Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, October 31, 1986
Opinion
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
The Battalion Editorial Board
Cathie Anderson, Editor
Kirsten Dietz, Managing Editor
Loren Steffy, Opinion Page Editor
Frank Smith, City Editor
Sue Krenek, News Editor
Ken Sury, Sports Editor
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Absence of balance
Memorial Student Center’s Political Forum is bringing “A Pan
orama of Republican Perspectives on the State of Texas” to Texas
A&M Monday afternoon. We can only hope this panorama doesn’t
turn into a one-sided political rally the day beforedections.
Scheduled to appear are Vice President George Bush, Sen. Phil
Gramm, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Clements and Rep.
Joe Barton from Ennis. No Democrats are on the panel, although
Political Forum did try to get Gov. Mark White to join the ranks.
Although the program is a means of getting different views
about the state, this partisan political perspective makes an organiza
tion that has prided itself on its non-partisan stance appear biased.
Moral
onde
of Tex
TSOT NOT*
anymore
pres
X C.HALLEN6i£
ny dpponcnt to
HeAD-TO-HEAC>
COMPARISON/
i
Political Forum’s effort is not in question — it is the outcome of
those efforts that creates a problem. Stacking the panel with Republi
cans — even unintentionally — doesn’t give voters an accurate “pa
norama” of all perspectives. (Small wonder White didn’t trail along.)
Immigrants ultimately enrich,
not destroy English language
Although the speakers are to address specific topics and avoid
iai<
endorsing any candidate or party, their mere presence this close to
election promotes the Republican Party. Divorcing these leaders’
views about the state from their political affiliation will be difficult,
especially since politics in the ’80s is largely cosmetic.
This is one case where the appearance of the presentation is as
important — if not more important — than its content. Unfortu
nately, the appearance suggests all-out Republican hype.
By sponsoring such a program before elections without any op
posing views, Political Forum has tainted its non-partisan image, per
haps endangering its credibility. The committee should concentrate
on presenting balanced programs, and let the politicians politick on
their own.
My grand-
mother, an immi
grant from Po
land, spoke hardly
a word of English
and almost no Pol
ish. Yiddish was
her language and
for her it was suf
ficient. She used it
in conversation
with her family
and friends, lis
tened to the Yiddish-language Tadio
with a spoon such practices as bilingual
ballots where they are not required by
federal law. Six other states have passed
similar although less consequential laws,
offending non-English speakers, but ac
complishing little else.
Richard Cohen
Witch hunt ‘solutions’
not a cure for AIDS
and would have read the Yiddish press
if she could. As I like to say, she was illit
erate in three languages.
Since I visited
Salem, Mass., this
summer, I’ve
thought often
about how fear
can control our
lives, about how
we dread most of
the things we can’t
control, about how
love for life makes
us shun those who
have the remotest
Cathie
Anderson
chance of securing our deaths.
I still can hear the voices of the re
corded lecture at the Witch Museum in
that old New England city.
“Witch! Witch!” they shrieked in the
eerie light of the place, which once
served as home to a holier spirit.
The building now functions as a mu
seum where tourists or townfolk can
learn about the intricacies of the witch
hunt hysteria — a hysteria that, in 1692,
took the lives of about 20 inhabitants of
Salem.
Historians believe the fanaticism in
Salem began after a young girl was said
to be possessed by the devil. Apparently
the child had fever and seizures for
which the doctor could find no cure.
The blame fell upon a black slave from
the Caribbean who professed to be well-
versed in black magic.
Although the slave worked in a
household other than this child’s, she
often told tales to young girls who vis
ited her.
After the first child fell ill, other girls
began to act strangely, and soon the
townspeople blamed the slave woman
for the the girls’ insanity. The children
testified at the trial of the old slave.
They writhed on the floor and spoke
gibberish, all the while saying the slave
was causing their distress. The slave was
found guilty. She was not executed but
was imprisoned.
And when others tried to convince
the town that the girls were playing
pranks, the children said they were
witches or warlocks. (Often, witchcraft
was an expedient means of imprisoning
people whom you disagreed with or
wanted out of the way for some other
reason.)
lent that convictions and executions be
came a common occurrence. Under the
Spanish Inquisition, as many as 100 peo
ple were burned for practicing witch
craft in one day.
Although I know about the effects of
such blind fear (The atrocities com
mitted at Auschwitz and other World
War II concentration camps cannot be
forgotten.), I’m always amazed that
these things keep happening, that few
people seem to realize such persecution
when it’s happening and that we have to
wait — sometimes several years, some
times forever — before the injustices
that were perpetrated can be righted.
Years after the imprisonment of the
reputed witches and warlocks in Salem,
they were released. Some had died, and
others were deprived of seeing their
children or other family members for
years. And the people who were exe
cuted for the children’s pranks and the
unreasonable fear of adults could never
be recompensated.
Unfortunately, the phrase “witch
hunt” comes to me more often now that
I’ve come to associate it with another
phrase that’s frequently in the media.
That phrase is acquired immune defi
ciency syndrome or its acronym, AIDS.
This deadly disease is panicking peo
ple throughout the United States, and
many Americans have persecuted and
shunned sufferers of the disease rather
than try to help them.
The National Academy of Sciences
on Wednesday urged the federal gov
ernment to create a National Commis
sion on AIDS to study the disease, and
the distinguished academy says the 1986
research funding should be doubled to
about $1 billion by 1990. The group
says this funding should not be redi
rected from other research efforts but
should be newly appropriated funds.
Such funding, such understanding is
needed in the battle against AIDS. We
will not conquer this disease by imitating
the people of Salem.
Cathie Anderson is a senior journalism
major and editor for The Battalion.
My grandmother’s daughter, my
mother, was also an immigrant from Po
land. She speaks both Yiddish and En
glish, the latter without any accent what
soever. And her son — that’s me —
speaks no Yiddish, understands just a
bit and makes his living writing in En
glish. As for my son, he knows a few
choice Yiddish words. His second lan
guage, at least the one he studies in
school, is Spanish. His Espanol is pretty
good.
My own unexceptional family history
suggests that these law’s are, to quote ei
ther Shakespeare or Dangerfield, much
ado about nothing. The Yiddish-speak
ing immigrants from Eastern Europe
settled in neighborhoods where it was
possible to thrive without speaking a
word of English. The community w as so
linguistically impenetrable that Henry’
James, slumming on New York’s Lower
East Side, observed of the language he
heard, “Whatever we shall know it tor ...
we shall not know it for English.” A
generation later, the children of these
people were winning Pulitzer Prizes for
their writings in English, and even
grandmother was not unaffected. When
she w’as stump>ed at checkers, she would
pronounce herself “fa-stumpyed” and
quit the game.
I have gone through the recent lin
guistic history of my family for a reason.
There is something of a panic in this
country about the fate of English. We
are told the survival of the language is at
stake and that, in certain parts of the
country, the language of both William
Shakespeare and Rodney Dangerfield is
endangered: it don’t get no respect.
More recent immigrants will follow
the same pattern. Indeed, the forces of
assimilation and acculturation are more
numerous today than ever before. Ra
dio, television and movies — unknown
or unavailable to the immigrants of yes
teryear — are both attractive and ubiq
uitous. The children of today’s immi
grants may speak Spanish or Korean at
home, but they probably will speak En
glish on the street. Inescapably, it is the
language of the larger culture.
California soon will decide the fate of
Proposition 63, which would make En
glish the official state language (what
about Valleyspeak?), possibly gagging
Indeed, it would surprise many of the
world’s peoples to learn that Americans
fear for the future of English. In many
countries, English has become a second
language. The one-two punch of British
colonialism and American predomi
nance in Ixith commerce and popui
culture has made English almost aim
versal language — the one a Russia;
lot uses when spieaking to a Frenck
traffic controller. So pervasive is it
glisii. so innovative and so vigorous.ih
throughout the world, language pans
decry its inroads into their ownfe
guage — for instance, le drugsiori
French.
Of course, the real issue is notb
glish, but the people who cannotsfo
it — immigrants. Ironically,todavsM
English speakers probablv will on:
the language. But languageaside.ns
grants will wind up enrichingourctB
try and these laws, either propose!
already on the Ixxtks, are what the';
meant to lx* — an insult and rebut!
them.
[ hose brave and industriouseo.
to wade the Rio Grande or set of
boats from V ietnam are real nation;
sets. America’s most valuablenatun
source always has been its peop*
many of them immigrants. Thevctt
as finished products, ready to wotb
brimming with industriousness'
Korean greengrocer, the Vietnc
fisherman or the Hispanicmerck’:
not threats to our way of lifebuub
caricatures of it — a babble of Hoi
Alger characters.
Our language, part John Miliocr
part Milton Berle, will weathertta
rent immigration wave as it ah®:
— by thriving. We will havener
to play with, new terms and, in thee
new English speakers who will
language in new and inventive-
Given the history of English,toe
otherwise is mind-boggling. To ft
one of those inventive immigrant
“fa-stumpyed.”
Copyright 1986, Washington Post Writers^
AUSTIN (/
Service agreec
long moratori
an East Texas
General Jim h
environmenta
■ 'The U.S.
to stop crushii
been going or
about 30 acre
palm any of t
age during the
said.
■‘Mike Lann
U.S. forest lan
fell it was quit
This will give
look into it.”
■ Mattox toh
Thursday that
bui ning 2,600
Four-Notch ai
■“It reminds
about burning
rid of the rat
they’re burnin
of the pine bet
r Lannan sab
damage was
clearing of lan
B “The open
hind the pine
several years a
reforestation,’
beetles are ge
time.”
M.ti/o.x suit)
destroying h
with pines, am
wildlife in tf
Houston Natit
■‘They are u
to crush the
rious kinds o(
type of wood p
gered species
Mattox said,
grtannan sab
stroyed includ
trees
if “All the tree
removed,” La
we determine
cent of the ar
producing qu
and that area
all.’
The mass hysteria became so preva-
CORRECTION —In last Friday’s col
umn, I said Kirk Whalum would be appear
ing at Texas A&M Nov. 7. Although Wha
lum initially had been approved for this
date, the committee changed the date to
Nov. 13.
Mail Call
Thank you for your support
EDITOR:
I would like to give a BIG Texas Aggie thank you to
Coach Jackie Sherrill for his recognition of the fans for
their support and enthusiasm at the Texas A&M vs. Baylor
football game Oct. 18.
His recognition was shown by waving a Twelfth Man
towel to the student section of Kyle Field, which made all
my screaming and yelling worthwhile.
I take this time to thank him because no other
recognition has been given to the “fans.” I realize we didn’t
win the game ourselves, but we gave the team so much
support during that game, and to me it kept them going
when things were down.
The Bryan/College Station Eagle said nothing about
the crowd’s enthusiasm, and I am sure that many of the
other media didn’t either. I hope in the future we will be
recognized by other media (thanks, Battalion, for your
recognition), but if not, that doesn’t mean that my support
will end!
Janie Pluenneke
historical context, will bring the templeo
separation crashing down on our heads.’
' religious
As a member of PAW for some years now, and as a
regular recipient of their press clips and position papt':
can assure Steffy and his readers that the officialposfc
of that organization is anti-censorship, not anti-religion
The central issue in the current textbook debateM
whether religion will be discussed. It is rather whether
religious indoctrination will take place at the taxpayer!
expense, and whether a narrow hand of religious
extremists in Tennessee or Alabama or Texas have the
right to limit the full access that school children musttu' !
to information about a full range of religious viewpoints
they are to be truly educated.
It is Vicki Frost in Tennessee who objects to textbooh
that mention religions other than her own and believes
that the imaginations of her chldren must be “bounded
not the People for the American Way. And whereas diet 1
opponents have called for an excision of information
about the evolutionary hypothesis from school texts,
People for the American Way has never called for dele: 1
from those texts the information that some people in
fact, do believe that the world was created in sevenda'S
]
RAW'S point missed
EDITOR:
As a rule, I read Loren Steffy’s opinion column in The
Battalion with great delight. His work almost invariably is
informed, insightful and carefully considered.
Thus I was somewhat surprised to see that he had
missed the point of the position that People for the
American Way has taken with respect to the treatment of
religion in public school textbooks. He suggests that they
fear that “the slightest mention of religion, even in a
People for the American Way does not stand for
“theological abstinence,” as Steffy suggests, but forthe
free flow of information regarding religious beliefsand
practices of every type.
Larry Hickman
Associate professor of philosophy
Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length.Theti-' f|
staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length,bui«i^
every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Eadt letter mustbes
and must include the classification, address and telephone numbr
writer.