Viewpoint
Stee
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Wednesday
October 1, 1980
c
Slouch
By Jim Earle Legal vacuum exists for those I
unmarried football widows
‘Imagine that! Mount Aggie erupting!
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — It was reported the other
day that a man in Cleveland shot a women who
blocked his view of a television set while he was
watching a football game.
I seem to hear you yawning. “Ho hum,” you
are saying. “So what else is new?”
OK. It is true that incidents of this sort have
become all too common in our society. But this
case is different.
These people weren’t married.
In other words, the shooting points to a
whole new maze of legal trails to blaze.
The legal rights of married women with re
spect to football have been pretty well deline
ated by the courts.
One landmark ruling gave a wife whose hus
band absorbed three games on Thanksgiving
the right to have him declared legally dead.
Another upheld the right of a wife suing for
divorce to name Howard Cosell as a corespon
dent.
But the rights of women who live with foot
ball fans “without benefit of clergy, ” as we used
to say, still fall within the gray area.
That aspect of the relationship is back where
the question of property rights was before the
famous “palimony” suit against actor Lee
Marvin.
Marvin vs. Marvin established a precedent
for the party of the first part to receive a finan
cial settlement from the party of the second part
upon the dissolution of their relationship.
Similar precedents clearly are needed with
respect to the strain football telecasts impose on
unmarried couples.
I mean, shooting someone simply isn’t the
answer. That approach to the problem seldom
is justified no matter what the provocation.
What is needed are court rulings that would
let both participants in a live-in relationship
know where they stand in relation to televised
football, herein known as the party of the third
part.
Had the Cleveland couple had access to legal
remedies, the party of the first part might
have taken so drastic an action as standing
front of the party of the third part, and the
of the second part might not have felt
strained to reach for a shotgun.
One feminist I know told me that in tl|
present legal vacuum unmarried women «|
pretty much left to their own devices whfl
football alienates their lovers.
“We are forced to improvise countefactional
she said. “No woman enjoys coming betwe^|
her lover and the television set, but sometim
that is the only way to get his attention."
My personal feeling is that single wome
who live with football fans should be accordi
the same legal status as married women. Hi
would include the right to confront him wit
extraneous material during commercials and!
require him to acknowlege her existence ath^
time.
Some women also seek the right to turnd
games that encroach on the dinner hour. Bj
let’s not take justice too far.
Rural, minority votes
are the key to Texas
By ROLAND LINDSEY
United Press International
AUSTIN — The battle between President
Carter and Ronald Reagan for Texas’ 26 elector
al votes is centered not on the major population
centers of Dallas and Houston, but in the citrus
groves of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and in
the scrub brush small towns and cities Lyndon
B. Johnson called home.
Strategists for both campaigns agree that it is
the vote of rural Texans, along with that of the
Mexican-American population that is concen
trated in South Texas and the Rio Grande Val
ley, that are the key to Carter’s chances of
overtaking a substantial Reagan lead and again
carrying the state in November.
Republican presidential candidates in recent
years have managed strong showings in the
urban centers of traditionally Democratic
Texas, but only once — with the election of
William P. Clements in 1978 as the state’s first
Republican governor in 105 years — has the
GOP been able to crack the Democratic domi
nation among rural voters.
“We feel strongly that we need to do better in
the rural areas than we have done on the aver
age,” said Ernest Angelo, manager of Reagan’s
successful primary campaigns in Texas in 1976
and this year.
“We have about 90 percent of the counties
organized, and that means we have a lot of
people willing to be identified with the cam
paign.”
But Democrats contend the rural Democra
tic tradition will prevail.
“My father taught me three things when I
was growing up,” says state Comptroller Bob
Bullock. “The first was, ‘Don’t vote Republi
can.’ The second was, ‘Don’t vote Republican,’
and the third was, ‘Don’t vote Republican.’”
Public opinion polls in Texas showed Reagan
leading Carter by margins of about 2-to-l be
fore the Democratic National Convention, but
the president has whittled Reagan’s lead now to
about 8 percentage points.
“If Reagan keeps talking, he may be behind
in a couple of weeks,” said one state representa
tive from a rural area of Central Texas.
“Basically what it looks like is, Texas is going
to be a horse race, ” said pollster George Shipley
of Austin. Shipley contends voters have not yet
focused on the presidential campaign, howev
er, and polls taken before mid-September may
be meaningless.
“The polls in Texas are misleading because
they show many traditional Democratic consti
tuencies, such as workers and Mexican-
Americans, leaning to Reagan, but history
tends to show that on election day they will fall
back into the Democratic column,” Shipley
said. “I think Texas is up for grabs and it could
go either way. ”
Shipley said his surveys taken since the
Democratic convention indicate Reagan is fac
ing a credibility problem concerning his econo
mic proposals — “of those who have opinions, a
slight majority do not believe Reagan can do
what he says, and that is his credibility
problem. ”
Clements is directing the Reagan campaign
in Texas, and is utilizing a mammoth telephone
bank operation to identify GOP voters and get
them to vote on Nov. 3.
The Republicans hoped to raise enough
money to finance the telephone operation and
the remainder of the state campaign in one
huge fundraiser — a dinner in Houston featur
ing Reagan, Bush, Gerald Ford and John Con-
nally.
Carter backers fought bitterly during the
primary campaign and national convention with
Texas supporters of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy,
D-Mass., but leaders of both sides joined at a
campaign kickoff to proclaim the state party is
united and ambitiously campaigning for Carter.
“I was a Kennedy supporter and I’m still a
Kennedy supporter, ” said Marc Campos, presi
dent of the Mexican-American Democrats.
“But our commitment was to the Democratic
party and to the Democratic nominee.
“We have a good record to sell for President
Carter. His record of Hispanic appointments is
the best of all the 38 presidents combined, and
we think we re going to be able to turn out the
Mexican-American votes in South Texas and in
the urban centers based on the president’s re
cord.
“I think we’ve found out in the last two elec
tions in 1976 and 1978 that the Republicans
dumping a lot of bucks into Mexican-American
areas doesn’t work. Polls may show it about 65
to 35 for Carter now, but on election day you
can count on 80 percent of the Mexican-
Americans to vote Democratic. ”
Labor leaders, blacks and representatives of
leading women’s organizations have joined the
Carter team in Texas in an effort to offset
Reagan’s popularity in conservative areas such
as Dallas and West Texas and the appeal of
Texan George Bush in his hometown of
Houston.
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It’s your turn
Performers love Aggie concert crowds
Editor:
This letter is in response to Albert C. Gross’
letter, which appeared in the September 25
edition of the Battalion. I have been to a few
Town Hall concerts in the last three years and I
would like to suggest that the Aggie “crowd” is
far from rude. On the other hand, our crowd is
fast becoming very well known among artists
and their booking agents by virtue of recent
shows such as The Beach Boys, The Oak Ridge
Boys, Pablo Cruise, Mel Tillis, Anne Murray,
Ronnie Milsap, and most recently, Larry Gatlin
and the Gatlin Brothers Band. All of these
artists have been nothing less than delighted
with the A&M “crowd.” Anne Murray told the
audience they were the best audience she had
ever played for. Ronnie Milsap has told other
audiences that there is no audience anywhere
like the one at A&M. Larry Gatlin, his
brothers, and the rest of the band, began raving
about how great the audience was on their way
down the steps of the stage. Later, in the dres
sing room, they said they hoped to play here
again in the future. This type of response from
artists is invaluable to Town Hall in bringing;
other popular artists.
As for the hecklers in question, I personally
apologized to Gatlin for their actions during the
intermission, whereupon Larry replied that it
had been a relatively minor incident, and he
even took a moment to pat himself on the back
for his handling of the situation. Incidentally,
two intoxicated males and one female were re
moved from the Coliseum at intermission and,
as I understand it, they were not students at
this university.
I guess my whole point in writng this letter is
to let the A&M “crowd” know how big a factor
they are currently playing in our booking of
concerts. In fact, those A&M students are our
strongest selling point. It is really great to be
able to tell an artist he or she is about to play in
front of the best audience they have ever seen,
see the questioning look in their eyes, and then
see them shaking their heads in disbelief as they
walk off the stage. For those of you who Saw
Anne Murray or Larry Gatlin among others.
you know what I mean. Thanks Aggies! Keepuj
the good work.
Michael Parkman ’81
Chairman, MSC Town Hall
Correction
A story in Monday’s Battalion about thf
Peace Corps contained some errors.
Peace Corps volunteers serve a two-yeai
term, not one of three years, as the story indi
cated. Mike Bowker should have been reported
as saying that, for a prospective employee of thf
World Bank, two years of work at a bank in i
foreign country’s capital might be a better qual
ification than two years of experience at a home
town bank.
Warped
By Scott McCullar
The Battalion
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