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Wednesday, July 15, 1987
Kansan Summer Weekly
Opinions and Editorials
North's smoke screen
Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North had his day in court, and he became quite an apt performer in front of the cameras. Being the able actor he was, North turned the hearings into a public forum to gain support for Nicaraguan contra spending.
North, a decorated war veteran, testified about the diversion of Iranian arms sales to contras and the role he and other administration officials played in the scam. The hearings became a forum for North, the attorneys and committee members to accuse one another. North's long-awaited appearance drew a packed committee hearing room and 150 tourists who lined up outside the room daily.
In the beginning, North was prepared to become the fall guy, to shoulder the blame. But since then, he changed his mind after learning that criminal charges were to be brought against him. His defense was based on the assumption that
his superiors had knowledge of his operation. He assumed that he acted with President Reagan's consent in the affair.
In a prepared statement made last Thursday, North portrayed himself as a staff officer who did what he was ordered. "I did not engage in fantasy that I was the president or vice president or Cabinet member or even the director of the National Security Council." But since North did what he was told, he sat before the committee.
"I suggest to you that it is the Congress which must accept the blame in the Nicaraguan freedom-fighter matter. Plain and simple, you are to blame because of the fickle, vacillating, unpredictable, on-again policy toward the contras."
North dug his own grave by bypassing Congress, but in an attempt to cover his tracks, North shifted some of the blame on what he called Congress' inconsistent policy.
It's time to pull PTL's plug
Stop us if you've heard this one before.
Enough is enough.
Many people who have better sense than to send money off to televangelists — to be spent on God knows what — are getting quite a kick out of following the seemingly daily revelations about the inner workings of the TV ministries. Unfortunately, the men involved, Jim Bakker, Oral Roberts and Falwell, make themselves only too easy targets.
On Tuesday, Jerry Falwell, current leader of the scandal-wracked PTL so-called ministry, said PTL must raise $11.5 million before Oct. 1 to survive.
Falwell said the money must be raised to show that PTL is viable. The ministry is $72 million in debt and has 1,400 creditors on its tail.
The real story here is not that the ministry is seeking
In other words, the PTL ministry requires about $3 million a month to keep itself going. It is, of course, in the best interest of the ministry to continue operating. Part of that $3 million pays the salaries of its employees.
more money. That's old hat.
Also, it isn't surprising that its Heritage USA theme park generates $1.5 million in one month. What is surprising is that this money pays for only about half of PTL's operating expenses.
It is time for PTL to look at itself objectively. Most businesses $72 million in debt would have the good sense to close up shop. It isn't likely that the U.S. government will offer to bail out the PTL ministry.
Perhaps then its followers would find a charity worthy of the $1.5 million they could donate each month.
Miss America's gaffe
Kellye Cash, Miss America 1987, has accomplished a notable feat: In one swift, stupid statement, she made the citizens of three states and the organizers of the Miss America pageant wince.
In summing up her accomplishments as Miss America, Cash said she was glad to visit places she "never thought people actually lived in — like North and South Dakota and Nebraska."
Perhaps it takes winning a national title and allegedly becoming an articulate, intelligent (but most of all, shapely) representative of our country to find out that people really do live in North Dakota, South
Dakota and Nebraska.
This stupid comment from Cash only serves to do two damaging things: It perpetuates the "dumb, blonde" stereotype that so many truly intelligent, articulate women are trying to overcome, and it sets back the efforts of the pageant organizers.
Let us hope that this isn't a larger reflection upon education in our country. But studies of our educational system have indicated that U.S. children are not as proficient in geography and demographics as they should be. Maybe Cash is an accurate representative of our country.
What a disheartening thought.
News staff
John Benner ... Editor
Dawn O'Malley ... Managing editor
Jane Zachman ... News editor
Pam Miller ... Campus editor
Paul Belden ... Assoc. Campus Editor
Tim Hamilton ... Sports editor
Darry Charge ... Photo editor
Connie Sheridan ... Graphics editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Lisa Weems ...Business manager
Lisa Oment ...Retail sales manager
Sally Depew ...Campus sales manager
Dan Pennington ...Classified manager
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Jeanne Hines ...Sales and marketing adviser
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'What's the matter with Kansas?'
Beauty of Land of Ahs deserves close inspection
Once, crossing the Midwest, a pioneer found himself dying of thirst. While the rest of his wagon train went on to the green pastures and gold in California, this pioneer became crazy from dehydration. He bit off his lips and did not form an appreciation for the Kansas prairie.
As I see it, most early Kansans were not taken by the romanticism of those who continued west. Instead, they mixed idealism with the knowledge that life out here can be hell some days. One day, they hoped it would pay off.
Today we conform to a faster pace, and old values are out of date. Some Kansans think we're still not modern enough to pursue a more worldly lifestyle. Kansans seem to be embarrassed at themselves by doing and saying the strangest things. For example:
Meanwhile, these Kansans knew about daily rewards and above long-term profits. They were always aware of how the economy worked.
--businesses escaping the urban areas, by then neglected. Hence, the city becomes "new" because it has moved radically outside itself
$\bullet$ The European put-on. Some of us seem to think that if we begin to spell differently, we'll fool people into thinking us worldly. This explains the lovely new "Exocentre" in Topeka.
● The o! Kansas twang. It doesn't exist, as does the funny talk of New Englanders, who create vowel sounds not recognized as English by most linguists. Yet, I can detect the Kansas twang when someone admits to living in the state. "G-a-a-d, K-a-nas is s-oo boring."
*Somewhere is nowhere syndrome. In cities experiencing economic growth, expansion is favored over improvement. Suburbs grow, each with their own shopping mall. Eventually, a loose cluster of townships emerges of homes and
Ilsabe Schlingenslepen
Staff Columnist
On the other hand, some Kansans are unequivocally terisitical (for Kansans) romantic about the way things "used to be." They want to bring back the old days that were. . . actually not all that great. But there are some unromantic aspects of that history that seem timely again.
**Realistic expectations.** A good thing about the handpowel was that you already knew the desired ends would require hard work. Today, the difficult task might be to improve a city, yet we tend to think that technology will do all the work. Our ideas, like the plow, need to be painstakingly guided.
Kansas?)
- Hard work. I like to think early Kansans were less concerned with the "self-made" man, then a modern breed, then with making the plains inhabitable for the least of its settlers. I like to think they were, translated into modern English, more liberal (but dare we even say such a thing about
An unromantic view of nature. It is easy for Coloradoans and Californians to romanticize the mountains and the ocean. And it is probably good, since they are usually most outspoken about environmental conservation.
Still, there is always the point beyond just being made aware that the land is being polluted and ruined by us, where conservation stops and pollution continues. Here, Kansas history intervenes, implying it is much easier to care for a land that you rely on for survival daily, than one that makes a pretty postcard.
The plains being just a little bit plain is nothing to bemoan. After all, the beauty of purple mountains majesty is just a cliche. With Kansas, the more you look at it, the more you like it. Colorado is and always has been a monument to beauty, but the beauty of Kansas comes more as a daily reward.
I used to grab a little of it on jos along the Kansas river (where there are no mountains obstructing the view.) Without stepping one foot outside the state, I saw a piece of landscape that was new every day. The beauty was there, though some days I really had to squint for it.
So, while other states have cosmopolitan cities and natural landmarks that burst out at you, they also have their drawbacks. We shouldn't try, nor wish, to copy them. To get to know the shy state of Kansas takes some effort. Even then, it's less of a lasting romance than a risky day-to-day love affair. As the early settlers might have said, in their own words, "Go for it."
Buying rubbers is an awkward situation
Few things can compare to the gripping fear of buying rubbers for the first time. This occasion usually falls only too close to the advent of puberty, before the delicate male psyche is even fully able to deal with acne.
Women can empathize with men. Surely going to the doctor to get that first prescription for the birth control pill can be equally harrowing. Both men and women know the terror of the trip to the
From many accounts, pharmacists are cruel men. So, apparently, is everyone behind the drug counter with the power to dispense rubbers. Anyone who has seen The Summer of 42 knows how far this cruelly can go. I once had a nightmare that goes something like the cartoon that appears on this page.
I still remember my first time as if it were yesterday. The very worst events in life somehow fade conveniently from our minds, but the memory of it still sits neatly atop the pile of my reminiscences.
I knew the druggist at the nearest store, so I drove to a neighboring suburb. Along the way, I wondered where I was going to go next time, if indeed there was to be a next time.
Just as I was beginning to breathe a sigh of relief, my girlfriend's best friend walked out of the stockroom and behind the counter to ring up my rubbers.
I went to the counter, which mercifully was situated at the rear of the store. Everything seemed to be going just fine. The rubbers were peg-hooked on the front of the counter. I decided to stay at the secluded rear counter to pay for my little purchase.
--imagine Oliver Norv limithing himself to so simple a truth; every breast-beating confession seems to come with a gaudy rationalization. "No excuse, sir" would be so much simpler. It not only saves time but saves the miscreant from embarrassing himself further by offering feeble excuses.
I quickly swept them off of the counter with my arm.
"Hi." she said. "What can I do for you?"
"I, she said. What can I do for you."
I looked behind the counter and saw the packages of film. "I need a 36-exposure roll of tri-x, please."
"Sure," she replied. "Do you want those rubb-ers, too?"
"Price check on condoms!"
I was certain that my face turned scarlet. "Yes, I guess I do."
"Have a nice time. Tell Shari 'hi' for me, okay?" "Sure thing." I wondered how she could be so casual about this. I knew Shari was going to kill me.
It was only after this first trip to the drug store that I began to discover all the things that go with being the owner of rubbers. I had to find a place to keep them so my mother wouldn't find them and ask embarrassing questions. I realized that keeping rubbers out of reach caused it caused a raised circular outline on the leather.
I got home one day to find my brother and a friend of his using one of my stashes as an extremely durable water balloon.
Only years later did I discover that, if I hadn't been too particular, I could have purchased rubbers just about anywhere. I found that they were sold in the restroom of any respectable gas station or bar. One of my favorite pieces of graffiti appears on a rubber dispenser in the restroom of a bar here in town. It simply says: "Don't buy this gum. It tastes like rubber."
I hope this means that my son, when he goes to buy rubbers for his first (and probably not sanctioned) sexual encounter, will have an easier time of it.
These days, with many people fearing AIDS and other diseases transmitted through sexual contact, various health organizations have recommended rubbers in full-page newspaper advertisements. Rubber companies have started advertising rubbers on television, and some grocery stores now sell them in the checkout lines.
Did Lt. Col.Oliver North learn his lesson?
The Iran-contra hearings are proving less than educational for the one witness who may have the most to learn: Oliver North.
There he was in his beribboned uniform telling a congressional committee that he had lied to Congress again and again, month after month. "I want you to know," he said, "that lying does not come easy to me." That may have been his most surprising assertion yet. Think of all the practice he's had. "I admit that I participated in the preparation of documents that were erroneous, misleading, evasive and wrong." North said. "I make no excuses for what I did." Whereupon he proceeded to make excuses for almost everything he did — lying to Congress, using funds not his, and covering up his actions.
Paul Greenberg
North could scarcely confess a deception without making excuses for it, and he confessed indiscrements with the same bravado with which he committed them. One moment he said that "the grossest misjudgment I have made in my life" (it must have been hard to make that choice) was his fabrication of some phony documents to hide the gift of a security system for his home. The next moment he blamed the government for not paying for it. The next, he offered to take on a legendary terrorist mano-a-mano...
--imagine Oliver Norv limithing himself to so simple a truth; every breast-beating confession seems to come with a gaudy rationalization. "No excuse, sir" would be so much simpler. It not only saves time but saves the miscreant from embarrassing himself further by offering feeble excuses.
Syndicated Columnist
'It’s as if North has learned nothing from all this. He is still able to sturt while sitting down and under oath. His aye is a ‘yes . . . but’. And his nay is a self-serving defense. To summarize his testimony: yes, he lies, deceived and did what he ought not to have done, but there always was a good reason.
Once upon a time, military men were taught a simple, concise response when they had done something for which there was no excuse. It went, in its entirety: "No excuse, sir." What ever happened to that expression? It is impossible to
Unfortunately, Oliver North seems to be setting the tenor of the whole committee's deliberations. Senator Daniel Inoyue, whose reputation as an impartial judge was much stronger before he began chairing these hearings, decided to wear his own Distinguished Service Cross to the hearings for the first time last week. He didn't have to do that; his empty sleeve is testimony enough to his services to his country. But the bemedaled presence of Ollie North reduces everything to a form of personal competition. Principles, even simple ones like telling the truth, tend to be obscured by all the macho he brings out.
In order to defend certain principles — truth, honor, country — Oliver North winds up muddying them. The depth of that betrayal does not yet seem to have struck him. In order to repent, one must be aware of what one has done, and Oliver North's confession-capulation would indicate that he
has only the vagueest notion of what he's done — just enough to admit and defend it.
There is no denying the man's charm, his good looks and confidence, his almost sensing sense of humor. One can see how he got so far and, alas, how he fell so fast. The sins of Congress in handing aid to the Nicaraguan resistance, or rather mishandling it, have given the colonel and his always vigilant counsel Brendan Sullivan, an opportunity to argue on trial: It is a sight that cannot help but please him, and for the underdog, Outnumbered by his host of congressmen and their staffs of lawyers, Col. North is the picture of the gladiator at bay, and not an unappealing one.
Yet there is something missing in Oliver North — the something that in others counsels prudence and produces self-restraint. It is most important that a military officer who serves a republic, a government of laws, has a strong sense of self — where it begins and leaves off, how far it can be exerted in the service of one's country and the point beyond which it dare not go, what encroachments it rightly may allow others to make on it, and what it must not sacrifice to their demands or to its own aspirations.
The next time the service academies revise their reading lists, they might do well to consider including some of Oliver North's testimony. It could prove invaluable in teaching young officers what to avoid. As for the education of Col. North, that would seem a more formidable assignment. He seems remarkably assured giving testimony that ought to do anything but assure him. Perhaps it is the surroundings. He acts like an adamant captive in the midst of the enemy camp. Like any military man, he bridles at a bunch of civilians sitting around and second-guessing the decisions made by an officer under pressure.