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Wednesday, November 15, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
It's time we remembered our Korean War veterans
More than 5 million U.S. veterans spent part of 1950-1953 in Korea.
But to many KU students, most of whom probably know little about the war that was fought before they were born, Korea has a limited meaning.
puno-raising for a Korean War memorial began two weeks ago by KU ROTC units. They hope to build a memorial on campus in the next two years.
Television and movies certainly have played a part in giving U.S. citizens a glance at what happened in both World War II and the Vietnam War. The countless movies of the '40s and '50s gave the viewer a glorified version of the World War II. The John Wayne hero types fill the post-war movie collections.
At the very least, controversial movies from the early 70s, such as "The Deer Hunter" and "Coming Home," and more recent films, such as "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket," have given a view of the Vietnam War through someone else's eyes. Vietnam gains network television attention each week on shows such as "China Beach" and "Tour of Duty."
Although some people argue that most of the attention given to Vietnam is either inaccurate or negative, at least attention has been given, and the U.S. viewer has something to refer to — even if it's just a weak historical outline of the war.
But the Korean War never quite gained the fame and attention that other U.S. wars have.
Col. John T. Rademacher, Air Force ROTC commander at KU, said, "Korean veterans seem to be forgotten."
The absence of a Korean War memorial on campus suggests that Korea was getting lost in time.
The ROTC units' drive to raise money for the memorial is needed, and it should be an appreciated effort. Korean veterans, like all U.S. veterans, deserve this type of recognition. U. S. soldiers in Korea gave their energy, time and dedication to the Korean War. And over 50,000 gave their t
Liberation to the Korean War. And over 50,000 gave their lives.
This is our chance to give them the respect and recognition
they deserve.
Release of Iranian assets endangers position of U.S.
George Bush and administration officials erred greatly when they decided Nov. 6 to return $567 million in frozen assets to Iran.
Bush announced the move with the hope that the action would motivate Teheran to encourage the release of eight U.S. citizens being held by pro-Iranian factions. Although the Bush administration called for the release of the hostages on "humanitarian grounds," it has set a new precedent for dealing with the cowardly and immoral actions of terrorists.
By freeing the Iranian assets, the United States becomes a more likely target for terrorist attacks, and the U.S. government becomes more vulnerable to negotiator's demands. Bush said he was uncertain what effect the financial transfer would have on the hostages' fate.
have off the hostages in Iraq. One thing is certain: By freeing the Iranian assets, U.S. officials have unconditionally sacrificed the Iranians' only motivation to free the eight remaining American hostages. Our government has forfeited the only incentive Iran had to return the hostages safely, if at all.
the hostages safely, if at all. Even if the hostages are returned, the Bush administration's decision has been detrimental. It could encourage future actions against the United States, and it sets a precedent that obligs our leaders to be more sympathetic to terrorists' demands.
Although to err is human and to forgive may be divine, the Bush administration's decision to thaw $567 million in frozen assets is unforgivable. We will have to live with this decision and its ramifications for years to come.
Thom Clark for the editorial board
Members of the editorial board are David Stewart, Stan Diel, Brett Brenner, Ric Brack, Daniel Niemil, Craig Welch, Kathy Walsh, Thom Clark, Tiffany Harness and Scott Patty.
News staff
David Stewart...Editor
Ric Brack...Managing editor
Daniel Nieml...News editor
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Carry Dell...Editorial editor
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Christine Winner...Art/Features editor
Tom Ellen...General manager, news adviser
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Node attracts future developments
You saw it here first, almost. Yeah, I'm talking to you. You know who you are. You don't wait to hear about it on so-called alternative radio or see it on electronic bulletin boards. You're so far out ahead of the cutting edge that it's only removing the sutures in the cultural lesion you left behind.
Or are you? You'd better get with the program because the place to be is the node. That's right, "node." According to a local newspaper, an intersection west of town is the new node of future development. A lot of people are interested in this node because, like all such nodes, it stands to make them lots of money. For a node is potent with eminent domain and new zoning.
Sure, you thought node meant something like the dictionary's definition of a "protuberance or swelling" or perhaps a "point or region of minimum or zero amplitude in a periodic system." To be sure, there is something of both of these elements in the new vernacular sense of "node." What now appears to the naïve observer as a nondescript semirural intersection, in fact, is a tumescent bulge of unrelieved demand-side pressure. Lots of people want to live, however transiently, outside the press of the city. They're going to spend money while they're there, too. That's the initial source of demand, the nodule, if you will.
Developers anticipate this by buying the land or options on it. They get it platted and agitate the city to bring services out to the site, which by now,
Stuart Beals
Staff columnist
urgid with the attention of public planning officials, has grown into a fully formed node.
The second denomination of "node" also is apt. There is a sort of periodicity to the use of the land. Where perhaps five generations of farmers saw a home, there is now a suspended traction, neither residence nor business. However, there will soon begin a period of rapid growth in the purveying of novel cuisine items and vicarious life on VHS cassettes. As the population of surreptitious reliages aged, the video cassettes will be replaced with archival and then orthopedic shoe devices. Desdes later, in the perpetual show of high-rise housing projects, these sites will house beauty parlors and package liquor stores frequented mainly for pints of cheap wine. A curve for a while but a node again.
and it's not yet too late to appropriate it. While it and places like it are nodes, we can go there and soak in either swollen enterprise or flaccid destitution, depending on which side of the curve our node is located.
But enough of these metanodal musings. Most of us can't be a direct part of the node, strictly speaking. But this "node" is a concept after all.
we'll need to derive a bunch of "nodal" attributes to apply to any objects or acts that await the tardy arrival of ordinary vanguard culture. In this before-new totally anticipatory state, things are, or rather will be, so hip that they're literally unreal.
Of course, by our definition, once something is realized it's no longer technically nodal, but we can make social currency of even detumescent, "infranodal" modalities. We can invoke a place's conceptual past in the ambiance we create in the present.
Meanwhile, developers can capitalize on exurban sprawlers' penchant for residing in developments with names that end with a silent "e" such as Oakwood, Pigeon Point or even Lawrence. What can match the cachet of a planned neighborhood called West Node or Nodal Acres?
For instance, we can open a bistro and call it something like Gunther's on the Node. Even on the land-use curve's wane, we can convert an aerobics studio into an art theater called The Node.
Editorials are dying a boring death
> Stuart Beats is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism
Writers will do almost anything to get out of writing — sharpen pencils, play with the computer or read. It doesn't matter what they read; it could be newspapers, novels or stock tables. It all comes under the heading of "research." There is an old story about the writer whose wife left him alone for the day so he could finish an important article. She bundled the kids into the car, took off for the beach and didn't come back until evening, when she found that her husband had polished every piece of silver in the house. Writers will do almost anything to avoid writing — even fly to Houston to fill a slot at a convention of Sigma Delta Chi, a journalists' society. Talking about writing is so much easier than writing.
Opinions are diluted by trends toward a group consensus, lack of humor
Phil Geyelin, who used to write a column for the Washington Post, told me years ago that the political column was a dying art form, but you would never know it from the proliferating number of columnists in U.S. newspapers. At this juncture, it may be the U.S. editorial that is dying, and it is the columnists who are filling the vacuum. They're meeting the demand for spirited, forthright, distinctive opinion that the editorials no longer seem able to provide on a regular basis in the country that produced William Allen White, Grover C. Hall Jr., Henry Watterson . . .
What is killing the great U.S. editorial? My personal theory is that its demise can be traced to the baneful effect of the editorial conference that begins the day at so many dailies. Do you know any painter or sculptor or author who would invite in a roomful of colleagues to talk over his idea for a
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
work of art before proceeding? The standard U.S. editorial tends to read like a committee report because its writer may feel duty-bound to reflect every point of view expressed at the table. There should be conferences to evaluate editorials, not stifle them at birth. How many good books do you suppose have been talked away? Surely not as many as good editorials.
Next in this roundup of the usual suspects in the assassination of the U.S. editorial comes the humorous editorial. It often isn't, at least not intentionally. Its principal effect is to create a craving for Dave Barry. Humor is better as an editorial condiment than as a main dish; it should compliment opinion rather than serve as a replacement for it.
The great mystery about the editorial-as-soprific is why anyone would write like that. Surely it takes more time and trouble to bang out a thoroughly insipid piece than a lively opinion. Even an outrageous, atrocious, dead-wrong opinion is more interesting than prose so unbalanced, so safe, so predictable, so mediocre, so unobjec-
tionable that it lacks opinion. Yet the country is ewash in ill-fated attempts to resurrect Walter Lippmann. If I had my way, every inky wretch of the press would take an unsolem oath never to write anything that could carry the headline, "Whither the UN?" or "The American Infrastructure."
The current misplaced focus on the technique of writing rather than what's said is the surest symptom of the malaise that besets the editorial. I think it was Raymond Carver who warned that when a writer starts talking about technique, it's a sure bet he's fresh out of ideas.
Archy the Cockroach, who used to come out at night to ghostwrite a column on an old typewriter, had it right. As the old blattid once told Don Marquis, whose byline appeared above Archy's stuff;
boss i am disappointed in some of your readers they are always asking how does archy work the shift so as to get a new line or how does archy do this or do that they are always interested in technical details when the main question is whether the stuff is literature or not.
▶ Paul Greenberg is the editorial page editor for the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial.
CAMP UHNEELY
BECAUSE OF THE TREMENDOUS RESPONSE WE'VE RECEIVED FROM LOCAL BUSINESS MEN ABOUT THE AVAILABILITY OF EX-BRUIT SPOKESMAN WILFORD BRIMLEY, WE'VE BEEN ASKED TO EXHIBIT MORE OF MR. BRUMLEY'S TAINTINGS.
BY SCOTT PATTY