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Wednesday, January 25, 1989 / Unive. ty Daily Kansan
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Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Americans need to convert new attitudes into action
"The homeless problem," as it has come to be known, continues to be an albatross around the neck of the land of opportunity.
opportunity. But times are changing. Americans are learning to care about the less fortunate. However, the action we take as a result of our new caring attitude remains to be seen. Dell 4
According to a recent New York Times-CBS News Poll, 49 percent of Americans would be willing to pay $100 more in taxes a year to help the homeless. A majority of those polled said they had witnessed the homeless problem firsthand. Either consciousness has been raised or the problem is worsening. Or both.
worsening. You'd lead that more people care about the homeless than did three years ago. However, the poll shows that the typical response of the affluent still reigns. Throw money at the problem, don't get involved and everything will get better.
Before we can end the travesty of homelessness there not only must be a major investment of money, but of time and creativity.
President Bush has said that working to relieve the homeless problem is on his agenda.
oblem is on his agenda. Bush needn't encourage people to donate both money and time to the local level. The new administration should avoid the temptation to eat up tax dollars by creating a government task force to study the problem.
Corporations and private donors can help by financing local efforts. Individuals can help by donating time. American ingenuity and contributions can solve the problem.
Relief at the local level is simply the most direct and efficient use of money and volunteer time.
ingenuity and contributions can solve the problem. It is on this front that Bush's recurring campaign theme of "A thousand points of light" has a chance to become more than a vague patriotic statement.
Actually, Bush may be just the man to facilitate the donation of corporate money and individual time to privately attack the homeless problem. After all, he got corporate sponsors to foot much of the $25 million price tag of his inauguration.
Karen Boring for the editorial board
KU men's basketball team made good grades last fall
Proof that mehs' basketball team members don't think only about making the game-winning hoop came with last semester's grade card.
grade card.
The composite grade point average of the mens' basketball team stands at 2.84, a wide margin above the 2.0 minimum GPA for athletes.
Certainly the Jayhawks have had an impressive season on the court. Despite probation and the loss of Danny Manning and Larry Brown, the team has clawed its way into the Associated Press' top 20 and recorded a string of exciting victories.
victories.
But the news of good grades is even better. Sophomore Mark Randall led the team with a 3.5 GPA, while seniors Sean Avarado and Milt Newton and juniors Kevin Pritchard and Jeff Gueldner all scored better than a 3.0.
Gueldner all scored better than a 3.0. In this time of skepticism toward sports at the collegiate level, it's refreshing for KU athletes to be taking their homework as seriously as their court play. And with the National Collegiate Athletic Association gunning down schools for athletic misconduct, including our own, the news seems even sweeter.
But the grades are worth more than they might be to the typical student. The marks reflect positively on the University's athletic program and Coach Roy Williams. They prove that an athletics coach need not lose the ball game for encouraging his players to be good students.
The grades demonstrate that high shooting percentages and high classroom standards can be attained at the same time. Many other athletes, who have forsaken school work for sports or vice versa, can use the grades as goals, challenging themselves to make the most of college, both on and off the court.
bart:
The editorials in this column are the opinion of the editorial board.
The editorial board consists of Julie Adam, Karen Boring, Jeff Euston, James Farquhar, Cindy Harger, Jennifer Hinkle, Grace Hobson, Jill Jess, Mark McCormick and Mark Tilford.
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Julie Adam...Editor
Kevin Boring...Managing editor
Jill Jess...News editor
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Mary Lou bowled over by sport
W When I started hanging around bowling alleys, it was obvious that nobody was giving much thought to the public image of that ancient game.
I was one of the pirnbobs, a scruff mix of neighborhood kids, wins and drifters. We needed pits, scooping up the ball and speeding it back on twin rails to the bowler, then tossing the pins into the rack and slamming it down for a reset.
The air was usually heavy with cigarette and cigar smoke. The bowlers' language could be even heavier, especially when they left themselves a tough split in a money game.
selves a tough split in a money game. Most places had a memorable aroma; a blend of beer, sweat and smoke. This was before the days of air conditioning and armpit preps. Today's health vigilantes would call in a federal agency.
Not that there was anything disreputable about bowlers. To the contrary. They were working people, and bowling league night was an important part of their social lives.
tah part of their stairs.
But most bowling alleys were no-frills joints. A bar, a short-order grill and maybe a few pool tables. The paint on the walls might be faded or peeling, and neighborhood idlers may be hanging around the pinballs. But as long as the alleys were properly oiled, the drinks honestly poured and priced, and the pinbow didn't get his head in the way of the ball too often, the customers were satisfied.
satisfied.
Of course, this was long before the bowling industry tried to gentrify itself. It was before bowling alleys became known as bowling lanes or family recreational centers. It was before automation replaced the pinbow, forcing thousands of youths out of the pitches, where they had developed agility and strong backs, and into McDonald's burger assembly lines, where they now develop high cholesterol.
high-quality rooms, no question that today's bowling centers are cleaner and more comfortable than in the past. And I can't quarrel with the business motives of the bowling proprietors. They now
Mike
Royko
Syndicated columnist
compete with racquet sports, jogging, VCR movie-watching, video games and dozens of other recreations that didn't exist a couple of generations ago.
But I think they may be carrying their image- consciousness a bit too far.
consciousness of a new consciousness.
I say that because of the legal flap between Mary Lou Retton, the former olympics darling, and a couple of national bowling organizations.
After Mary Lou bounced into America's consciousness, she signed a lucrative contract to hype the bowling industry. That's what dream. You devote your years to training your world's greatest backlift for your nation's honor and glory. Then you become a TV salesperson.
Although Mary Lou was not known for her bowling, that industry rented her image of good, youthful, wholesome athleticism. But now they'd dumped her, and she's suing.
we dumped her, and she's gone. The bowling moguls argue that she is no longer a suitable spokesman because her body has been maturing.
They won't come right out and say it, but it has been reported that she's been maturing too much from east to west. In other words, she's become kind of a pudgy young lady.
That's an image the bowling industry wants to shake. It wants us to think of bowlers as lean and slinky. Sort of like pro golfers with greasy baircouts.
other than to say that they are kind of stupid.
Us their industry, so I won't give them advice,
but then to say that they are kind of stupid.
They overlook the polls that say the vast majority of Americans either weigh too much or think they do.
They also ignore the fact that the last place you would look for lean-and-mean athletes is a bowling alley.
So, if the bowling industry had any sense, it would welcome the new, broader-beamed Mary Lou. It would have her make a commercial in which she said:
rn, remember me, the famous Olympic athlete? Of course you don't. I've been eating a lot of quarter-pounders with fries.
or that youepo. be, don't worry. Do what I've done.
Forget the backtips. Forget pumping iron and eating tofu. Just go bowling. There's nothing to it. Roll the ball a couple of times, then sit down.
And if that tires you, let someone else keep score while you eat pizza."
The bowling industry doesn't realize that it is going to drive away its traditional constituency the overweight out of shape majority.
— the overweight, out-snap that If the industry is determined to drop Mary Lowe as its spokeswoman, she should get someone like him. Ms. Grokau, who was elected to the Pinbail Hall of Fame for having been simultaneously hit in the head with a ball and a pin, and not missing a rack.
Slats could articulate the three things that make bowling unique among all participation sports.
sports.
"Hi, I'm Slats, and I'm a bowler. Why do I bowl? Because it is a great sport. You spend 99 percent of your time sitting down."
people.
"More than that, it's the only sport where the arena of competition provides the players with ashtrays. You ever see an ashtray in an aerobics class?"
"But best of all, it's the only sport where you push a button and a waitress brings you all the beer you want. Billy Martin should have been a bowler."
My guess is that Mary Lou will win her lawsuit. All she has to do is set up cameras in a few bowling alley and film the athletes.
**Mike Royko is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Chicago Tribune.**
U.S. must examine position on Arafat
M mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem occupies roughly the same position in Israel's Arab community as Mayor Teddy Kolleck of Jerusalem occupies
more to move among that nation. Both are, men of hope and good will who are trying to keep their cities together amid the rots and repression that have shaken their nation during the past year.
In the Christmas spirit, Mayor Freij recently raised the possibility of a truce. He proposed that Arabs stop throwing stones and that, in exchange, the Israeli government free thousands of prisoners it had taken and reopen Arab universities.
The response to the mayor's proposal was wholly predictable. As has happened to other Arab leaders who dared talk peace, he started getting death threats. One came directly from the PLO's "reformed" leader, Yasser Arafat, who had just renounced the use of terrorism. Referring to the troubles that have shaken the West Bank and Gaza, he said, "Any responsible Palestinian calling for stopping it exposes himself to the bullets of our people." The new,
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
moderate Arafat sounds remarkably like the old, japonic one.
Remember the peace-loving sentiments Arafat wove into his Castro-length address to the United Nations last month. "I reaffirm that we do not want a drop of Jewish or Arab blood shed, that we do not want the continuation of the fighting for one extra minute." His newly declared state of Palestine, Arafat assured his audience, "is a peace-loving state committed to the principles of peaceful coexistence, and it shall strive with all states and peoples to attain a permanent peace built on justice and respect of rights. It rejects threats of force and violence."
Compare all that flowery verbage with Arafat's unmistakable message to Mayor Freij. Unlike his address to the world, it had the vigor and clarity, the brevity and candor, of a friendly reminder from Al Capone. There were no careful reservations or diplomatic niceties.
reservations or diplomatic ties. The United States need to open negotiations with Iran early after that organization for worse terrorism. And Arafat's latest statement is sufficient ground for breaking them off.
If Washington ignores this development, a fair conclusion would be that the United States isn't serious about refusing to deal with terrorists, nor will it insist that those it negotiates with honor their commitments to peace.
their commitments to peace. If that sounds familiar, it should. This is much the same negotiating strategy Washington took in Vietnam, with tragic and all-too-familiar results: defeat, humiliation, abandonment and the creation of an endless stream of refugees. It's certainly the kind of U.S. diplomacy that the Israelis fear, and have every reason to.
- Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist who writes for the Pine Bluff, Ark., Gazette.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed