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University Daily Kansan
Opinion
17
Thursday, April 10, 1986
Imagine a world where everyone was the same same taste in food, same interest in music, same choice of clothes.
Tolerance of individuals
Disagreements between individuals would not exist, but then neither would individuals. Individuality is rooted in difference, whether it be in the choice of food, music, clothes, religion, politics or sexuality.
Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas sought to emphasize the importance of accepting and appreciating such differences last week by sponsoring Gay and Lesbian Awareness Week. Speakers and workshops focused on tolerance and understanding between gays and heterosexuals.
However, increased awareness during GALA Week also seemed to foster increased hostility, or at least more directed hostility, from those who would banish such individuality.
The GLSOK office received protest calls, letters and even a bomb threat.
Although the threats were not as numerous or serious as in previous years, it is unfortunate that there are still students at KU who would deny others the basic freedom to support different ideas.
— events were well attended and much information was distributed.
Despite the childish attempts to ruin it, GLSOK says this GALA Week was one of the most positive in recent years
One purpose of GALA Week is to reaffirm the right of all people to choose different ways of life. Those who threatened participants in last week's events seem to want that right themselves without recognizing it for others.
It's just too bad that those who most need to hear the message are those who are screaming the loudest against it.
An admirable effort
In less than three weeks, about 60,000 people were supposed to crowd Memorial stadium for a day of great music featuring big-name performers, and all for a good cause.
But the proposed Vietnam veterans concert, which was scheduled for April 27, was canceled late last month. More was lost than just a good concert. A chance to help a deserving group of people was also lost.
The concert was planned as a benefit to establish a scholarship fund for the children of Vietnam veterans who are disabled, missing in action or prisoners of war.
It's too bad the concert didn't become more than just a good idea. Students for Vietnam Veterans, a group made up of five KU students who were organizing the benefit, showed the kind of initiative so often lacking among college students today.
In January, the group received permission to use the stadium. However, they were supposed to get contracts with
performers nailed down by March 1.
Group members traveled to the East and West coasts seeking performers, but they rarely got past the performers' managers.
They were unable to get any commitments and found themselves $20,000 poorer for the effort, the majority of which came from their own pockets.
The students were, unfortunately, newcomers to the concert organizing game. When dealing with big-time promoters and managers, amateurs rarely have the upper hand.
The group lost money, KU students lost a good concert and a deserving group of people lost a chance for help.
But the five students told the University Events Committee they weren't giving up and would try to have the concert this summer.
Let's hope that at some point they are successful. The idea, and their efforts, are admirable, and the failure of an effort to help those in need is always a sad loss.
Pushing science fiction
Easier said than done.
According to a recent poll of more than 500 physicists, this old phrase is more than applicable to President Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as Star Wars.
The majority said that even if Star Wars could be developed, it would not protect the United States from a Soviet missile attack. In other words, Star Wars is a nice idea, but also essentially science fiction.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, admittedly a liberal organization, polled more than 500 members of the American Physical Society.
Who are we to believe? Should we believe the president, who tells us such a defense system is just around the technological corner? Or
should we believe the experts who would actually have to attempt to develop this system?
The physicists' opinions make it clear that it is ludicrous for President Reagan to ask for billions of dollars and countless hours of research in trying to develop Star Wars.
The space shuttle disaster in January made it clear that America's best minds can't always build technological wonders that guarantee safety, and that was on a much smaller scale.
Now Reagan is asking scientists to devise a system that will protect the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The system must be fail-safe. If not, the consequences are unthinkable.
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WHEN THERE IS TOO MUCH
PETROLEUM AROUND WE SAY
OIL GLUT
WHEN PUMP PRICES FALL
CUSTOMERS REFER TO IT AS
FREE MARKET
CHEAPGAS
WHEN OIL PRICES DROP DUE TO A GLUT THE TERM IS
WHEN THE VICE PRESIDENT FLIES TO THE MIDEAST TO PUT A STOP TO ALL THIS ITS KNOWN AS
While the easy approach is to think of Nicaragua as a small and poor country that only wants to be left in peace, this conveniently ignores that Nicaragua actually deserves some status as a "power."
Poor Nicaragua?
Nicaragua doesn't deserve U.S. pity
This is the second in a series of three columns examining Nicaragua and the Sandinistas.
There is a particularly obnoxious commercial on television that asks various people how they spell "relief" to which they obediently respond by spelling the name of the sponsoring product.
Amidst the hoopla of the current Nicaraguan debate, a similar question is being asked by detractors of the Reagan administration: How do you spell Nicaragua? The obedient response is Vi-i-e-t-n-a-m.
"The comparisons are there," the critics cry. "If we send aid to the contras then our boys are sure to follow and it will be just like . . . get ready now . . . Vietnam." At this point, the concerned citizen is supposed to recoil in terror, pull at his hair and telephone his congressman to bither incoherently about how the United States should leave poor Nicaragua alone.
Nicaragua's potential as a staging
Paul Campbell Staff columnist
area for advanced Soviet fighters, reconnaissance planes and attack submarines make it a power in the making. Its large army and support for terrorist groups against democratic states certifies this power status.
To affect the political and social environment of its neighbors, Nicaragua supports terrorism and drug trafficking.
Alvaro Baldizon, a former deputy of Sandinista Interior Minister Tomas Borge who has since defected, has testified before the House of Representatives that drug trafficking in Nicaragua is spearheaded by Borze and the internal police forces.
Baldizon further testified that Sandinista officials provide support for Colombian drug traffickers. Drugladen planes land at Nicaraguan military airfields to get provisions and refuel. He reports that Sandinista officials told him cocaine巾
ficking to the United States "destroyys and corrupts U.S. youth so as to harm and weaken further generations."
Despite this testimony, defenders of the Sandinistas say it just isn't so. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has given nothing of such operations.
If not the Nicaraguan are doing this why aren't we destabilizing Mexico and Colombia whose percentage of the drug trade is much greater than that of Nicaragua? The fact is that the Mexican and Colombian governments are taking drastic actions to combat the drug trade while the Nicaraguan government is fostering it.
Another example of deceit on the part of the Sandinista supporters is their denial of Sandinista support of guerrilla movements in the Central American region. The members of the Sandinista nine-man Directorate have repeatedly claimed that they do not sponsor terrorism or harbor groups involved with the undermining of Nicaragua's neighbors.
However, a former guerrilla commander of the FMLN, the communist group trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of El Salvador, says otherwise. Nearly all of his unit's arms were received
from the Sandistas. He gave orders that his lieutenants were to give false information as to the origin of their weapons.
Edward Luttwak, strategic expert at Georgetown University, has cited the future threat of the Sandinistas. The consolidation of the revolution to provide unrestrained support for terrorism and guerrilla movements.
"They will perform in the hemisphere the way the Soviet Union performs globally," he said in an interview with the Washington Times.
Poor Nicaragua indeed. Critics of the administration's policies in Central America would see a continuation of Sandinista support for subversion than a Reagan foreign policy victory.
"Nicaragua is not Vietnam, not by several thousand miles and not by several dozen geostrategic considerations" says Arnaud de Borchgrave, Washington Times editor and former Newsweek correspondent.
One comparison is apt, however. If the Sandinistas are allowed to consolidate their revolution, like Vietnam, it will become a terror regime backed up by Soviet arms, bent on complete regional destabilization.
Getting a grip on the reality of golf
So I took the next stool and asked him why he was there.
"Why shouldn't I be here?" he answered in a listless voice.
Because it was a sunny spring afternoon, I was amazed to see this friend sitting in the gloom of the barroom.
The truth is, he has always been a man obsessed. For most of his adult life, he has sought the perfect golf swing. He has read every golf book and magazine, gone to golf clinics, spent a fortune on private lessons and tried every miraculous putter, amazing driver and incredible ball as soon as they reached the market.
And when the snow melts, he abandons the golf course or practice range only for his job or to sleep. While sleeping, he wears earphones that play a hypnotic recorded message: "left arm straight, head still, shoulder turn, weight shift . . ."
He once joined a midnight religious
In the winter, he spends hours in his living room, swinging a weighted club to strengthen his golf muscles. He once accidentally struck his wife in the brow with his follow-through. When she regained consciousness, he jumped up the lump on her head for clues as to whether he had hooked or sliced.
Mike Royko Chicago Tribune
cult, hoping to cut a deal with the devil — his soul for one season as Jack Nicklaus.
So I repeated my question: Why was he there?
His voice shaking, he said,
"Because it is all a lie."
What is a lie?
That is your perfect Vardon overlapping golf grip. Anybody can see that.
He brought his hands together and said, "What is this?"
Leaping to his feet, he swung his arms and said, "And what is this?"
He slumped against the bar and said, "Yes. The swing, the grip. All lies, fraud, deceit."
That is your perfect Hogan golf swing. You have shown it to me countless times.
What are you talking about? The grip, the swing, these things have evolved through the ages. They are classic, carved in stone, the golf gospel. You've told me that a thousand times.
So?
He shook his head. "Did I tell you that I recently was hooked up for cable TV?"
"They show the senior golf tournaments."
"I have seen . . . " He paused,
covered his eyes with his hand, sighed
and finished the sentence. ".. .
Charlie Owens."
Ah, I should have known. Charlie
Owens — golf's most terrible secret.
"I had never seen him before, he said, tears dripping into his beer. "And there he was winning the tournament, beating Palmer, Casper, Player, with their great swings. It was horrible, like a bad dream."
Charlie Owens, 56, black, a pro on the senior golf circuit.
He walks as if he has a rigid leg. That's because his left leg is rigid. When he was a young paratrooper, he shattered his kneepac and it was removed. His knee was fused so that it can't bend. When he rides a golf cart, the leg sticks straight out.
"Do you know what that means?" my friend said. "I have six books devoted entirely to proper leg action. You cannot have proper leg action with a rigid left leg. It is heresy. But
that's not the worst of it. Have you seen his grip?"
I have. It is upside down. His left hand is below his right hand. It is said that he learned it as a kid. But by the time people told him it was totally wrong, he was beating those people.
My friend cried out, "Read Var
don. Read Hogan. Read Nicklaus.
Read anyone. It all begins with the
correct grip. Without it, you cannot
play the game properly. It is
impossible."
But Charlie does. And brilliantly at times.
"Yes, so that means it is all a fiction. Meaningless. All these years Everything I've believed in. A fool's quest."
Even worse, if Owens ever became widely known, it could mean the end of an entire industry — the thousands of golf books, golf videotapes and the pros all teaching the same thing. An aging black man with a stiff leg and an upside-down grip, and he goes out and shoots 65s.
My friend reached into his pocket and took out a handful of tees. He let them slip from his fingers onto the barroom floor.
Then he pounded his fist on the bar and said, "Oh, Lord, why can't they just stick to basketball."
Mailbox
Base opinion on truth
Proverbs 18:2 says, "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his own opinion." I have heard many foos speak about Nicaragua and many of their opinions are untruthful.
A common lie about Nicaragua is that the Sandinistas have a large base of popular support. According to Time magazine, about 15 percent of the Nicaraguan population supports the Sandinistas. 70 percent do not care who is ruling.
Many people have the opinion that U.S. intervention is unjust. God's plan for government is that people should govern themselves. We call this democracy. The United States
still has an opportunity to install a democratic government in Nicaragua. The tool available is the contrax. If the United States hesitates, the Sandinistas will be allowed to consolidate their victory of 1979.
A stable Sandinista government in Nicaragua would allow them to extend their revolution to all of Central America. To say the Sandinistas' revolution will not spread is a lie because the Sandinistas already supply and train guerrillas in El Salvador and Guatemala. Ortega has stated that the Sandinistas are fighting a "revolution without borders."
To all you fools preaching hands off in Nicaragua, your words are un-
George Binger Fulton, Mo., sophomore
Irrelevant swipes
truthful, emotional arguments, in the future, gather correct information and make an effort to understand the issue.
Once again, Victor Goodpasture has deviated from the subject of his column to make wisecracks about those who do not share his views.
His April 4 column would have been fine if he had stuck to the subject of Student Senate's inefficiency, but he couldn't resist taking a swipe at GLSOK, which doesn't share his moral principles. Whether the organization should be financed by Student Senate is not the issue of the
column.
He also refers to Senate financing of Jayhawk Defense Initiative, Freshman Disorientation and the Rocky and Bullwinkle Club as trivial. By no coincidence, these organizations oppose his political views.
If a liberal columnist were to write the same thing about Goodpasture's Slightly Older Americans for Freedom, he would respond with another vicious column.
His latest column proves that he is against freedom when it comes to the speech of his opponents. It also shows how unprofessional he is and provides a good excuse to claim that Student Senate financing of his salary is trivial.
Ben Ashe
Springfield, Mo., sophomore