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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 28, 1986)
Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, February 28, 1986 Opinion Leave me alone; I'm trying to be fiscally irresponsible I bought a T- shirt recently that sums up my finan cial status. It re ads: “I can’t be overdrawn, 1 still have checks left.” Actually, I’m not so financially naive that I don’t know that the number of checks I have left has nothing to do with the amount of money I have left. I’m just so financially apathetic that I don’t care. I balanced my checkbook this week for the f irst time in more than a year. It was simple. I threw away my old check book register and waited until I got my most recent bank statement. I put a brand new register in my checkbook, wrote in the amount the bank said I had and subtracted all the checks I’ve writ ten that weren’t included in the statement. See, I know the basic steps. I came up with a negative balance of $70.68. Now I can relax because I fi nally know how much money I don’t have. Actually, negative $70 isn’t too bad for someone who’s had a negative balance of $600 on more than one occa sion. I have a condition known as fiscal ir responsibility. It’s not an uncommon condition. In fact. I’m not to blame for this condition because I’m just following the example set by my country’s leaders. I spend recklessly until I’m deeply in debt and then I make radical cuts to compensate, just like the government does. President Reagan spends wildly on the military and Star Wars and then cuts deeply into social programs, education and other unimportant things. I spend recklessly on dresses from Blooming- dales and trips to March Gras and then cut back on food, rent and other unim portant things. It’s the same concept. We’re both dealing in negative numbers. President Reagan and I. Of course. I’m dealing in two-, sometimes three-, digit negative numbers and President Reagan is work ing with nine- and 10-figure negative numbers. But it’s all relative. He’s got a much wider range of choices to cut into than I do. But I don’t see anyone threatening to destroy Reagan’s credit rating or send him to jail for overspending. I don’t think it’s fair for creditors to be too hard on me if I’m occasionally in the red. The United States has been in the red for years. And as long as the politicians are allowed to be fiscally irresponsible, I should be too. It’s hypocritical for this government to have a different set of rules for the government and for the people. I’ll balance my checkbook when Rea gan does. Until then, leave me alone. I still have a couple hundred checks left. Michelle Powe is a senior journalism major and editor for The Battalion. Michelle Powe United Fceture Syndicate No ethics for achieving fame G. Gordon Lid- dy’s least-favorite airport is Dallas- Fort Worth , he tells USA 'Today. H is favorite air port clubs are the ones run by Amer ican Airlines. His favorite book on just ordinary crime, he tells U.S. News & World Report, is The Friends of Eddie Coyle and his recommendation for a book on special-tactics warfare is Crossfire. Got any more questions? Yes! Who is G. Gordon baddy’s favor ite columnist? It used to be Jack Ander son who, according to witnesses, he once set out to kill. Who is his favorite psychi atrist? It may be the one whose office he was convicted of burglarizing. What is his favorite office building? It just could The Battalion USPS 045 360 Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Michelle Powe, Editor Kay Mallett, Managing Editor Loren Steffy, Opinion Page Editor Jerry Oslin, City Editor Cathie Anderson, News Editor Travis Tingle, Sports Editor Editorial Policy i hc B.million is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a community service to Texas AStXI and Br\un-College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the Editorial Board or the author and do not necessarily rep resent the opinions of Texas A&.X1 administrators, faculty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department of Communications. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&X1 regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. .Mail subscriptions are $16.75 per semester, $33.25 per school year and $35 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on request. Our address: The Battalion. 216 Reed XlcDonald Building. Texas A&-X1 University. College Station. 'TX 778-13. Second class postage paid at College Station. TX 77843. be the Watergate where his burglary team was caught. You get little hint fom either USA 'Today or U.S. News that Liddy is an ad judicated and unrepentant criminal. Neither publication pauses so much as to say that in furtherance of Richard Nixon’s re-election, and using the cover of national security, G. Gordon Liddy did break and enter, burgarize and in other ways besmirch public office. His punishment, though, has not necessarily fit his crime. He was sentenced to 52 1 /2 months in prison and signed to appear on “Miami Vice.” What is going on here? It is true, of course, that Liddy has paid his debt to society and that he is free, under the laws he used to flout, to make a living anyway he can. But to USA Today and U.S. News, he is nothing but a celebrity. When the former published a special section on airports, Liddy was just one of the famous it turned to: OJ. Simpson loathes O’Hare. Ann Landers likes it be cause it means she’s home. That’s the way Nancy Kissinger feels about New York’s John F. Kennedy. And Dr. Ben jamin Spock has a soft spot in what Liddy would say is his bleeding heart for the airport in Kansas Gity. Each and ev ery one of these people is given a title: sportscaster, columnist, pediatrician, “wife of Henry Kissinger,” and, for Liddy, author. Yes, author. Long ago someone observed that American life is turning into a parody of a television talk show — a chat with a nuclear physicist, and actress, a volun teer at a hospice and a Nazi war crimi nal. Each gets a mug of coffee and each gets to call one another by his or her First name — “What a nice suit, Fritz.” They are all equally famous, and fame after all, is what counts. It hardly mat ters anymore how you got there. What only matters is that you are famous. Gordon Liddy is the personification of that ethic — a barometer of the na tion’s hypocrisy. Mothers rail against obscenity in rock lyrics, but don’t even think about Liddy appearing on “Miami Vice.” The president’s guardian of mor ality, Edwin Meese III, deputizes a posse to investigate the effects of por nography on everything from children to green plants, but doesn’t ask the same kids what lesson they draw fom the life and times of Gordon Liddy. (The only thing sillier than Meese’s mission is the press asking a president who once played opposite a monkey what he thinks of his son appearing on television in his underwear.) If L.iddy had stolen cash he would never have been heard of again. We do not forgive crimes against property. But crimes against the Constitution are a different matter. That is politics and politics, we obviously think, is some sort of joke. The real joke, though, is that Liddy himself knew better. For his poli tics, he was willing to steal, to burglarize, to plant recording devices and, accord ing to witnesses, to kill or be killed — al though that may have been nothing but talk. At any rate, Liddy’s politics was to rob you of yours. A nation needs its scoundrels if only to remind it that it stands for something. Scoundrels personify a society’s values — what is permissible, what is not and what line can not be crossed. Liddy, who crossed many of them, would be the perfect scoundrel — the lawyer with contempt for the law, the public official who betrays the public trust, the man who, in his own little way, made the world worse for being in it. But the demand for celebrities triv ializes both the good and the bad — the baby doctor and the crook from Water gate. OJ. Simpson hates O’Hare and Tony Randall says he can’t tell one air port from another. Singer Dionne War wick thinks “New Edition” may win a Grammy, Author Gordon Liddy has two crime books to recommend and Idi Amin, we may presume, has an unlisted number. He could be an author too. Richard Cohen is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. Richard Cohen Mail Call Let tc l s to the id it m sin mid tint r\< red U to , n ds in let n’t ll I lie editorial Staff reel tii’ht in edit lettets Ini st\le .md length hut util in.ike even effort tO nuintlW thtltlk | intent. Each letter must be signed anti must include the address and telephonem the writer. Cynthia Gay — devil’s advocate? EDITOR: I was appalled when I read Cynthia Gay’s article of Feb. l/.Peth she was merely playing devil’s advocate to Guest Columnist LoraSe preceding article praising the manned space program and its need; continuation in face of the recent shuttle disaster, but 1 don’t think sol article has that strident tone of protest that only the ignorant andi formed can summon up. Te> pill Kg'- s flnive |coun(i Jtrollei Isavs, Jgom' lexpen | the ot [fe< I I Ik | dink" ;cani|> spend Isawl Gay focuses repeatedly <ui the price the simtt!<• pu>gi,mi ik!:j the American people. She quoutes a Figure of $1-1 billion; accurate.‘ , ‘ ‘ , I ■ . ° , , [I 511 as it goes, but certainly nothing to become overly upset about,e$pe_® et( when viewed in light of the fact that the United States easily spendsfoBlhi billion a year on defense alone. ; Texas Bear in mind the fact that aforementioned $1-1 billion wasspenton period of 15 years. This averages out to a little less than $1 billionavcii lot of money, yes. but we knew that we were in tor an expensiveundt® ing when we began the shuttle program. She also mentions “theura fortable Figure of $1.2 billion — the price of the Challenger." Noon tar y Figure is loo high a price to pay for the profitable advanceim; human knowledge — and certainly much more profitable knowkdj gained from the reactions o! human bcm>_;x ib.m I u im the dn <• li vations ol robots and computers. If you must find some overspendir.;^K n true overspending — to rage about, then direct vour attention toHardfcl iis flagrant overindulgence of the U.S. Department of Defense. Ited S The fact of the matter is, man simply must enter space. It’s gecera m little crowded at home. And while the loss of life during the endeavor 1# be regretted, it is also to be expected. Every new frontier is dangerousaB’^ many people have died on the ones that once existed here on Earth-:B ,sa ress New World, the seas, and the polar ice caps. ■g*' Thus far, only 1 1 people who have partic ipated in the manneds[n [at|! program in the past 25 years — of a cast of hundreds — have died kW this compare, even percentage-wise, to all those who perished on the.vH a Frontiers here on Earth? Is this too high a price to pay-At the nil® j sounding callous and unsvinpathetic. I don’t think so. i e \ p. To bring out a hackneyed and perhaps overused argument,ifv get out there first, then someone else will. They might be Germanormt-j t sian or Chinese, but someone will go into space and thus rise toasffBt ou dancy on Earth. There’s a lot of rich, unclaimed real estate out therci |tflt '°n destiny awaits us in sjvace. Robots aren’t men, and can never replat in any extraterrestrial situation. H-t Whiu To paraphrase the Bible, the meek shall inherit the F.arth. The rest us will escape to the stars. Floyd Largent ’88 accompanied by two signatures Honesty and accuracy essential EDITOR: 1 have a few questions to ask The Battalion opinion writersuh recently equated Reed Irvine’s watch dog organization Accuracy in .bi mia with witch-hunts, McCarthyism, anti-democracy and anti-ireesp 1. Are Truth in Advertising laws examples of McCarthyism? 2. Is the Better Business Bureau involved in witch-hunts? 3. Are consumer advocacy groups anti-democratic because tk\^ “tolerate” bad products along with the good? If we were to follou ilir ] soning (or*should I say unreason) of these writers we could onlyco®j the above conclusions. Once again we have been treated to a lot of rW without supporting evidence. Have these writers done any reseat what AIA does or what it stands for? Have they read their reporij doesn’t sound like it. However, we should not be too hard on them- 1 - are only guilty of following in the footsteps of their professional breM According to Reed Irvine in his article “Accuracy in Academia: j and Reality” (published in the Feb. 1 issue of Human Events) all but oitj the reporters he contacted who had written articles about AIA had- read AIA's reports or even contacted anyone in AIA's organic According to Irvine, “that’s how myths about ‘thought police,’‘hiring? dents as stoolies,’ and running tests for ‘ideological purity’arepK? gated.” Neither the media nor academia are sacred, holy institutionsevf^ from criticism. The reactionary and hypocritical resjxmse they havefl AIA shows they think they are. I can only say 1 wish AIA had been an® when my economics professor alternately B.S.ed the hours away,orfl walks, instead of teaching. The class had to guess their way through £ standardized tests and most failed. The crown of it all came when he *1 an hour late for the final exam. Was anything done when this formed dent comjdained to the academic appeals board? No — he was | by the sacred institution he belonged to. AIA is not anti-democratic or against free speech — rather the'-1 jjort these freedoms in dealing with academic complaints similarWl personal experience I have related. One such instance, they discus# the above mentioned article, involved an Arizona State student who removed from the student newspaper after complaining to the Bo# Regents about one of his professors. Whose free speech rights were 1 * lated here? I really wonder if you could be “tolerant” in this situation Honesty and accuracy in the Media and Academia are absolute!)] sential to a free society. These qualities are the least we should expect"] even demand — from them. In the fairness and free speech IwouldM see The Battlion reprint Reed Irvine’s article from Human Events,^ something really radical, interview the man. Florence Mayes ’83 EDITOR’S NOTE: Glenn Martha’s Wednesday column on AIAsti basic goals of the organization, which came from its newsletter. fhe AIA reprinted excerpts of a Battalion article about A&M^' professor Terry Anderson — without confirming the quotes, orclm the context in which they were used. Now that the AIA is having top 1111 its cards on the table, its members are trying to cover their tracks. W 1 ecutive director of AIA, Les Csorba, is now claiming that he verify quotes taken from the October 1984 issue of The Battalion with the and with the writer of the article. Not true. AIA never received ain't 1 cation from The Battalion about the quotes used. Csorba never event to anyone on this staff about the article until January 1986 AIA article was published and the damage done. So much for accuracv.