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Wednesday, June 22, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Invasion of privacy is also endangering woman's life
A case now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court involves the publication of the name of a San Diego woman who returned home to find her roommate dead and an intruder in the apartment. The woman was so shocked by her roommate's death that she allowed the man to escape.
The next day, the San Diego County edition of the Los Angeles Times identified this woman by name as having found the victim's body. A year later, she filed a $3 million lawsuit against the Times, charging invasion of privacy and negligence for revealing her identity.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe, charged that publication of her name made her a "walking target" for the intruder, who has not been apprehended. Lawyers for the Times argued that the courts had given newspapers an absolute right to publish accurate information about public events. They went on to say that because the event was newsworthy, the newspaper was required to publish the name of the woman.
The event was newsworthy, yes. But publishing on the day after the event the name of the only witness who could positively identify the supposed killer was wrong $ ^{a} $
The Times was, in effect, saying to this man, "Oh, by the way, in case you didn't catch the name of the woman who can nail you as the killer, we'll give it to you." This is certainly an invasion of privacy, and it is certainly negligence. The woman's life was in danger because her name was in print as the roommate of the victim.
A judge in California's 4th District Court ruled in February that a jury, not a judge, should decide whether publishing the real name of the witness was indeed newsworthy. "The individual's safety and the state's interest in conducting a criminal investigation may take precedence over the public's right to know the name of the individual," the court said.
The California Supreme Court on May 19 rejected an appeal of the case. Now on board the crusade to justify publishing the name of this innocent woman are the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS and several other high-ranking, efficient news organizations. They charge that the court's decision gave juries the power to play "super-editor," deciding what to print and what not to.
But they are missing the point. The issue that they would like to make of this case is that it is only an example of a newsworthy event, nothing more. Lawyers for these organizations have compared the case with other news events in which names have been published. "She walked upon the public stage," one lawyer said. But this is not a case of witnessing a fire or watching a gang fight. This is endangering the life of a woman who should have been protected.
David White, managing editor
"PULSE,NORMAL."
Other Voices
The classics must remain in classrooms
Should we read Harriet Beecher Stowe instead of Herman Melville? Should young writers read Toni Morrison and ignore Dante, Milton or Shakespeare?
would distort the history of preceding centuries.
These questions are in vogue in the nation's universities. A growing revisionist movement aims to restructure the literature taught in core curriculum English classes to include minority, women and non-Western writers.
Both sides of the dispute agree racism and sexism in our culture have resulted in white males traditionally having been better educated and freer to be creative. But the revisionists, eager to set things right in the 20th century, are proposing measures that
By seeking to equalize the representation of women and minority authors at the expense of the writers who now constitute the core curriculum, the revisionists would promote a false vision of our cultural history. There is no doubt that women, for example, have always been creative. But their creativity did not materially affect the direction of our culture until recent times.
Yet, the purpose of the core curriculum, and one of the major purposes of a liberal arts education, is to show students the directions our culture has taken, hence, the predominance of white male
authors.
Jane Tompkins, a leader of the revisionist movement and an English professor at Duke University, has justified her efforts by saying, "We wanted to talk about civil rights in the classroom, to prove that literature wasn't a sacred icon above the heat and dust of conflict."
Virtually all the works the revisionists are so eager to replace grapple with what one philosopher called the final question: "What does it mean to be human?" Yet there is no doubt that writers like James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison and Richard Wright have tackled the same question.
In core curricula, however, the academy must teach students to analyze the highest examples of literary achievement in Western culture — the works of Dante, Shakespeare and the rest of the greats. From this foundation, we can understand and put into perspective the works of more recent authors.
To substitute the classics for more "representative" works of more immediate "relevance" is to mindlessly follow quotas. This sort of thinking subverts the kind of education it is attempting to enhance.
Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign not expecting to win
The Daily Texan Austin, Texas
By Paul Greenberg
Syndicated
Columnist
An aspiring movie producer once showed some samples of his work to Mel Brooks, today's king of slapstick, and solicited his expert opinion. Mr. Brooks watched with a grave air, then rendered his considered judgment. "Well," he said, "it's the sort of thing that has to be tried over and over again until it's abandoned."
Jesse Jackson is clearly set on trying over and over again, but he's not about to abandon his presidential campaign. Anybody wondering why he doesn't quit, now that he has no chance at the nomination, doesn't understand the point of a Jesse Jackson campaign. It isn't winning; it's running. Nobody ever pretended that Jesse Jackson's politics had anything to do with governing. His record is as devoid of political office as it is of administrative expertise. In the grand tradition of American demagogues, he is at home baiting power, not exercising it.
There is no doubling the Reverend's ability to move a crowd. Not since George Wallace's heyday has a racially-based campaign grown into such a generally populist appeal. But he has a lot more in common with the great orators of American politics than with the great'
sutmen. Jesse Jackson is closer to William Jennings Bryan than Franklin Roosevelt. When the Reverend isn't rhyming, there's no more affecting orator on the stump today. Just listen to this passage:
"No matter what Reagan and Bush may say, most poor people are not on welfare. They work every day. They take the early bus. They work every day.
"They care for other people's babies, and they can't watch their own. They cook other people's food and carry leftovers home. They work every day.
"They are janitors running the buffing machines; they are nurses cleaning the floors."
"They put on uniforms and are considered less than a person. They change beds in the hotels, Sweep our streets. Clean the schools for our children. They're called lazy, but they work every day. They work in hospitals. They mop the floors. They clean the commodes, the bedpans. They work every day. No job is beneath them. And yet, when they get sick, they cannot afford to lie in the bed they've made up every day."
sick. A loaf of bread is no cheaper for them than it is for the doctor. They work every day.
You would need a heart of stone not to respond to that kind of appeal. The only thing missing is the leader to go with the oratory. For once you get
denial the winters, we only use Jascon. The large-scale enterprise he was associated with, PUSHEXCL, was dedicated to helping the poor and in practice seems to have helped mainly itself. It collected a reported $4.9 million in federal money during the Carter administration to help poor students. In 1963, a federal audit disallowed $2.1 million in expenditures. That amount was later reduced; but, at last report, the organization still owed the Education Department $850,000, the Labor Department $557,000 and the Commerce Department $38,647.
The fine speeches grow faint when you examine the record of the speaker.
The financing of his organization was a scandal, from the handsome salary collected by Jackson himself, to the hundreds of thousands extracted from the Arab League. To quote the Christian Science Monitor, Jesse Jackson "preconditioned black political support for the Arab cause in the United States on Arab support for the black cause. If that were not forthcoming, Mr. Jackson threatened, 'we will all learn to recite the alphabet without the letters P.L.O.' The threat worked, and Mr. Jackson has kept his side of the bargain."
The income tax returns that the Reverend and Mrs. Jackson have just released show them making
20,000 last year, most of it through Personalities International Inc., which handles the Reverend's public appearances and publications. According to the return, they gave $2,145 to charity, or less than 1 percent. The fine words about helping the poor and needy grow almost inaudible.
This is the same Jesse Jackson who shamelessly exploited his presence, debatably, near Martin Luther King Jr., when the hero of the civil rights movement was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Coretta Scott King may not have forgiven Jesse Jackson for that yet, even if Hosea Williams finally did.
The rise of Jesse Jackson on the lecture circuit and in American politics (the two are not easy to separate), is a sordid story, marked by opportunism and manipulation. In the end, what the Reverend Jackson "is" speaks so loudly that his words and the man don't go together; they are not one. This is called, literally, a lack of integrity. Yes, you would need a heart of stone not to be moved by some of the things Jesse Jackson says. But to apprehend this man's record and still vote to let him run the country, you would need a head of stone.
To change the status quo requires more than a gift for elevating one's own status. Jesse Jackson has gained
great influence in the nominating process by largely eliminating the influence of the black vote in that same process.
His has been a great success story in the worst American sense of the word — in the sense of material gain, political influence and personal fame, but not in any other.
If the Democrats win, Mr. Jackson can expect a reward in the form of an appointment to some prominent if not substantial office. Somebody has suggested secretary of charisma. Perfect. Just don't let him have anything to do with spending public funds.
Jesse Jackson is well on his way to becoming this era's equivalent of William Jennings Bryan: a permanent presidential candidate who cannot win but who must be mollified at every Democratic National Convention. That's why there is little likelihood that Jesse Jackson will abandon his campaign this presidential year or any other. It's a great career, being your party's stumbling block. As the late Richard Hoffstader, that sage historian of Populism, once wrote of William Jennings Bryan: "It was never success that he demanded, but an audience . . ."
Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Pine Bluff Commercial in Pine Bluff, Ark.
No easy answers for winning the war on drugs
By Kathleen Faddis
Staff
Columnist
Michael Dukakis, who has at least mathematically secured the Democratic presidential nomination, said the "greatest threat to our nation is not the Nicaraguan government, but the avalanche of drugs pouring into our country."
It is a war that has been declared over and over by innumerable politicians and elected officials. And we have been fighting it unsuccessfully for about the last 20 years. It is the war on drugs.
In recent months, stopping drug use has become a popular bandwagon for politicians who hope to ride it into office.
The United States is at war.
drugs pool. Speaking to the Coast Guard Academy last month, President Reagan called drugs the "foremost concern in our country."
And they are not all wrong. Drug abuse is a weighty problem that deserves serious attention by lawmakers. Aside from the normal deaths from drug abuse and drug-related crimes, the spread of AIDS, especially in cities, has been primarily among intravenous drug users, women who sleep with drug addicts and the children of both of these groups.
Increase in violent crime has also been an unhappy result of drug abuse. A study by the U.S.
The falling battle has prompted some, including columnists William F. Buckley and Richard Cohen, members of the American Civil Liberties Union and the mayors of Baltimore and Washington, to lose cause and suggest provoking the profit mode for dealing in illegal drugs by legalizing them.
But the current all-out frontal assault on the drug pushers and users being carried out by law enforcement agencies is not working. For every pusher that is jailed or killed, countless others are on the street to take his place.
Justice Department in January showed that well more than half of all men arrested on serious crimes in a dozen cities tested positive for illegal drugs. In New York, that percentage increased to nearly 80 percent.
Although in some cases a peaceful surrender is a reasonable solution and can save lives, this would not be true of a surrender in the drug war. The new weapon could be used by such a move would far outweigh any benefits.
An important question to be answered by legalization advocates would be which drugs to legalize. Heroin? PCP? Crack?
A suggestion has been made by some that only heroin be made legal and available to addicts. This has already been tried in the form of methadone. For nearly 20 years, government-subsidized programs have handed out methadone, a synthetic narcotic that is supposed to block the need for
heroin and allow normal functioning. In fact, methadone causes an addiction even more insidious than heroin and does little to block the urge to use other drugs.
Urban methadone programs frequently become a breeding ground for crime and drug dealing. All kinds of drugs, including the methadone just obtained inside, are bought and sold outside the doors of the clinic. Addicts on the program often are kept on large doses of the drug so that they stay
We cannot stop arresting those who traffic in drugs, but we will not eliminate the demand for drugs by arresting the pushers. We need to continue early education about drug abuse in the schools. More low-cost or free drug treatment needs to be made available. Most treatment programs are beyond the reach of those without medical insurance.
And drug abuse cannot be treated in a vacuum. It is often a symptom of other problems, including unemployment, illiteracy, hunger, lack of opportunity, homelessness and the hopeless cycle of poverty caused by the welfare system. All of these underlying social problems also will need to be dealt with by the lawmakers so anxious to stop drug abuse before we will begin to start winning this war.
Kathleen Faddis is a Lawrence senior majoring in journalism.
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