Page 2/The Battalion/Tuesday, May 6, 1986
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Opinion
'Decency' group's efforts
misguided but not wasted
I frequently go
to 7-Eleven stores
to satisfy an irre
pressible urge —
for Cornnuts. I
can’t help myself.
Cornnuts always
have been a bigger
attraction for me
than the not-for-
sale-to-anyone-un- Lor©n St@ffy
der-18-years- of-
age magazines carefully hidden behind
the counter.
Occasionally I might catch a glimpse
of the Playboy nameplate and wonder
how Christie Hefner, an avowed femi
nist, can be in charge of such a publica
tion and not suffer a severe personality
split.
Other than this reason for pondering
ideological hypocrisy, it doesn’t matter
to me that 7-Eleven will no longer be
selling Playboy and its staples-in-the-na-
vel competitor, Penthouse. What does
matter is (he reason the convenience
stores’ parent company, Southland
Corp., arrived at its no-smut decison.
Southland has been under increasing
pressure from the National Federation
for Decency, an anti-pornography
group the magazines compare to Nazis.
Southland denies its decision was in
fluenced by the NED, but Don Wild-
mon, the group’s representative before
the Attorney General’s Commission on
Pornography, claims otherwise.
With more than 300,000 members,
the NED is not the small group of radi
cal fundamentalists that critics have
been writing it off as. Its demonstrations
are organized and the demonstrators
are informed and prepared to deal with
opposing arguments. Last year the NED
launched a massive protest in Dallas
with more than 10,000 people marching
to the steps of Southland’s headquar
ters.
Although the opposition can argue
the relevancy of the term “decency,” few
can say these people don’t have strong
convictions.
So why Playboy} Why Penthouse?
This group proved itself to be a formi
dable foe of pornography, so why attack
the most socially accepted of all the “gir
lie” magazines? Why not go after the
real threats that other, less organized
groups can’t?
Playboy’s pages frequently are graced
with excerpts from best-selling novels by
such respectable authors as Arthur C.
Clarke and William F. Buckley. Presi
dent Reagan’s son is on its payroll, and
it’s one of the 10 largest-circulating
magazines in the country. Penthouse’s
circulation can’t quite compare with
Playboy’s (it’s only in the top 20), but it,
too, is frequented by famous names, in
cluding Jerry Falwell, who heads a sizea
ble anti-pornography campaign him
self. The 7-Eleven ban barely will put a
dent in smut distribution — 3 percent of
Playboy’s sales at most.
Is NFD’s effort wasted? Misguided is
a better word.
NED targeted the “largest purveyor
of pornography.” But the magazine’s
obscenity is, legally, questionable at best.
NED merely lashed out at the largest
and most visible manifestation of a more
latent illness. They attacked the symp
toms but not the cause.
It has not been determined yet if such
magazines as Playboy and Penthouse
are linked to sexual crimes, violence and
child abuse. It probably never will.
But there are areas of the pornogra
phy industry — however it is defined —
that clearly are prohibited by law. Yet
many vile publications — especially
child pornography —continue to circu
late despite laws against it. They pose a
far greater threat to society — espeically
children — than a few bare breasts
nestled between ads for whiskey and
cigarettes.
Some forms are so explicit that they
serve as instruction manuals for child
molesters, explaining how to pick up
children in a park and sexually assault
them or how to perform incest — com
plete with illustrations — on a nine-
year-old girl.
Here is where our society needs the
NED to concentrate its efforts. Here is
the real threat the NED sees the poten
tial for behind the 7-Eleven counters.
I’m not belittling NFD’s efforts with
ludicrous cries of censorship. NED is en
joying the spoils of effective activism.
But the battle it chose to fight was the
least productive and easiest to win. If
pornographic material is responsible for
sexual crime, NED has gone after the
misdemeanors and left the capital of
fenses undisturbed.
Loren Steffy is a junior journalism ma
jor and the Opinion Page editor for
The Battalion.
Waldheim an innocent victim
Art Buchwald
Unless I am
presented with
convincing evi
dence to the con
trary, I have to go
along with Kurt
Waldheim’s story
that although he
was lieutenant on
the staff of a Nazi
general, he had no
idea that any atro- 1
cities were committed in Greece and Yu
goslavia during 1942 to 1945.
There is no reason at this point in
time to question the fact that the former
Secretary General of the U.N. was any
thing more than a translator for Ger
man Gen. Alexander Lohr, who unfor-
tunate 1 y cannot be with us today
because he was hanged as a war crimi
nal.
Despite unfounded accusations, it is
my humble opinion that Waldheim was
a victim, as were most German officers
of World War II.
I cannot verify it, but this is probably
what happened.
Waldheim, then a bright young offi
cer of Austrian birth, was assigned to
General Lohr’s staff. Lohr’s job was to
kill as many Yugoslavs and Greeks as he
possibly could and solve the Jewish Bal
kan question once and for all.
sion Gen. Lohr’s mission was to keep the
Yugoslav and Greek partisans from
looting stores.
When Waldheim first arrived and
presented himself to Gen. Lohr, the
general told him, “I need a translator.”
“Jawohl,” said Waldheim. “What
would you like me to translate?”
“Shakespeare. I love to read Shake
speare in the original. It relaxes me af
ter a long day on the battlefield.” Lohr
handed Waldheim a German copy of
Shakespeare and said, “I want a new
play on my desk every night.”
“What about my fighting, sir?”
“Don’t . orry about fighting. Leave
that for our boys in the field.”
So Waldheim moved into an office
three doors down from the general and
started to translate Shakespeare.
Every so often someone would rush
in and say, “We have 5,000 Greek men,
women and children in trucks outside.
What should we do with them?”
-Waldheim would yell, “That’s not my
department. Can’t you see I’m translat
ing ‘Hamlet’?”
Or an SS sergeant would crash in and
say, “Where are the freight trains for
the Jews of Salonika?”
But Lt. Waldheim never knew about
any of this. He was under the impres-
Waldheim would put his hands over
his ears so he couldn’t hear what the
man was saying and run out of his of
fice.
For three years Waldheim kept his
hands over his ears and eyes, never once
hearing or seeing anything that the Ger
mans were doing in the Balkans. As
long as he completed his Shakespeare
translations no one ever asked him to do
anything for Hitler’s war effort.
Probably one of Waldheim’s great tri
umphs was translating “All’s Well That
Ends Well” while Lohr and his troops
wiped out 15,000 Yugoslav partisans in
the infamous “Operation Black.”
The fact that Waldheim appears in a
photograph at a Montenegro airport in
full uniform with other officers a few
days before the pperation in no way
means that he was involved in it. He was
just saying hello to old friends before he
went off to his tent with his German-En-
glish dictionary.
Some people maintain that it is aw
fully difficult to serve on a Nazi gener
al’s staff in the Balkans from 1942 to
1945 and not know’ what went on. Kurt
Waldheim was the kind of guy who
could do it.
If he made a mistake it was not men
tioning in his autobiography that he
served in the Balkans as a translator of
Shakespeare for Gen. Lohr. The only
reason I can guess for the omission is he
was ashamed to admit he had no idea
what happened in World War II.
Copyright 1986, the Los Angeles Times Syndi
cate
Mail Call
Costs outweigh the benefits
EDITOR:
As students at Texas A&M hear about the recent disaster in the Soviet
Union, we all wonder how it happened and what effects the meltdowns w
have on everything from people to politics. As a zoology major, I am of [](|nu-astii
course interested in environmental impact of such an event; and although in N‘1 State:
time answers may be revealed, an underlying question in my mind drives me J F n ^ 1
to ask why we employ nuclear power at all. The (quite literally) immeasurable^J on
damage of the stations simply fascinates me. ^3 ■ in k t()I1
The practice is unsafe. No matter how “perfected” it is, the entire proce ^
will never be 100 percent fail-safe. Given, the level of an accident is variable ai ( .j
but how can any accident (at any level) be justified to those effected, to ;nt w | m i
(possibly) deformed offspring or to the environment. To any supporter of > Ivlemori
nuclear energy —justify this “cheap, reliable energy source” to the untold litlcal Fort
number of people who are effected by the meltdowns at Chernobyl. And it fh< Rev. 1
will happen again, as long as nuclear energy is used, the threat is always there 0 1 was tl
Her at tl
■pic
f\c< ording
■s not gi
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■ by killi
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for an accident. It will never be safe.
Even if “perfect” procedures were possible, such an energy would and
will produce incredible amounts of radioactive wastewater and highly
radioactive products, and as the quantities of these highly hazardous wastes
increase, so does the need for effective containment metnods and disposal
sites, which clearly do not exist.
Nuclear power is a very selfish practice. It produces a cancer in our
world, and now it’s killing people. It doesn’t think of the future. Does anvonelen it acts
really think that the Nukes are considering the cost of paying someone to h ei than o
warn people for thousands of years to stay away from their aumpsites? I
believe the solution to the problem is too complex to solve today, but new
policies must be made to curb this practice, like “No dumpsites — you make
it, you keep it.” The environmental impacts of events sucn as Chernobyl are
immense, and I honestly wonder why anyone could support anything so
dangerous to everything and everyone.
Pete Walton ’87
orniei
rism is
Absolutely no absolutes
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EDITOR:
I would like to address this letter
moralist,” Mike Foarde, whose last Bible
Tuesday’s issue. I have been tempted for some time to write in rebuttal to
many of his “divinely inspired” letters but refrained, thinking “He has a rig
to express his opinion.” Well, Foarde had finally pushed me over my
threshold.
First of all, Foarde’s assumption of the “absolute truth” of the Bible is
absurd. The fact is that the Bible originated from the oral tradition before
there was writing. Secondly, he seems to be entirely ignorant of the fact that
the Bible has been translated into many languages before English, f here is |
not always an exact translation for each word. Lastly, based on these two e improp
facts, interpretation of the scriptures is indeed left to the individual. ts at the 1)
Although the message of the Bible is clear, it could not logically be taken as ‘°nal Aiq:
“absolute truth.” ■tandth
Next, Foarde decided to address the issue of morality and attempted to * lstr; ition s
argue how the rest of the world should believe in his values. If he would seek ‘Tiding
the definition of this word, he would discover that morality is the “quality of || ri ^ cto
or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior.” Note that this says f
nothing of the Bible or Christianity. It seems apparent to me that principles
are largely individualistic. Therefore, morality is the individual’s idea olright
and wrong. Although I do not choose this style of life, I also do not condemn
it. Homosexuals are humans and have rights as humans. I just hope for
Foarde’s sake that God does not judge him as he has judged others.
Jon A. Thomas
Vet school o sure bet
EDITOR:
The Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine has once again gained
e S t ,
the honor of being one of the top institutions in the field. This was evidenced
recently by the acceptance of all fourth-year students who applied for
veterinary internships at other veterinary schools around the United States.
This in part can be attributed to a faculty compsed of staff members from
all over the world as well as A&M graduates, dedicated to academic
excellence. This has given the veterinary students an extremely broad
background and a high degree of exposure to many different concepts of
veterinary medicine.
Congratualtions to all fourth-year students who have accomplished this
goal. Also, congratulations to the college for maintaining a high standard of
academic development which has gained them the recognition and respect of
the nation’s veterinary colleges.
Karol B inford
Unauthorized use of Reveille
EDITOR:
On Thursday, a political advertisement was featured on page three of
The Battalion showing Kent Hance posing with Reveille V. Not only was the
picture unauthorized, but it was taken after we had specifically told the
Hance organization that under no circumstances was Reveille to be used for
political promotions. Her appearance Wednesday at the Kent Hance rally
was done only to give equal time to all candidates. (She made a similar
appearance at the Loeffler rally without incident).
Reveille represents Texas A&M University and all of its diversified
student body. She does not support any political candidate. We always have
and always will maintain an open door policy of trying to grant all requests
for Reveille’s appearance. It is unfortunate that some people would take
advantage of this policy to satisfy their own ends. In light of the events of the
last week we are not at all displeased with the results of the Republican
primary on Saturday.
Darryl Jamail ’86
Commanding Officer
Company E-2
Tette^^^tK^^TIxorTftoufcniotejtceecr^^^o^tTnnengtTi^nii^e^itonarstaT^^servestfKr^
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The Battalion Editorial Board
Editor Cathie AndersoJ
Managing Editor Kirsten Ditf
Opinion Page Editor LorenSteil'l
City Editor Frank SmiJ
News Editor Sue Krend
Sports Editor KenSut 1 !
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