
It seems the girl had the flu. She would be out of preschool for a while. The father still sat with his son.
The woman with the mule kick was X-rayed, diagnosed with a cracked rib and released.
The man from the party was beginning to rest, but he was still in pain. An orthopedic surgeon had left his bed at 1:00 a.m. to come to the hospital and survey the damage.
My friend and I dropped off the sick girl and her mother. Then we went to get juice and a thermometer.
The pain in my side was nearly gone. I was pretty certain I would live.
VIEWPOINT
Lack of cameras, reporters aids Simpson jury selection
It is a tedious process to find 12 minds unpolluted by pretrial publicity to determine O.J. Simpson's fate, and it would have been more
Donella Hearne is a Wichita senior in newspaper journalism.
difficult had the courtroom been filled with cameras.
be,and people will have to wait for the opening statements in November for answers to many questions.
The jury selection has begun outside the
But the camera ban her
Judge Ito was right to ban cameras in jury selection.
The ban protects Simpson and potential jurors alike.
protected jurors from being sacrificed to gossip-hungry media. The ban is also a great step in insuring a fair
courtroom reporter's pool. The prospective jurors have been identified by numbers.
trial for Simpson.
As jury selection continues, "O.J. info" will not be as abundant as it used to
As we have seen so far, the lack of a camera in the courtroom has not stopped the public from receiving any pertinent information.
BARBARA STREETS FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
Environmentalists and economists have agreed on a common solution to a myriad of problems: hemp.
Hemp's commercial uses could help America soar
The government should recognize the industrial and commercial uses for the marijuana plant and legalize the
requiring lumber and/or cotton is immeasurable. Hemp makes a quality paper and is versatile as a textile substitute. Hemp grows easily and would
HEMP
The industrial and commercial benefits from hemp outweigh public fear of the drug form of marijuana.
use and growth of hemp for such purposes.
The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall.
give the United States an edge in the global market.
Legalizing the male marijuana plant for industrial
The land that could be saved from deforestation through the use of hemp for products currently
uses and legalizing the fragrant female plant for individual consumption are two very different things. The government should recognize that.
MARK YONALLY FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Guest column should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed.
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THE MANY USES FOR HEMP:
American media circus causes split personality
Matt Hood / KANSAN
Sometimes it's hard to tell what information-seeking Americans really want from the countess voices they lump together as "the media."
On the one hand, we have TV ratings that clearly tell us the O.J. Simpson murder trial is still the hottest of news stories. It is bigger than Haiti, health care or even Monday Night Football.
On the many computer services, the Simpson babble boards are running second in message volume only to the always-popular sex-dating forums.
Radio talk show hosts report that nothing brings in the volume of calls that the Simpson case does. ("Hi, it's Joe from Cicero. What ya say, Joe?" "I say that if O.J. didn't do it, who did, huh, wha, hey?" "You make a very good point, Joe."
When he was the greatest runner in football, and later as a TV pitchman and Hollywood actor, Simpson was not nearly as hot a commodity as he is as an accused fiend. The big difference is that now he won't earn $10 million; he'll pay it in legal fees.
Yet, the polls tell us something else. The majority of Americans are disgusted by what they see as a sensational media circus.
If so, they have good reason to be disgusted, because it is a sensational
MIKE ROYKO
media circus, and before it's over it will outdo anything Barnum & Bailey dreamed.
But this means Americans are suffering from a split personality.
We can't say that we are horrified by the excesses we see on television and in print (but mostly on television), while sitting glued to the tube and saying, in effect, "Gimmie more, gimme more."
Actually, I suppose we can have it both ways. If a pollster calls, just make yourself feel virtuous by saying: "Yes, I am appalled by this sickening media cirus, the over-coverage, the sensationalism. Horrible, I say. By the way, I had to run to the bathroom just now — did I miss anything?"
No, the ratings don't lie, so we're getting what we want. Just check your TV listings — there are all sorts of non-Simpson shows available at any hour.
And there is, after all, life beyond the tube. You can spend the evening talking to your best friend. Or making love to your spouse. Or making love to your best friend's spouse.
Unless, of course, you choose to wallow like the piggy-wiggy you might be. Then you should not complain about the media circus, because there would never be a circus unless there was an avid audience.
But if you truly believe we are being dragged against our will into being part of the mass who wouldn't qualify as jurors, then I have a suggestion.
Judge Lance Ito might have the authority to ban cameras from the courtroom for the entire trial.
So if you feel that you are being overexposed, just drop a line to him and plead that he cut off all TV coverage.
Address it to: Judge Lance Ito, Criminal Courts Building, 210 W. Temple St., Los Angeles, Calif., 90012.
Do your civic duty.
Miko Royko is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Social programs don't kill freedom
I am writing in response to the column by Zachary Starbird in the Oct. 3 Kansan.
Starbird begins with a simple observation, that it was wrong to oppress women on the basis of gender because it restricts their freedom as individuals. Starbird has a keen grasp of the obvious. He might have also discussed the economic class exploitation and cultural values of domination that account for the historical oppression of women.
He might have pointed out that patriarchy forces men into limited codes of behavior and that patriarchy hurts men as well as women, although women bear the brunt of it. But he didn't say any of these things because Starbird does not seek to understand relationships of people and societies.
Starbird rails against the government, which he says "has become so obsessed with preventing our failures that we are becoming kept citizens." He draws an analogy between the "kept" women of the past and the "kept" citizens of today. However, Starbird misses a crucial difference. Men did not keep women to protect women against failure. The subjugation of women was intended to exploit and oppress women.
By characterizing men in such roles as "caretakers", Starbird conceals a brutal reality. Things like national health care, Social Security, unemployment insurance, subsidized school lunches and child care are designed to promote individual freedom. They guarantee a stable base for working people, those who fail or those who are forced into failure. With a first-time jobless rate running about 300,000 per month, corporations routinely lay off competent and dedicated workers for the sake of profit.
Social welfare programs, such as guaranteed health care and food stamps, do not restrict freedom. They free people from desperation. A civilization thrives when its people thrive. People who regularly lack food, clothing and shelter do not have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs, much less engage in the arts or expand the frontiers of science.
I agree with Starbird that we are "traveling down the dark road of the past" but not toward Starbird's mythical and ambiguous past. Rather Starbird's agenda to eliminate "improvident and self-destructive" undesirables moves us toward the sinister派 of Germany between 1933 and 1945. Starbird's each and all mentality combined with a call for self-imposed austerity propels us all the faster down that dark road.
George Lundskow
Destin, Fla., graduate student
HUBIE
By Greg Hardin