Page 2/The BattaliorVTuesday, November 4, 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
Editorial Policy
The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper oper
ated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-College Sta
tion.
Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial
board or the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinions
of Texas A&M 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 Depart
ment of Journalism.
The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during
Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination
periods.
Mail subscriptions are $17.44 per semester, $34.62 per school
year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnisned on re
quest.
Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald Building,
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843.
Second classjpostage paid at College Station, TX 77843.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battalion, 216
Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station TX
77843.
Big bucks, small change
When General Motors and International Business Machines an
nounced plans to disinvest from South Africa, apartheid opponents
were quick to commend them. But the congratulations were prema
ture. The corporations’ decisions were made for the wrong reasons
and by themselves will have little effect on the government-sanc
tioned racism practiced in South Africa.
GM and IBM didn’t go through the motions of disinvestment be
cause of a sudden awakening of concern for the oppression of South
African blacks. They pulled out because it was economically advanta
geous, complying with social outcry was merely coincidental. It did
wonders to boost their images as businesses with consciences.
IBM actually will make money on disinvestment. It will distance
itself on a corporate level, but still enjoy profits from the sale of
products and parts in the South African market. In addition, IBM is
providing a loan to the local investors who are buying their opera
tions. In return, the investors get a three-year renewable contract for
importing and selling IBM products, a five-year contract on spare
parts and access to future technology.
GM has made similar arrangements to unload GM S.A. Ltd., the
company’s South African subsidiary. GM hasn’t made a profit in
South Africa since 1981 and will just have to export its product and
watch the money roll in. But it claims the disinvestment decision is
based (»n South Africa’s failure to abolish apartheid.
The corporations’ actions are a good first step, but they’re not
enough. Business in South Africa still will be conducted as usual but
under different terms. Technically, IBM and GM have withdrawn
their investments. But their products are still available and their for
mer subsidiaries will continue to enjoy the profits.
South African investors realize the companies’ moves will have
minimal impact. What they fear is intensified anti-apartheid senti
ment in the United States that might result in a total cutoff of the
atir products. Despite their new-found social consciences,
.A and GM aren’t willing to go this far.
IBM and GM once again have shown that morality isn’t an entry
in the profit-oriented corporate dictionary. Until companies are will
ing to commit unconditionally to disinvestment, until they are willing
to put human rights ahead of the bottom line, apartheid will con
tinue to prosper.
Only when U.S. corporations show they are as concerned with
where tneir money goes as they are with how much is coming in, will
they deserve commendation for battling apartheid.
Why are all men responsible
for Sinatra’s bad manners?
Lewis
Grizzard
I recently com
pleted Kitty Kel
ley’s blockbuster,
“His Way: The
Unauthorized Bi
ography of Frank
Sinatra,” and you
know what I
think?
I think it was
Frank Sinatra who
single-handedly
started the worn-
en’s movement.
Fm serious here. Frank Sinatra, if the
book is to be believed, used and abused
about half the female population of this
country beginning way back in the ’40s.
I think what all these women did was
hold a meeting and what they decided
was to make all males pay the price for
what Sinatra had done to them.
This not only led to the women’s
movement, it led to Donahue, Cagney
and Lacey, an overabundance of female
products being advertised on television
and, worst of all, Joan Rivers getting her
own TV talk show.
If you’re a man, you have to read this
book. If you’re a woman, please don’t.
We are in enough trouble with you peo
ple as it is.
Of Blue Eyes did such things as not
showing up for the birth of his first two
children. He sent his publicist instead.
Later, his first wife, Nancy, was host
ess'at Frank’s New Year’s Eve party. She
noticed a stacked showgirl who was
wearing a ring like the one her husband
had given her.
As a matter of fact, it was Nancy’s
ring. Sinatra was supposed to have
taken it to a jeweler for repairs, but he
gave it to Miss Boobs instead.
“I felt like killing myself,” said the
first Mrs. Sinatra, whom he later
dumped for Ava Gardner.
Ava Gardner later dumped him be
cause he wanted her to give up her ca
reer and cook him spaghetti. So Frank
started dating Judy Garland.
He dumped her for wanting to marry
him. Then, he went out with Elizabeth
Taylor. She got pregnant, and Sinatra
made her get an abortion. Then, he is
sued her walking papers.
Sinatra decided then, no more Mr.
Nice Guy.
At a party in Palm Springs, he got
mad at an unnamed female and threw
her through a plate-glass window.
One of the girl’s arms nearly was sev
ered. Sinatra paid her off to keep her
quiet.
At a dinner party, he once said to a
pathetic and drunken Marilyn Monroe,
“ Shut up, Norma Jean. You’re so stu
pid, you don’t know what you’re talking
about.”
He insulted a young Natalie Wood
while he was dating her to the point she
often would run out of a crowded room
in tears.
He called Nancy Reagan “a dope with
fat ankles,” he married Mia Farrow and
then trashed her, and then he stole
Zeppo Marx’s wife, Barbara, whom he
later married and called “the dumbest
broad I ever met.”
There is much, much more. Sinatra
comes out of Kitty Kelley’s book as a
monster, an arrogant, spoiled jerk.
Sinatra would never apologize for
any of this in the past, and he certainly
wouldn’t do it now.
But can I apologize for him? May I
say to the female population that as bad
as some of the rest of us are, we’re not
even close to Frank Sinatra when it
comes to pigdom?
Let’s be friends, again, ladies, and
maybe as soon as Sinatra does the world
a favor and leaves it, we can accomplish
just that.
Copyright 1986, Cowles Syndicate
Despite fears, ‘classroom cops’ all bark, no bite
“Today, class, we’re going
to discuss Karl Marx and the
role his writings played in
world politics,” the professor
begins.
In the back of the class
room a button is pressed, a
distress signal sent. In a few
minutes, uniformed guards
burst into the classroom.
“Silence!” they shout. “A- Loren
cademic Police!” Steffv
The stormtroopers pum- mmmmmmommJmmmmm
mel the instructor into submission and drag his
unconscious form from the room.
In the back of the class, the informant for Accu
racy in Academia grins. The classroom has once
again been made safe.
Such a scenario, of course, never happened and
probably never will, but it reflects the anxiety with
which many academicians anticipated the growing
power of AIA, Reed Irvine’s self-appointed class
room monitors.
It’s been more than a year since AIA announced
it would be monitoring college classes for “liberal
bias,” but despite the early fears of academic free
dom infringement, AIA has turned out to be little
more than a paper tiger in watchdog’s clothing.
The group has dropped its plans to monitor
classes and is instead focusing on free-speech is
sues and academic controversies, particularly
those attacking — you guessed it — conservatives.
Most of these articles are “look at those horrible
liberals suppressing free speech” redundancies.
When conservatives engage in similar acts of sup
pression, the group is predictably silent. AIA has
attempted to turn campus free-speech violations
into an ideological issue, instead of an intolerance
issue that knows no partisan boundaries.
But the group’s greatest accomplishment, it
claims, is that students, especially — you guessed it
— conservative students, are more willing to chal
lenge their professors. If that’s the case, then even
the instructors themselves should be ecstatic that
AIA infiltrated academia.
Ask the average college professor to describe
the average student, and you’ll get such descrip
tions as “brain dead,” “zombies” and “doorknobs.”
A more realistic classroom scenario doesn’t in
volve Academic Police. Instead the professor
stands at the front of the class trying desperately to
pry a response — any sign of life — out of a sea of
silent students. Questions that were meant to spark
a discussion become painfully rhetorical, as stu
dents faithfully, mechanically, write down the in
structor’s every word without bothering to men
tally savor what is being spoon-fed to them.
What teacher wouldn’t feel a sense of accom
plishment if a student was motivated to the point
of saying, “I disagree with you; there’s another
side to this”?
But this is neither AIA’s intent nor achieve
ment. Instead the group flaunts its politics, mixing
them with its “mission.” Academia is not perfect,
and a little watchdogging might do some good in
some areas. But not if the watchdogs are lapdogs
of a political ideology first. Far more will come of
the recently formed Carnegie Forum than AIA.
Despite its harsh criticism of higher education, im
proving the quality of education is the forum’s pri
mary goal, not championing a political majority
that pretends to be oppressed.
AIA leapt at the academic community, to use di
rector Les Csorba’s description in an AIA column
of scholars’ pursuit of academic freedom, “with all
the restraint, dignity and erudition of hogs charg
ing the morning trough.” But countless un
founded accusations, sloppy reporting and a law
suit later, AIA is eating humble pie.
The “exposes” of alleged liberal misdoings on
campuses were compiled from hearsay and unre
liable sources. In some cases attempts to verify
sources were done months after accusations had
been printed. Fortunately, no professors lost their
jobs because of AIA attacks. In fact, the group’s
claims were largely ignored by even the most con
servative colleges and universities.
After a year of such pathetic tripe, AIA has
proved itself a mere sham of its original prowess —
the group cried “liberal bias” once too often. If stu
dents feel they’re being subjected to such bias —
and in some cases they undoubtedly are — they
should speak out. But the desire to challenge a
professor’s views should come from an internal
need or desire, not from political peer pressure.
Assertion, self-motivation, confidence and toler
ance of different views are part of the learning
process as much as textbooks, research papers and
all-night study sessions. But these qualities are den
ied to students who rely on a goon squad of self-
proclaimed classroom monitors to stand up and
shout “liberal bias” for them.
Luckily, no Academic Police storm the class
room. Their “law” has no authority, no backbone
and deserves no respect. AIA may continue its pa
per tiger role of playing classroom cops for years
to come, but its scare tactics ignore a higher law —
for starters, the First Amendment.
Loren Steffy is a senior journalism major and the
Opinion Page editor for The Battalion.
The rest of the bike story
EDITOR:
I feel that Robert Morris’ article on super-sport bikes (Oct. 28) was
incomplete. I have been riding motorcycles for 13 years, and feel that I
know the hazards of riding. The worst hazard for the cyclist is the semi-
senile lady blindly piloting her 4,000-pound Cadillac through parking lots
and roadways. It is not the leaf in the middle of the road. Most of the
single-vehicle accidents that reportedly are caused by the “advent of the
super-sport bike” are the result of the rider trying to avoid an incompetent
driver’s judgement error.
In such a situation, the rider has two choices: go off the road onto a
gravel shoulder and try to make a safe recovery, or lay the bike down and
slide. A lot of the time car drivers do not even know that they are at fault.
If auto drivers exercised the same caution that cyclists do, accidents would
decrease even more than they already have.
Tim L. Mahaffey ’87
Appalled at the coverage
EDITOR: *
I was appalled at the anti-Semitic article by Olivier Uyttebrouck (Oct.
31) that expressed sympathy to the Palestine Liberation Organization. It is
unfortunate that in the aftermath of the Istanbul massacre of 22 Jewish
Mail Call
people, The Battalion published pro-terrorist propaganda, failing even to
mention the victims of Arab terrorism. In an attempt to equate the PLO
with its victim, the author did not say a word about the crimes that
Palestinian Arab terrorists continue to perpetuate, instead he quoted old
Palestinian propaganda, such as calling Nobel Peace Prize winner
Menachem Begin a “Zionist extremist.” The truth is that Arab terrorists
are attacking people indiscriminately, targeting Jews and non-Jews
everywhere, trying to kill as many people as possible.
It is unfortunate that Uyttebrouck is trying to make The Battalion a
forum for racism and anti-Semitism. The Battalion devoted a lot of space
to apartheid and ignored the discrimination and racism that exists in the
Soviet Union, which is also a primary sponsor of Arab terrorism. It is time
to protest apartheid in Russia, where Jewish people have no rights and are
not even allowed to leave the country.
Leon Luxemburg
Editor’s note: The sympathy for the Palestine Liberation Organization was
expressed by Dr. Mounir Bayyoud, the speaker quoted throughout the ar
ticle — not by The Battalion. The speech was covered because it was spon
sored by the International Students Association, an organization that pro
vides a variety of cultural programs and viewpoints.
Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff reserves the
right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the author’s
intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the classification, address and telephone
number of the writer.
cami
bbb
ond
Cem
1
i
Fre
bee
Ph (