Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, October 1, 1986
r
The Battalion
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Frank Smith, City Editor
Sue Krenek, News Editor
Ken Sury, Sports Editor
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The missing link
Researcher Judith Reisman has completed a three-volume,
1,600-page report that describes and analyzes hundreds of issues of
Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler to determine the effects sexual por
trayal of children in the magazines have on readers. The study is
considered the most extensive ever done on the subject and also is
one of the biggest wastes of government money since the $600 toilet
seat.
Funded by the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, Reisman’s study cost $734,371 —
nearly 33 percent more than the commission’s original appropria
tion of $500,000. The office initially appropriated the money in
1984 and granted Reisman three extensions.
But the study drew no conclusions and has been criticized by a
peer-review group as not adhering to the grant proposal. The report
did not suggest a link between the cartoons and child abuse, as was
originally intended.
In fact, it failed to explain what significance, if any, these find
ings had in relation to its purpose. Even the office funding the pro
ject has not rushed out to embrace its results.
The study analyzed 2,016 cartoons that depicted children and
3,988 pictures, including advertisements, that showed anyone “from
fetal development through age 17.”
Some of the study’s “conclusions” include:
• Eighty-five percent of the children depicted in the magazines
were white, 3 percent black, 1 percent Jewish, 1 percent Asian, 1 per
cent Hispanic and 8 percent unspecified. The study never explained
what happened to the other 1 percent.
• “About one-third of the presentations of the principal child in
volved direct eye contact with the camera/reader, and about one-
fourth had the child gazing offstage or at someone with the whites
visible. About one-sixth had eyes cast downward or closed, with the
sclera and iris hidden, and in about the same number of cases the
eyes were hidden or otherwise eluded classification.”
• The report questioned “the numerous illegal or illicit images”
of Santa Claus and other fantasy characters.
Reisman was paid almost $750,000 of the taxpayers’ money to
look at more than 550 issues of the “three top-selling erotic/porno-
graphic magazines” but produced no results.
Funding such a costly and useless study puts the Justice Depart
ment on a level of fiscal responsibility equal to that of the Pentagon.
Reisman, for her part, should stop wasting federal funds with her
ambiguous studies and return to her previous vocation — writing
songs for “Captain Kangaroo.”
Fur industry clothed
Opinion
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Teaching of family values
not a social miracle cure
By
Two Texa
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INF has on t
Did members of
the Reagan ad
ministration ever
go to school? How
about some poli
ticians, columnists
or teachers who
seem to think that
the teaching of va
lues in schools will
remedy much of
what ails the na
tion? My school-
day recollections sa
taught values.
Richard Cohen
otherwise. I was
The day began with a prayer. We
pledged allegiance to the flag and sang
“My Country Tis of Thee,” including
the more religious of the verses. Once a
week we had assemblies that began with
a color guard (I carried the flag) and
more singing of patriotic songs. The
boys wore ties, the girls white blouses
and blue skirts, and we were segregated
by sex to be taught shop) or cooking.
We were given no classes in sex edu
cation. We were told to shun drugs be-
in cruelty
cause they were always addictive and
usually fatal, an admonition that in
cluded marijuana. Patriotism was
drilled into us and we had a class called
“civics” in which we learned, among
other things, about the communist men
ace and the wonders of our own democ
racy. We were graded for conduct, neat
ness and even citizenship. We were
taught, as 1 said, values.
And yet we were the generation that
first turned to drugs in a big way, that
broke all kinds of barriers when it came
to sex, that provided the foot soldiers
for the army that secured abortion as a
right, that overturned laws banning the
sale of contraceptives in various states,
that lived together without benefit of
marriage and that now contribute to
those awful statistics on divorce and ex
tramarital sex.
None of this is necessarily proof that
teaching values is worthless. The best
that can be said for my anecdotal evi
dence is that teaching values did not
make a significant difference — that
greater, countervailing forces were at
work. For instance, it may make us all
feel warm and nostalgic to talk about the
traditional family, but it was economic
factors — not a lack of values — that
sent women out of the home to work.
You cannot set values down on the table
at dinner time.
ture in which the instant gratilicatioi
drugs (or a child) may aniounitoik
only gratification. Nancy Reagan it
cently extended the American dreairn
these children in a sincere and mom;
television speech, but their livesproiid
contradictory lessons on a daily basis.
Eras take names, sometimes fret
popular culture (Jazz), sometimesfroi
economic conditions (the Depression
Ours should be called the Placebofe
eration. To fight everything fromdn|
to premarital p»regnancies, we chooi
antiquated weapons and battleonaM
of nostalgia. For the economic and so
cial forces that are ripping the fami
apart, that have helped produce boti
the feminist revolution and the disinif
gration of the poor family, we prescA
the nostrums of yesterday insteadtf
programs that could meet theneedst'
today.
Qi
ByS
Republican
landidate I
uesday nigl
in headquar
mce the state
iceds of Tex;
Davidson,
usinessman
;y University
igainst Lt. G
Surely values are important.Theydt-
fine who we are as a people. But if it
lues are not in consonance with ikt
times, they become neglectedad
wither. Our appalling divorce rate (in
world’s highest) was not produced fee
cause we, of all the world’s peoples,lad
values, hut by economic and socialoi-
cumstances that rendered those value
less relevant. Many of the marriedccti'
pies of yesteryear would have divoretd
if women had had recourse to the la*
The bell has " “—TTV ,
tolled for the lux- Richard
ury fur industry, a Adams
contemptible busi- Guest Columnist
ness constituting a
major moral stigma on the face of West
ern civilization. While the trade en
dures, society is not entitled to any sense
of collective self-respect.
All that has prevented universal con
demnation is, first, that most people are
too busy earning their own livings to no
tice what is involved and, secondly, the
greed and dishonesty of those control
ling the so-called industry.
The furriers, however, are no more
to blame than prostitutes (which is what
they are: to prostitute being ‘to surren
der to an infamous use’). There remains
a demand, so these men supply it, being
the sort of people who could not make
so much money in any decent way.
The public is the real culprit. When
we stop buying, the animals will stop be
ing tortured to death.
A favorite weapon of the fur indus
try, the leghold trap, invented during
the first half of the 19th century, has in
flicted unsurpassed carnage and agony
on fur-bearing animals.
More than a century later, however,
the number of fur-bearing animals
trapped in these torture-machines has
greatly increased. A conservative esti
mate of the total annual Figure for Can
ada and the United States is 20 million
— far more than the number of Jews
murdered by the Nazis.
If such a comparison seems tasteless
or inappropriate, remember that, the
question under consideration is not “Can
these animals reason or articulate?” The
question is, “Can they suffer?” There can
never have been any greater suffering.
To understand what an animal en
dures while struggling in a leghold trap
is to be Filled with horror, and with
shame for the human species as a whole.
The pain alone, of course, is terrible.
The animal is held for 24 hours, 48
hours or even longer, by spring-locked
metal jaws crushing a broken leg (or
even the pelvis). In addition, there is the
torment of hunger and the worse tor
ment of thirst.
The blood attracts flies and preda
tors. The shock, constraint and panic
terror, acting upon the instincts of a
wild animal, are most distressing to con
template.
Some trapped animals bite off their
own legs in order to escape — sever
flesh, sinew and bone. The pain in
volved does not differ from that felt by a
human being. Such animals are known
to trappers as “wringers.” To forestall
wringing-off, some traps are not pegged
down, but attatched to a grapnel on a
wire. As long as
the animal can
limp about, drag
ging the grapnel,
it will not bite off
its paw. It cannot
go far and the tra :
pper will find it.
Many people
have said to me,
“Don’t tell me: I
don’t want to
know.” Yet we are
all collectively re
sponsible.
In Canada and
in most of the
United States,
anyone can become a trapper. Children,
adolescents and adults alike can enroll
in training courses. Traps can be bought
over the counter.
The fur industry exists not for any
human need, such as hunger or phar
macology, but solely for luxury, vanity
and adornment. There is not even any
valid argument for protection against
cold. In 1981 I made a voyage through
the Antarctic in temperatures often
reaching 40 degrees below zero. No one
— passengers or crew — wore fur gar
ments.
There recently has been much Ca
nadian propaganda about fur constitut
ing the livelihood of indigenous people.
In fact, the great majority of trans-At
lantic trappers are part-time amateurs.
But even conceding some truth to the
claim, why should we be obliged on that
account to buy fur? If someone says his
livelihood is selling onions, you have no
moral obligation to buy them. The slave
trade, in its day, was the livelihood of
thousands. What moral justification can
there be for a man who lives by the in
fliction of agony or misery on his fellow
creatures?
The fur industry has been unable to
advance any valid or convincing justifi
cation of this institution.
The past two centuries have seen the
destruction of many evils: black slavery,
child labor facto
ries, public execu
tion, flogging and
restriction of the
vote to males.
The destruction
of the obsolete and
discredited fur in
dustry, which con
sists, in essence, of
the barbarous ex
ploitation of warm
blooded, senitent
mammals for no
better reason than
vanity and adorn
ment, lies in the
logic of social and
moral progress.
When the majority of people realize
the truth and no longer want to buy or
wear fur, the evil will end. The process
— as with smoking — will be gradual,
but we should see a great change by the
end of the century.
In the words of Pope John Paul II,
speaking in 1984, “It is necessary and
urgent ... to abandon inconsiderate
forms of domination, capture and cus
tody with respect to all creatures.” In no
sphere is the necessity and urgency
greater than that of the fur industry.
Richard Adams is the bestselling au
thor of Watership Down and The Girl
in the Swing.
Nonetheless, from the four corners
of the land comes a cry for the teaching
of values. No one is quite sure what that
would mean in a pluralistic society, but
we all seem to want it. We believe some
how that the teaching of values will set
right much of what ails us. Among other
things, we want prayer in the schools, as
if words alone are a remedy. We forget,
for instance, that many of the pregnant
teen-agers of our recent but brief con
cern were mostly raised as churchgoers
— or by churchgoers.
The same thing holds for the drug
problem. Drugs are a problem, but for
the addict, not the only one. So is help
lessness, despair, poverty — a bleak fu-
r- Mail
and the job market. Our country ist
dergoing these and other changes,)!'
government policy ignores tlieunderl'
ing causes and instead exhorts peopled
act as if there were no problems.
My generation was taught values'
values we still cherish. We want to iff
married, but many of us don’t, We wan 1
to supervise our kids, but often we can'
We want a drug-free environment,bn
we create one in which a white powita
sometimes provides the only high. As*
ciety that talks one way and actsanolbt'
is obligated to answer a question fro®
the very kids we want taught values 1
What, exactly, are our own?
Copyright 1986, Washington Post WritersG0!
Call 1
What senior privileges?
EDITOR:
Senior. Derived from the Latin “senex,” meaning old. Webster’s
Dictionary defines this term as “above others in rank or length of service ” or
“having precedence in making certain decisions.” In the Orient, the seniors
of the population are treated with dignity and respect. In fact, being a senior
in most any society today can be marked with a sense of accomplishinentand
responsibility .. . except at Texas A&M.
I can remember, as a freshman, dreaming of the day when 1 could invoke
my senior privileges by sitting at a reasonable level (second deck) and
between the 30-yard lines for home football games. Nothing less, ticket wise,
was given on the first day. Ticket distribution certainly has taken a turn for
the worse.
A senior at A&M will not be difficult to find this weekend. Just look inside
the ten yard lines. We’ll be the ones sitting down during the game, wearing
our hats dur ing the yells and standing on the timber during the war hymn so
we can see what is happening in the middle of the field!
Steve Luckemeyer ’86
Gordon Sefolk ’87
Rhonda McMurry ’87
Tami Preston ’86
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