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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 1981)
Friday January 30, 1980 The comfort of fuzzy-wuzzies vs. elegance of fashion shoes L I I was not meant to be a cross-country walker. I was one of those blessed with a love of being driven everywhere I go. Alas, I am at the wrong university. I swear I have worn a symmetrical triangular path between Mosher Hall, the MSC and The Battalion office. My feet will never be the same. They show the wear and tear. They revolt every morning when I slip out of my fuzzy- wuzzy slippers and into my fashionable shoes. The calluses are very seldom bothered any more. They have found a permanent home with my feet. Consequently, my feet are very ugly, not to mention sometimes painful. Nothing disgusts me more than to look at a man’s feet. Men’s feet are always wonderfully soft. This is universally true because men wear Put/wmi&Qz- Offhand By Venita McCellon nice, natural blend socks, low heels and shoes with real toes in them. Women, on the other hand, must, by con vention, wear stinky nylon hose, three-inch heels that compress their toes into one-half- inch stubs and air-conditioned shoes in the dead of winter. This, though, should be expected, because men invented high-heels and nylons. Don’t deny it! No woman is masochistic enough to inflict the burden of high heels on her friends. I’ve considered plastic surgery for my feet But, I’m sure that when I visit the friendlv doctor he’ll promise to work wonders for mv trompers with those beautiful orthopedic shoes. Sorry to disappoint you, doc, but no way. 11 have 36 perfectly decent pairs of high heels in my closet dying to be worn. It’s not chic to wear basic black and basic orthopedic. So, bowing to the dictates of fashion, I wi]| continue to limp painfully from Mosher Hall to the M SC to The Battalion office and back home. I will soon be easy to spot on campus. I’ll be the one in basic black and fuzzy-wuzzy slippers. At least I’ll be comfortable. It ain't ikiinycLffiygcd unless it hurts.... Drastic overload is afflicting the senses WASH!Sr ton 10 f ’i BR ^ DER directly into the policy desisions of the govern- AbHlNUION I don t know about any- ment. But this impulse to participatory, plebis- ne else, but my senses and emotional circuits cetary democracy is fundamentally at odds with I / , T« I Si ir re suffering from drastic overload. The scenes od sentiments of the last 10 days have made it ear impossible to focus one’s judgment or jrite with a degree of detachment and perspec- ve — which is what I get paid to do. There may be a time when it is possible to iy something sensible about the lessons of the 44 days of America’s captivity by Iran, to assess le future of our relations with that country, or I > analyze why this society and 52 of its citizens ere held thrall for so long. There may also )me a time when something pertinent can be ritten about the opening days of the Reagan Iministration. But I am not at that point now. My head — like yours — is swimming in the ivid images of the hostages’ release and home- >ming, overlaid on the pageantry of the lange of governments. It has been a time in which the Super Bowl — | apotheosis of overpromoted sports specta- es — has been outdistanced by events in the al world, or at least the television rendition of lose events. We have seen history' unfolding irough the camera lens in that special way — instant replays laid atop each other — that Is the consciousness with a montage of drama- cally intense scenes and almost obliterates iderstanding. There s a problem in this kind of perception •at is perhaps more fundamental for our form government than we realize. As Garry Wills >ints out in his new- bok on the Federalist ipers, the men who devised the American institution were wise enough to see that the .pansion of the Republic to continental mensions might, by itself, serve to distill the iser claims of selfish men and permit the na- >nal interest to prevail. But no one has been wise enough as yet to fine how the shrinkage of the whole would to e dimensions of a television screen can be ade compatible with the workings of a repre- ntative government. Because television brings each of us into such timate contact with the figures, the forces and e events of the world, there is a powerful ipulse to translate our individual reactions the concept of the representative Republic we are. It is no accident that in the television age, all of the intermediary institutions created to dis till mass attitudes into policy — the political parties. Congress, the presidency — have fal len into disrepair and disrepute. And it is cer tainly no accident that in the full flowering of this television era, the President of the United State is a benign television host and actor — a sort of Walter Cronkite with opinions. The best television news show I know — CBS “Sunday Morning” with Charles Kuralt — tries to deal with this quandary. The program’s producers try to put the “events” the TV news cameras have recorded that week into perspec tive, by setting them in a framework of the arts and nature — leaving long moments of silence, in which you are invited to reflect on what you have seen. But even in this deliberate effort to achieve perspective in a medium designed for immedia cy, there is an inescapable paradox. Last Sun day, Richard Threlkeld went to Dubuque, Iowa, to view the hostage-inaugural week through the eyes of its people. The “estab lishing shot for the sensitive segment showed the oath-taking being watched by townspeople on a row of television screens. Their reactions emerged in the interviews that followed. The irony was that despite the serious effort to distill the human response, for the viewer this was just triple-level electronic gimmickry: a television picture of people watching a televi sion picture of a real event. Once the nation — and world — are wired, it is almost impossible to unwire them. Jeff Greenfield, the commentator on “Sun day Morning, asked the right question: How do you separate our emotions at the scenes of the hostages return from our judgement as citizens about future American relations with Iran? He did not offer an answer, and I don’t have one either. But the challenge is there — as ubiquitous as television itself Fundamentalists opposing networks Varped YOU WATCHeO THE OVERAGE >F THE CAPTURE AND THE RELEASE, /VOW cones THE PEAL Sltet: THE MARKETING.! By DAVID E. ANDERSON United Press International Religious groups, dismayed by what they see as a continuing increase of sex and violence on television, are getting ready to take on the com mercial TV networks. The most formidible of the coalitions, being put together to monitor and develop a response to what they find distasteful in the area of sexual programming, promises to be the Moral Major ity headed by television evangelist Jerry Fal- well. Another is the National Federation for Decency headed by Tupelo, Miss., Methodist minister Donald Wildmon. Wildmon, operating out of his church and home and with a next-to-nothing budget, has been an annoying gadfly for network television executives for the last several years. Falwell, who came to national attention last year as a leading spokesman for the new reli gious right, has used the pulpit of his Thomas Roads Baptist Church and Old Time Gospel Hour television program to flail immorality on television. The alliance of the two groups is expected to be announced sometime in February at a press conference. First on the agenda for the new coalition will be a massive monitoring and polling effort to determine the publics attitudes toward net work programming. The National Federation for Decency has already made some attempts at such monitor- By Scott McCullar ing, but the new campaign will be much more sophisticated. Last fall, for example, it released a study of programming that included such categories as “sex incidents per hour” by network, top users of sex in commercials, the top in sex-oriented programs, the least sponsors of sex on TV and the 10 most constructive and 10 least construc tive programs. Wildmon identified Revlon as the leading sponsor of sex and Volkswagen as the leading sponsor of profanity. “It will be the biggest response ever to what the public sees on television,” Moral Majority spokesman Cal Thomas told Broadcasting magazine. Precisely what action against objectionable programming will be urged by the new coali tion is not yet clear. None of those involved will say, for example, whether it will support boycotts of sponsors of programs it finds objectionable. Wildmon’s National Federation has spon sored such boycotts in the past and Wildmon has been quoted as saying, “If I were an adver- RRST, THE BOOKS, THEtf THE TALK SHOWS, followed By * Hostages : the motion PICTURE "... I OF COURSE THEN WILL COME THE MADE-F0R-TV SEQUAL" NOVIE + THE NBC SITCOM CUKE A PLAGUE IT DESCENDS) r\ , I -r- N'T F0BGEJ THE SOUNDTRACK ALBUM 91 <LNN1 ROG ERS, THE SAME, {eor S3 platers) The wrrws HE 1$ uGSTAfrE* I GAMfc f '%* AR YOU STARTING TO FCE *E A HOSTAGE ALREADY? tiser, I d look very carefully at my plans for television programming in the spring.” A separate monitoring project by the Nation al Coalition on Television Violence has re ported that despite public expressions of con cern the amount of violence on television has not decreased. The most scandalous revelation of the moni toring project, ” said the Rev. Nelson Price of the United Methodist Church’s Public Media Division, is the amount of violence on Satur day morning children’s programs. ” He said that, CBS children’s programs are six times more than violent than its prime time shows; ABC is four times more violent; and NBC 2.5 times more violent. Clearly the commercial networks are more interested in gathering an audience for adver tisers than in the welfare of children, Prfo* said. It is our hope that individuals and groups will let stations, networks and advertisers kno* of their displeasure with the amount of vio lence on television,” Price said. The Battalion ISPS 045 .160 MEMBER Fr«*» IttoctatKMi Now«b»e%t Ioumalum C oncrru Editor . . Dillard Stone Managing Editor Angelique Copeland Asit Managing Editor Todd Woodard 2* ^; tor r Debbie Nelson A«t. Oh; Editor Marcy Boyce New, Editor, Venita McCellon. c_. Scot K. Meyer Richard Oliver Focu, Editor Cathy Saathoff £ ff d ’ ’ o V Susan H °P h "s Staff Wrrter, Carolyn Barnes. Jane C. Brust i "Z ? U ? U1 ' B * rnie Fette - c indv Gee. Jon Heidtke. Belinda McCoy. Kathleen McElrov Marjorie McLaughlin. Kathv O Connell' _ Ritchie Priddy. Rick Stolle Scott McCullar Pbo,oE<lrtor Greg Gammon EDITORIAL POLICY Tf,r Bartahon a * non-profit, trlf tupportmg newspaper op- entrd tt m community xrvxe to Trtms SA W Vnnrrvti wd Brvao-Cofcar Station Opnuom etpmted in The BtttUoo mtt thme of the editor or the nuthor. and do not nemunh, rrprr tent the opnmmt of Term Cnnerwfy edminutraton or hcvfry members, or of the Bonrd of Regents Questions or comments concerning an\ editoriaJ matter should be directed to the editor LETTERS POLICY Letter, to the Editor should not exceed 300 sslords in lenith an are subject to being cut if they are longer. The rditorul stf rx m n es the nght to edit letters hr sty le and length, but e eccrs effort to maintain the author s intent Each Wjjt •ri'ot J so be signed, show the address and phone number efthr Columns and guest editorials are also welcome, and ur nut su jn t to the same length constraints as letters Address m mqu/ne, and correspondence to: Editor. The Battalion. M tyyd^fcDonald. Texas AicSt University . College Station. 1* The Battalion is published dailv during Texas A4tM »pnn* semesters, except for holidav and examination peno* Mail subscriptions are $16 75 per semester. $33 25 per sd** 1 sear an $35 per foil year Advertising rates furnished on ^ quest Our address The Battalion. 216 Reed McDonald BuiW*$ lexas A6rM University. College Station. TX 77843 a&mI SociT (SWH I E n 8* l l | confel Thl teachl htl Caml|