Page 2/The Battalion/Thursday, August 7, 1986
Opinion | Lit1
llcrc
Snoopy, Charlie Brown betray trust to make buck inj
I h av e neve r
been a big fan of
advertising. The
main purpose of
advertising is to
convince people to
buy things they
really don’t need.
There are laws
that prevent ad
vertisers from tell
ing outright lies to
the public. An ad
vertiser can’t say a product will do some
thing that it doesn’t. But advertisers
have found methods to stretch the truth
and insinuate without actually lying to
the public. Sometimes these methods
get out of hand.
The Coke and candy machines here
in the Reed McDonald Building, which
have been dubbed the Bait Cafeteria,
provide nourishment for all of the hard
working journalists who spend the bet
ter part of their evenings producing this
paper in an attempt to keep the public
informed. The Batt Cafeteria supplies
chips, crackers, candy bars and other al-
most-edible snacks. Occasionally the
Batt Cafeteria offers fried pies.
You might not be familiar with these
fruit-filled pies, the ones I so lovingly
refer to as “The Pies From Hell.” If
these pies had a big yellow, neon sticker
that screams: “WARNING! These pies
have been condemned by the EPA be
cause they would make a herd of goats
barf,” I wouldn’t object to them. But ad
vertisers have gone one step too far in
their attempt to push these pies in the
face of the unsuspecting public.
The apple and cherry pies have
Snoopy on the wrapper. Most people
have come to know and love the beagle
from Charles M. Shultz’s classic comic
strip. These pies have been around for
years, but 1 had never tried one. After
seeing Snoopy on television and reading
his exploits in various books and news
papers, I felt that I could trust this mutt.
I decided to eat one of the cherry pies.
The first thing you notice when you
rip through the Snoopy-embellished
wrapper is that the pie has the consis
tency of one of the exhibits in Madame
Tussaud’s. This dull, waxy yellow build
up on the pie crust is the tastiest portion
of the pie (excluding, of course, the
wrapper).
Your first bite of the pie usually
brings up nothing but crust and air
since, for the most part, the pie is hol
low. The wrapper says cherry pie, and
that’s what you get — a single cherry
and a bunch of cherry-colored goop. If
this goop was green instead of red you
might think the workers at the pie fac
tory had hay fever and couldn’t find a
Kleenex. That cherry pie was one of the
worst food experiences I’ve ever had
outside of our wonderful Fightin’ Texas
Aggie Dinning Halls.
Despite the unspeakable awfulness of
the Snoopy cherry pies, I keep eating
them so that my fellow journalists won’t
fall into the same trap I had. I ref use to
touch the apple pies, though. Some
times sacrifice has its limits.
I was disappointed that Snoopy had
betrayed my trust and allowed me to eat
something that I wouldn’t feed Moam-
mar Gadhafi. Recently Snoopy has
taken to selling insurance. Some dogs
have no scruples.
I used to wonder why Charlie Brown
allowed his dog to sell out. That was un
til I tried one of the chocolate pies.
The chocolate pies taste even worse
than the cherry pies and have Charlie
Brown on the wrapper. The chocolate
pies have the same dull, waxy yellow
build-up on the pie crust, but the insides
are filled with a substance that resem
bles three-week-old diarrhea. Given the
choice of eating a Charlie Brown choco
late pie or spending five years in a Viet
Cong summer camp, I would choose the
all-expenses paid trip to the Ho Chi
Minh Health Spa without hesitation.
Pallmeyer
Senators turn Rehnquist hearings
into a political grand opera
William F.
^uckle^r
The same week
the Senate Judi
ciary Committee
was grilling Wil
liam Rehnquist,
the Senate voted
by an overwhelm
ing margin to con
tinue to submit its
activities to tele
vision coverage.
And no wonder.
Politicians, one
supposes, ought not to be condemned
for acting like politicians. On the other
hand, non-politicians ought not to be
condemned for revealing disgust when
politicians do this on the scale of grand
opera. Sens. Kennedy, Biden and Met-
zenbaum needed only Puccini for their
act.
To begin with, there is the premise
that by moving from his present seat,
v : ere he has been judging the living
and the dead for 15 years, to the central
eat, where in addition to writing opin
ions as chief justice he would assign
opinions to a member of the voting ma
jority, William Rehnquist would malign
republican institutions. The premise is
preposterous.
It is true that the court is due to swing
a little in the direction of a) the public
sentiment, and b) traditional views of
the role of the Supreme Court. The two
coincide at this moment in American
history, and it is at the least anti-demo
cratic to assume that the republic is en
dangered by self-government, and
melodramatic to assume that a more
moderate court than those we have been
used to is menacing to our institutions.
There being no absolute fixes on leg
islators’ ideological inclinations, one
uses those of the Americans for mo-
cralic Action, and they are pretty reli
able. The man landing from Mars could
with some security look at a senator’s
ADA rating and predict how he proba
bly would vote on the economy, on for
eign policy and on social issues. The
three senators who are giving Rehnquist
the hard time have a combined ADA
score of 260. Maximum possible is 300.
These are the gentlemen who are afraid
that Rehnquist is not in the mainstream
of America.
Now, all of the digging into Rehnqu-
ist’s past has yielded only one concrete
problem, and that is in two parts. Ques
tion No. 1: Did Rehnquist “harass” mi
nority voters in the 1950s and 1960s?
And Question No. 2: Did he lie when he
said he had done no such thing?
For absolutely unfathomable reasons,
we have not seen Rehnquist’s champions
make the point, nor has he himself
made it, that up until we discovered
pure democracy in 1964, we used to in
sist that people who voted should also be
able to read and write. Under the cir
cumstances, it was not an act of ha
rassment to hold up a piece of paper,
with, let us say, “John hit the baseball”
written on it, and ask the aspirant voter
what was written on that piece of paper.
If Rehnquist had said that he stood by
the polls administering a literacy test, it
is hard to think that anyone would ac
cuse him of genocidal prejudices. How
ever, he has said that he did not even do
that, so the Gang of Three brought in
four people from Arizona who said in
fact he had done it. The only defense
against this flat contradiction is mis
taken identity, and calm observers of
the scene reasonably incline to that an
swer. No one ever has accused William
Rehnquist of lying. To lie about a point
without legal or moral substance would
be not only immoral, but stupid. No one
has ever accused William Rehnquist of
stupidity.
It is a grotesque spectacle, watching
Kennedy, with his background, accus
ing Rehnquist, with his background, of
evasion, hypocrisy and contempt for un
fortunate people. But the bitter-end lib
erals are playing for high stakes. Rea
gan’s popularity is up in the vicinity of
75 percent. He won every state in the
union except Fritz Mondale’s home
state. Massive gerrymandering by Dem
ocratic legislatures around the country
has given the House of Representatives
a 60 percent to 40 percent lead,
notwithstanding the 60 percent to 40
percent lead given to Reagan the last
time he ran for office. Even with that
lead, the Republican reforms, one after
another, have been making their way
through Congress. Comes now an at
tempt to enhance the conservative posi
tion on the Supreme Court: That is,
they judge, a burden they cannot ac
cept. i
It is overwhelmingly probable that
Rehnquist will prevail, that he will be
named chief justice, and that he will set
a new standard for eloquence and lucid
ity. Meanwhile, he is docile, humble,
nearly masochistic in what he is pre
pared to take from his inquisitors. It is
entirely possible that the bullying, com
bined with such brazen contentious op
portunism, will catch the public’s atten
tion in a way that is unmistakable to
politicians. If so, the curtain quickly will
come down on the delirium being pro
moted by the senators, and historical
footnotes will record that they voted
against William Rehnquist, a diminish
ing and disgraced minority.
Copyright 1986, Universal Press Syndicate
I have learned to deal with the treach
erous tendencies that Snoopy displays.
But it was a crushing blow when Charlie
Brown pulled a Benedict Arnold. Char
lie Brown and I were one. We shared
many of the same traits: we never won a
baseball game, we never could kick a
football, we could never get a kite off
the ground and the rest of the world
never quite understood us. We both had
similar problems with the cute little red-
haired girl too. 1 felt I could trust Char
lie Brown. There was a certain kinship
between us until that blockhead began
to peddle pies. Some Madison Avenue
advertising executive must have given
Charlie Brown a ton of moneu®|
him to do this.
The ’80s have become the dr ib
the sellout: Jerry Rubin became
pie, Fimothy Leary started sellin;|§
puters, Bobby Seale became aiJi
supporter, Paul McCartney sancljj
Michael Jackson, and E:K
Springsteen became popular. ■
Brown is selling pies that violatei.^/
of human decency. It’s sad thao::.'
are willing to sell their soulsforsc#)
Karl Pallmeyer is a senior jourafei
major and a columnist for Theb^
ion.
Mail Call
This evil undying ...
EDITOR:
In light of the recent letters to the editor concerning the July 25coluir: i
of Karl Pallmeyer, one would get the impression that poor Karl willbecasi I
amongst the denizens of hell for commiting (according to the letters) oneol |
the most heinous, disgracef ul and utterly unforgiveable crimes possible: f
criticizing Texas A&M. I do not feel that Pallmeyer’s column really warraffi I
these accusations of its being unspeakably evil — Texas A&M is not perfeci I
just as the United States is not perfect (there are just too many liberals
running around, aren’t there?).
Anyway, hurling insults (does Pallmeyer really dress like a dork?)at
anyone who points out flaws at A&M is neither productive nor desirable. |
There are things wrong, they should be pointed out, and they should be |
listened to with an open mind. I hope that future letters to the editorwill
reflect these qualities.
Tom Tsotsis
Graduate Student
Mechanical Engineering
Out of left field
EDITOR:
In his commentary on beauty pageants in The Battalion]u\y 31, Karl
Pallmeyer makes the statement that “A real classy, elegant woman wouldnt
lower herself to enter a beauty contest. . . .” Obviously, Pallmeyer has nevei
met Teresa Fritz (Bennet), who recently finished her reign as Miss Texas
A&M. She will become a doctor of veterinary medicine next May and litem
exudes elegance and class (She probably also doubles Pallmeyer’s IQ),
Pallmeyer should also introduce himself to my wife — she won a few
beauty contests in her day — and now serves as the executive director of tilt
Brazos Valley Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority.
So my limited experience would indicate that Pallmeyer’s remarkisfar
enough off base to be called out (in left field).
M J. Shiverly
Associate Professor
Veterinary Teaching Hospital
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Ken
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