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Friday, March 27, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Scandals a revelation
Blackmail, drug addiction, begging for money. Formerly, such words quickly could conjure up images of mafia members and Harlem neighborhoods. Today, they may be associated more readily with television evangelists, openly calling into question the validity and the integrity of large-scale televised gospel ministry.
Last week, Oral Roberts reached his goal of receiving $8 million in contributions for his university medical center following a plea to his TV flock. The money supposedly saved him from being "called home," which "God had told him" would happen if he didn't have the money by March 31.
It was hard for his viewers to swallow the idea that God was manipulative enough to use Oral Roberts' life to raise money. Now followers of another evangelical group, the $^{\text{DTL}}$ organization, must swa1
low even harder. Jim Bakker, the chairman of the organization, admitted to having paid blackmail money to keep hidden a 1980 sexual encounter with a church secretary, and his wife Tammy recently admitted to being treated for drug addiction.
These people, supposedly on a mission from God, have not turned out to be the moral role models they have preached others to be.
The only positive aspect of recent events is that after years of listening to the evangelists' interpretations of God's plan and the Christian way to live, their veiwers actually may have been enlightened through these revelations. TV gospel ministry, with all its multimillion-dollar cathedrals, theme parks and huge fund drives, may not be the answer to everyone's spiritual needs.
True greatness only can be measured by the positive effect a person has had on those around him. In this respect, the University of Kansas and the world say goodbye to a great man in Takeru Higuchi.
A portrait of greatness
Higuchi. Regents distinguished professor of chemistry and pharmacy, died Tuesday at the University of Missouri-Columbia hospital complex where he had undergone cardiovascular bypass surgery several years earlier.
drugs.
Overall, he published about 300 articles on pharmaceutical chemistry and held more than 50 patents.
Higuchi's fame spread throughout the world. Among his scientific contributions was the development of pills that allow medicine to be released slowly. The importance of this development is evident in its widespread use in over-the-counter cold medicine and in certain types of prescription
A loyal faculty member, Higuchi served as chairman of the board of Oread Laboratories, a corporation established to market discoveries made by KU's Center for Bioanalytical Research. He also worked with the Kansas University Endowment Association to establish the INTERx pharmaceutical research corporation.
Higuchi's greatest contribution to the world will live on in the accomplishments of his students, including more than 200 doctorate and post-doctorate students, and in the discoveries made possible by four annual, $10,000 Higuchi/ Endowment Research Awards.
A responsible reaction
The latest round began a couple of weeks ago when four despondent New Jersey teenagers went into an old garage, locked themselves in a car, turned on the motor and asphyxiated themselves. Coverage of this mass suicide is thought to have prompted other recent suicides as well.
This raises the perennial question: how should the media, or should they even, cover a suicide?
Many people think that the media is responsible for the recent rash of suicides. That is a harsh statement to make and may result from the extreme, emotional nature of the subject. A tragedy of this nature is a newsworthy event and must be reported.
As long as the media treats the subject with caution and compassion, suicide should be discussed in the media. Ignoring the problem will not make
it go away. While there always is the possibility that someone will be encouraged to attempt suicide after publicity from another suicide, there is an even stronger possibility that someone will be saved because they have been educated about the warning signs of a despondent person. Or perhaps they will realize the finality and idiocy of the act.
To blame the media for a higher incidence of suicide because of past coverage of suicides is an unfair statement to make. Anyone who commits suicide, or even contemplates it, has problems that go much deeper than the images on a television screen or the ink on the pages of a newspaper. The media has a responsibility to the public to present them with all sides of life, as long as it is done in a responsible and compassionate way.
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Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser
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Opinions
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Country suffers from double standard
Decent meals, peaceful surroundings, equal say in government. these things historically have provided meaningful reasons for many U.S. citizens to support changes from criminally automatic foreign regimes to democratic ones.
Paul Campbell
Yet, the support some segment of our society express for allegedly progressive or socialist regimes is a criminally negligent crisis of conscience. The new regimes that are supported are worse than the ones overthrown, although any recognition of this fact would be to admit that the supporters were wrong.
Columnist
This crisis comes from an applied double standard. The United States, as the granddaddy imperialist oppressor, is criticized by standards that no society, no matter how ideally democratic, could live up to.
Countries that profess an open hatred of the United States, on the other hand, are praised as stalwart defenders of freedom solely
because they utter the appropriate communist catch phrases about peace and equality.
The latest version of the crisis of conscience began its annual appearance when President Reagan requested $105 million in U.S. aid for democratic resistance in Nicaragua, the contras.
The ruling elite of the Sandistas make no bones about spreading their revolution to their increasingly worried Central American neighbors, as the State Department has documented on numerous occasions.
In 1979, the Sandinistas and other groups in Nicaragua overthrew the dictator, Anastasio Somoza, who at best, could be referred to in terms too impolite to be printed here. In the years since, the Sandinistas have worked to consolidate power in the way other communist totalitarian governments have, by militarizing Nicaraguan society.
Yet, in this country, an interesting phenomenon with historical precedent is taking place: U.S.
As a result of Soviet intentions in Central America and the vehement naivete of Sandinista supporters in this country, the civil war in Nicaragua has flared into the limelight as a prominent arena of superpower conflict.
citizens are flocking to Managua as if it were a political Mecca. The call to worship is the usual bellringing of U.S. foreign policy denunciations and praise for the myth of equality under socialism.
Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, former editor of the defouction press in Nicaragua, has said of the intellectually wayward that "most come to confirm what they already believe . . . they believe everything they are told." Upon returning to the United States, the true believers hold news conferences at which they regurgitate their carefully rehearsed balderdash.
Their activities are not without historical context. In his book, "A Better World," historian William O'Neil documents the extensive support many U.S. liberals and proponents of Stalin at the time he was to stalemate millions of peasants in the name of the new socialist order.
Paul Hollander, a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, has written of the predisposed political pilgrims who have gone to Castro's Cuba. He said they rationalize away the constraints placed on Cuban society as necessary to combat anti-revolutionary elements.
During the Vietnam War, many of the more vocal demonstrators in this country had great praise for the North Vietnamese. Andrew Young, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Carter, tearfully expressed great pleasure at the entry of unified, communist Vietnam into the United Nations. As a war protester himself, he could not help but disregard the flagrant human rights abuse by the regime he indirectly helped into power. A great day, indeed.
The support for the Sandistas is no surprise. With the previous objects of their attention adequately pacified, i.e. enslaved, they need something upon which to express their contempt for everything the U.S. government does. With their version of evil incarnate in the White House, they are driven as salmon swimming upstream to be for whatever he is against.
Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, of the Viennese school of economic thought, writes that the benefits of socialism are purely theoretical while "practical socialism is totalitarian everywhere." Still, the wide-eided children of democratic civilization peer longingly into the dark void, hoping to keep any light of freedom from breaking through.
Welfare reformers could learn from past
Ronald Reagan is for it.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, senator from New York with a deserved reputation for being right on the subject, is for it.
Paul Greenberg
Bill Clinton, chairman of the National Governors Association and all its members save one are for it.
Columnist
Congress and the public and the political parties are going for it.
And what is it?
Welfare reform. The kind that puts the emphasis on work, not subsidies. There hasn't been such an outpouring of support for a new approach to fighting poverty, well, since the anti-poverty program. And that program was the apotheosis of the excesses this one is supposed to correct. Beware when all men praise you, says the Good Book. The same caution should be applied to government programs. Their quality doesn't always match the enthusiasm with which they're greeted.
The governors' plan, which is supposed to reform the welfare system, would begin by adding up to $2 billion a year to the cost of supporting the poor. Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who has become the idea's chief salesman, explains that
"A binding contractual agreement between the recipient and the government, setting out the rights of both parties. The agreement would require recipients to strive for self-sufficiency in return for benefits and the government to provide adequate support in return for these efforts, including income, education, and training, child care, medical care, child support enforcement and job placement.
you gotta spend money to save money, and that eventually the plan will save money by getting people off the welfare rolls and into jobs. How?
Clinton explains it all, and in doing so he shows he's mastered the language of bureaucracy. That's the first warning sign that this approach could prove an even bigger bust than the one it's going to replace. Here he's describe what the paper shuffers invariably call Key Components:
"A requirement that all recipients of cash assistance with children age 3 or older participate in a work program.
"An enhanced management system, which would provide each welfare recipient with a caseworker who would be a partner in the march toward self-sufficiency, helping to develop an individualized program, thus making sure it is followed."
Uh huh. It doesn't take much experience with these Bold New Ideas to suspect that this latest approach could prove as murky as the sociologue in which it is expressed. The only clear beneficiary of all this sociobabble would be caseworkers; their seem to be the only jobs specified.
Paul Simon, an Illinois senator, has a simpler idea. It, too, ties government checks to work. It depends not on psychological contracts, but a 32-hour week. His suggestion: Rest the WPA. That's right: the Works Progress Administration, which put millions to work in the midst of the Great Depression. WPA built 125,110 schools, libraries and other public buildings, improved 580,000 miles of road, created more libraries, read and generally got public value for public funds. In the language of today's bureaucracy, WPA rebuilt the country's infrastructure. And it needs rebuilding again.
Nor is this idea that bold or new. Actually, its Key Components, which amount to tying benefits to work programs, have been tested in pilot programs around the country. The results have not been impressive. A private, nonpartisan agency (the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) studied several such programs and concluded that they had been able to move five to seven percent of those enrolled in workfare programs off the dole and onto the jobs. That scarcely justifies another $2 billion a year in welfare payments.
Senator Simon S's is a simple, old fashioned idea, and so is the language in which he describes it. He calls for "local jobs projects, with clear objectives and timetables, paying the minimum wage or 10 percent above welfare or unemployment stipends for 32-hour work weeks. ... Local boards would oversee the projects, which could range from sidewalk construction to park landscaping to tutoring adults to read and write.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed
THEIR MURDEROUS FREET SUPPENDED
SAFELY AHEAD THEY UNSEEN BRETCHEN
IN THE SPRING GRASS BELOW, THE
-NON-MEAT EATING, NON-PESTICIDE-
TREATED-VEGETABLE EATING, NON-
ANIMAL TESTED-MEDICINE USING,
NON-PAIRY CONSUMING, STRICTLY
COTTON-AND-POLYester WEARING
"CRITTER DEFENDERS" POWER
THE HAPPY FACT THAT THEY ARE
FINALLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY
COEXISTING IN PEACE WITH ALL
LIFE ON THIS PLANET...