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Wednesday, February 1, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Be active for gun control
If you don't care about the five children killed two weeks ago on a Stockton, Calif., school playground by a man with an AK-47 assault rifle, don't read this editorial.
If you don't care that inner cities of the United States have fallen to heavily armed drug gangs, don't take the action this editorial calls for. And if you don't care that more than 22,000 people are killed each year by handguns, don't blow 75 cents or the 10 minutes this editorial asks for.
Dear Senator/Representative:
But if you do care, read the following letter and consider taking action.
I have sent you a copy of this editorial-letter that appeared in the Feb. 1 University Daily Kansan, and I would like you to read it as a personal plea for peace and mercy.
a plea for mercy for the five children gunned down in Stockton. It is a plea for mercy for the innocent residents of our inner cities who must cower in fear as brutal drug gangs turn their neighborhoods into killing fields.
But most of all, it is a plea of peace for the innocent people who have seen their lives destroyed by a single burst of gunfire.
gunfire. Although such guns have not affected all parts of society, lax laws regulating their purchases have allowed thousands of irresponsible and unstable persons to obtain guns. The constitutional right to bear arms should not be free license for weapons of all makes and in all situations.
of all makes and in all situations:
I plead with you, then, to use your position as a member o Congress to heed the voices of those supporting tighter pun control laws.
control laws.
More specifically. I support:
More specifically, I support:
■ A waiting period of at least 48 hours for the purchase of an firearms, to check the background of gun buyers, to ensure that they are not convicted felons.
■ Severe penalties for those convicted of illegal firearm possession.
■ Banning the civilian possession of weapons such as armor-piercing bullets, plastic guns and explosive devices.
pricing business, please call us at 1-800-345-2733.
Further, I want you to listen more often to the pleas of innocent Americans and less to the big-money interests of the National Rifle Association.
I would appreciate additional contact with you to further explain my reasoning for supporting the control of the proliferation of firearms in our society, and to help curtail senseless deaths and suffering in this nation.
Sincerely.
The University of Kansas
There's the letter. We've done our part. Now we ask you to meet us halfway. If you care enough about this issue, sign the letter and send a copy to both senators from your home state and the congressman who represents your home district. It takes about 10 minutes and 75 cents. Please take the time and do your part.
Mark Tilford for the editorial board
Today marks the beginning of a monthlong celebration of black history throughout the nation.
Black History Month
black history throughout the nation.
Pursuing one's history and cultural identity in an academic setting is an important endeavor in itself. But in the wake of the recent racially motivated disturbances at the University of Kansas, the celebration of the rich tradition of black history is even more important.
The observance is one step toward improving the understanding among races.
Black History Month will be observed on campus by the office of minority affairs and the Center for Black Leadership Development and Research.
Development and Research. Alvin Pousaint, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School and a script consultant for the "Cosby Show," will discuss issues such as minority sensitivity in the workplace. The celebration also will include events ranging from an exhibit that recognizes the contributions of black medical doctors to jazz festivals and performances by gospel choirs.
But Black History Month is more than a series of events. An integrated society should treasure, not scorn, the diversity of its members. Observance of Black History Month enriches knowledge of black culture and promotes better race relations.
Jeff Euston for the editorial board
News staff
Julie Adam...Editor
Karen Boring...Managing editor
Jill Jess...News editor
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Elaine Sung...Campus editor
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Three-D glasses hide grim reality
It has been quite a couple of weeks for television casualties - strange politics, technological marvels, violence, sport and spectacular tackiness. Somewhere, Fellini is smiling.
I watched as much of the presidential inaugural gala as I could stomach. I watched Walter Cronkite. I saw a group of really white kids playing hillybillied bluegrass on fiddles. They wore sparkling red-white-and-blue flag motif Western outfits. As they played on the bandstand, the sequins in their outfits shone, reflecting a thousand points of light. It was quite awe-inspiring.
Tommy Tune sang a song and danced a dance. The song had to do with finishing on top. I was afraid to ask what Tommy Tune meant by that.
At that point, I changed the channel and watched Miami burn. Overtown was a large orange glow. I changed back and there was Tommy Tune, surrounded by dancers singing.
When Chuck Norris came on and used the word "hinterlands," I turned the TV off.
Another TV event last week was, of course, the Super Bow! Now, I like football enough, and it was a really good game for a change. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the Super Bow was dreamed up by the beer, cola and car companies. It was either that or run their own candidate for president and stick their logos on everything.
Christopher Cunnyngham
The strangest development in sports and modern technology, since the inception of instant-replay referees, has got to be the 3-D
Staff columnist
City officials expressed relief that massive outpourings of violence had not upset the Super Bowl. If the Super Bowl had been disrupted it might have tarnished the name of the city.
haltime show. And what a show! Now, hardcore kitsch and poorly choreographed dancing and singing can come right into your living room and scare the hell out of your pets.
During this halftime ceremony the Diet Coke people showed their new 3-D commercial. I guess they were very proud of it. I can't tell you how much I'm waiting for the 3-D sanitary napkin and condom ads. That will liven things up.
During the 3-D halftime show I changed the channel when I got a headache (without 3-D glasses) and watched Miami smolder. The fires, for the most part, had been put out. City officials expressed relief that massive outpourings of violence had not upset the Super Bowl. They had been worried about that. They were afraid that people would say, "Don't go to
Miami. Those idios interrupted the Super Bowl!!
It's strange what you have to do these days to tarnish the name of a city. You can let your African-American population feel neglected until they respond with an explosion of violence, but mess with the Super Bowl and you're finished.
I think that both the Super Bowl and the riots should have been filmed and presented in 3-D. Put that new technology to good use and show Americans what our culture engenders, side by side, full-front and in their living rooms. Joe Montana throws a pass; some, unnamed kid in Miami throws a Molotov cocktail.
Splice that in with George Bush and Dan Quayle taking the inaugural oath in 3-D. George Bush, rejecting the Reagan style by being accessible, gets out of his limousine during the parade and walks. (He wants to seem available, out in the open. I'm not sure I want George Bush walking around in the open. Too easy a target.) But maybe Dan Quayle in 3-D would be better than the one we have now. Perhaps.
Perhaps.
In the long run, maybe my friend Chip is right. He posits the theory that this new 3-D technology does irreparable damage to the eyes, that this whole 3-D scam has the Russians behind it. We'll all go blind watching cheesy halftime shows or something. Oprah Winki Comrade Geraldo.
inski, Clemaine Gerard
By the way, Salvador Dali died last week
- Christopher Cunningham is a Leawood junior major in English.
Mix of church, state risk by any name
the dictionary of American euphemisms continues to grow. The latest term for someone who would mix church and state is "accommodationist." But an
state is "accommodationist." But an establishment of religion by any other name is just as dangerous. And if the courts are alert, it will prove just as unconstitutional.
will prove just this. To make this point is to invite criticism, and I got some information from John E. Brown III, president of John Brown University and an accommodationist of the first order. He can't see why displaying the mere symbols of religion on public property should offend.
public property because I was assured by Brown's criticism because, despite a couple of troubling exceptions, his position offers every evidence of a decent man struggling desperately to get out of it, or at least out of its unavoidable consequences.
out of its unadversible passages, which I wish Brown would recconsider. The first consists of one word — hyperbolic — to describe Flanagan O'Connor's phrase about reducing Flanagan O'Connor's phrase to the symbolic: "If it's a symbol, to hell with it." Miss O'Connor was being plain, dead-sober accurate. But we have become so accustomed to accommodating religion, that is, reducing its symbols to the level of the nice, the cute, the inoffensive, the decorative, the creche on the
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
courthouse lawn, the mere, to use Brown's adjective, that Flannery O'Connor may seem a little, well, hyperbolic to us late-20th-century sophisticates. Ours is an age in which the John Browns condescend to the Flannery O'Connors, and offhand I can think of nothing more damning to say about it.
to say, I am afraid, there is Brother Brown's intimation that religion cannot survive apart from the state. But the history of religion in this country, and elsewhere, would seem to argue otherwise: Faith is in far greater danger from the friendly embrace of the levitian state that being left alone. At least inside the tentacle, observers have had to circumvent of religion in Europe, where it tends to be another state-supported service, and its flourishing in America, where it is free of that entangling alliance.
There are at least two ways to destroy the religious spirit in man. The first is to oppress and
vulify religion, to try to reduce it to a matter of empty ceremony and mere symbol.
There is another and far more effective way to snuff out the religious spirit. And that is to make it semi-official, a sign of respectability and acceptance. Endow the state with the church's symbols and the church with the state's, until the unknown may be quite sure which is which. Let each church and state, accommodate the other and into one civil religion. Raise the standard in the sanctuary and stick God in the Pledge of Allegiance. If government cannot inspire sufficient enthusiasm, let it borrow some from religion; if religion is struggling, let government sponsor it. Compared to this kind of God-and-country, all-American accommodation, persecution by an atheist state is a poignant clumsy way to extinguish the religious spirit.
Brother Brown calls himself an accommodationist in matters of church and state, and I think he's got that absolutely right. But if he thinks religion and government can blend without cutting the integrity of both, he is moving down a dangerous and all too familiar path. Integrity does not mean mixture or accommodation; it means oneness. That is why I am a separatist.
■ Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Pine Baffl (Arz). Gazette.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed