Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, February 12, 1986
Opinion
Under the big top
The antics of all involved in the Filipino presidential election
would make even the most accomplished circus performers jeal
ous.
Early vote tallies were inconclusive. President Ferdinand
Marcos, according to the government election commission, is
leading 53 percent to his opponent’s 47. Unofficial counts show
the challenger, Corazon Aquino, ahead by the same margin.
Aquino held a victory rally of sorts, claiming “the people have
won this election.”
The results still are unclear five days after the polls closed.
The National Assembly is charged with determining the official
outcome and has yet to agree on rules for the election canvass.
Thirty computer operators tallying votes walked out Sun
day, claiming fraud in the tabulation, which showed Marcos
leading. Other reports of violence, sabotage, vote-buying, intim
idation and ballot box stuffing and stealing cloud the legitimacy
of the so-called democratic election.
Marcos has the power to declare the election void, as he
threatened shortly after the first unofficial counts showed
Aquino ahead.
The farcical proceedings have turned a serious democratic
event into a circus even P.T. Barnum would be proud of.
The Battalion Editorial Board
Behavior of inner city poor not unique to blacks
Before I could
write this column I
had to call my par
ents in Florida. I had
to ask if I could write
that my maternal grandfather,
Richard
Cohen
seem
ingly the storied immigrant of Ameri
can mythology, tried to abandon his
family. After coming to America, he was
pressured by relatives here to do the
right thing. Only reluctantly did he send
for his wife and children. That’s how my
mother came to America.
ily lore by way of saying that the behav
ior now associated with the inner-city
blacks has been seen before. I raise it,
further, with the absolute confidence
that what was true for my family was
true for many others. You don’t have to
go back far in any family, especially one
that was once poor, to find the relative
who went out for a pack of cigarettes
and never came back. In time, the kids
called a different man “daddy.”
same sort of thing. This so-called facing
of the facts is nothing new. When
enough “facts” get faced, people wind
up getting lynched.
My paternal grandfather was hardly a
mythmaker, either. He, too, came to the
United States with the promise to make
enough money to send for his family.
He, too, let time slip by until the women
he had left behind — an arranged mar
riage in any case — must have seemed
less and less attractive. Under pressure
from relatives, he too finally sent money
for the passage.
It is important to dredge up the worst
of your family’s history because increas
ingly people are citing the apparent dis-
intergration of the poor black family as
proof that there is something awfully
wrong with young black men
thing in the genes.
some-
I cite these stories from my own fam-
In a Playboy magazine article, Hod-
ding Carter III quotes a fellow guest at a
Washington dinner party as saying,
“You have to face the fact that some
people are culturally and genetically un
suited for democracy.” I have heard the
The awful truth is that no one can to
tally explain what is happening to the
poor black family. No one really knows
the precise cause of the high rate of out-
of-wedlock births, or if there is only one
cause. There are studies to show that
welfare is a factor, studies to show that it
is not, and guesses at what would hap
pen if (as some have suggested) welfare
were abandoned altogether. Like the
archetypal immigrant family where one
son becomes a cop and another a crook,
there is no explaining why welfare
launched many blacks into the middle
class and kept others hooked on the
dole.
grandfathers reluctantly wound up
doing what is called “the right thing.” (A
cousin, though, did not; the family he
left behind in Europe eventually per
ished in the Holocaust.) Many others —
as countless of the poor have always
done — abandoned their families, rais
ing new ones whose decendants now
make sanctimonious remarks about the
innate immorality of blacks.
blacks is also a product of culture; e( j \
economic reality — unemployme
poverty, and, yes, it’s intendedantidol
welfare. When people are poor,*ki ;inN
they simply cannot cope with
behave in ways that may be immorall ’ u P fl
that make sense to them. This is notto
is how people!
immorality is canti
MEX!
esider
tleg
akin]
S. aid
In a I
Of course, it’s too simple to compare
my grandfathers with ghetto kids today.
They have come from different cul
tures, different eras and, besides, my
If ghetto youth and my grandfathers
had something in common, it was that
economics played a role in their think
ing. My grandfathers struck out for
America thinking life here would be
better for them. It wasn’t. It was worse
and one of them never found work that
lasted. The family that he was not al
lowed to abandon eventually came apart
anyway — a wife dead, a daughter sent
to live with relatives and two boys put
into an orphanage.
Things change, but they also remain
the same. The lifestyle of poor urban
blacks behave; it
The "gene” for
within us all.
In a different era, people wonden
about men like my grandfather,
said their poverty and exotic wap
in their “blood.” The Americanra
logy of immigrant success later w;
over the dismal reality and.cleam
up. But the harsh truth is thatthefi
erty that ravages the poor black
of today also blighted the white poor
yesterday — maybe not identical
maybe not as extensively, but certaii
as tragically. When it comes to inirwi
ity, the house we all live in is r
glass. Throw stones at your peril
Richard Cohen is a columnist forth
Washington Post Writers Group.
r, Ca
ivate
Allan
Mail Call
Militant protest hinders goals
EDITOR:
In response to Sheila Clout’s letter of Feb. 6:
There are many women out there who believe that the so-
called “feminist realization” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Al
though feminists’ concern about discrimination on the basis
of sex is a valid one, militant protest serves only to hinder
their efforts at being respected as equals.
It would be be better to spend less energy complaining
about the injustice of it all and devote more time to devel
oping your own potential and realizing your own goals. Hal
Hammons brought up a good point — if a woman pursues a
career simply to prove a point or to show she’s “just as good as
any man,” she is to be pitied. She has really missed the point.
Women are people with the same dreams and capabilities
of all people. That we also have the added gift of being able
to bear children should be a source of joy, not anger or bitter
ness or sorrow.
I also disagree with Clout’s idea that to be a lady is to be a
passive plaything in the world of men. Being a lady earns a
woman respect. It is not patronizing nor demeaning. I would
feel demeaned by being considered only a woman, for being
a lady implies a much higher status.
I applaud the ladies who courageously stand up today to
say they are proud to be housewives and mothers as well as
those who pursue other challenging careers ouside of the
home. To attain our goals and to realize our potential, to en
joy what they’re doing — whether it be as housewife or
mother or businesswoman or lawyer or doctor
what we are looking for anyway?
Julie K. Hope
Class of’87
Future Physician, Wife and Mother
isn’t that
Twelfth Man a yearlong job
EDITOR:
We were shocked and appalled at the apathetic attitude
displayed by some members of the Texas A&M student body
during the A&M vs. SMU basketball game. These “privile
ged” students had very visible seats on the floor at the north
end of the court. Their lack of enthusiasm and failure to par
ticipate in the traditional A&M yells is a sad reflection on our
scholarship athletes.
They were unceasingly supported during the fall semes
ter, including the occasion in Dallas on Jan. 1. However, they
did not feel compelled to show the same consideration and
support for their fellow athletes on the basketball team.
We hope those at fault will reassess their superior atti
tudes and realize the true spirit of a Texas Aggie. The
Twelfth Man is a year round responsibility for ALL members
of the student body.
Lisa Holy ’87
Michelle Lawson ’88
Be there!
The Battalion
USPS 045 360
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwestjournalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Editor Michelle Powe
Managing Editor Kay Mallett
Opinion Page Editor Loren Steffy
City Editor. Jerry Oslin
News Editor Cathie Anderson
Sports Editor. Travis Tingle
Editorial Policy
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Regents.
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EDITOR:
On February 18th at 7:30 . . .
•YOU might win tickets to the Houston Rockets game
• YOU might win dinner at Dan Patrick’s Sports Market
• YOU might get VIP passes to Fizz.
BUT. . .
. . . YOU must be in the stands during the Aggie Ladies
vs. Texas Tech women’s basketball game at G. Rollie White
Coliseum . . .
This game is sponsored by the Brazos County A&M
Mothers’ Club and their portion of the receipts will go toward
two Texas A&M Scholarships, one to a Bryan High senior
student and one to an A&M Consolidated High School stu
dent.
BE THERE!
Mrs. Richard Crawford
Brazos County A&M Mothers’ Club
Letters to the Editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial
staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length but will make every
effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter mus be signed and must
include the address and telephone n umber of the write
Deficit unites, divides
More so than
any other major
public issue, the
budget deficit
unites philo-
John
Cunniff
AP News Analysis
sophically and separates politically.
Everyone is against it, but they’re
against it in their own ways.
Asked where to cut spending,
Americans give a thousand differ
ent answers, and many of those an
swers are colored by their partic
ular relationship to government,
particularly by the benefits they re
ceive.
Therefore, while the desire to re-
duce government spending ap
pears to be as strong as ever, the re
luctance to cut spending where it
might hurt particular projects is
equally strong or stronger. It is a
strange case of division in unity.
Theoretically, there is almost no
limit to the number of spending
items that can be eliminated or re
duced in a budget of $994 billion,
but if asked to pick them every
American’s list would differ in
some way.
The Grace Commission, formally
referred to as the President’s Pri
vate Sector Survey on Cost Control,
last year listed 2,478 “separate, dis
tinct, and specific” recommenda
tions to save billions of dollars by
reducing waste.
Practically speaking, it said,
“these savings, if fully imple
mented, could virtually eliminate
the reported deficit by the 1990s
versus an alternative deficit of
$10.2 trillion in the 1990s if no ac
tion is taken.”
These measures, it continued,
could save $424 billion in three
years, rising to $1.9 trillion a year
by the year 2000, “without raising
taxes, without weakening America’s
needed defense buildup and with
out in any way harming necessary
social welfare programs.”
But implementation is another
matter, because one person 1 *
“waste” is another’s income or secu
rity.
In place of effective action, Con
gress and presidents have snipped
and clipped here and there but
have avoided real surgery. In fact,
trickery of a sort has been resorted
to by shoving some items “off bud
get.”
Devices proposed in this year's
budget proposal include sellingoff
assets, selling off loans (the pur
chasers presumably would seek to
collect at a, profit) and imposing
user fees, such as for federal meat
and poultry inspections.
An “oil import fee” to raise reve
nue has been mentioned, even b)
the president, but the difference
between a fee and a tax is a hair so
thin that even lexicographers have
difficulty presenting a convincing
distinction.
Perhaps the most promising
move made by Congress was pas
sage last year of the Gramm-Rud-
man Act, which requires the grad
ual elimination of budget deficitsbv
1991. But that law was immediate!)’
challenged in the courts.
Unable to cut spending — unable
to decide what items should be
shaved or excised altogether
Americans and their leaders have
simply resorted to the technique of
spending beyond their means and
wishing for a miracle.
Instead, economists argue, the'
have flirted with the threat of eco
nomic disasters in the form ofinfla
tion, high interest rates and deep
recessions.
But even if these disasters re
main threats rather than actualities
the American people already pay a
big price, because one-third of per
sonal income taxes now go to pa)
for the big debts rather than for
government services.
John Cunniffis a business writer
for The Associated Press.
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