Page 2/The Battalion/Monday, Movember 10,1986 Opinion The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Mi’IiiIkt of Texas Press Association Soul Invest join tialistn (ionfcienee The Battalion Editorial Board Cathie Anderson, Editor Kirsten Dietz, Managing Editor Loren Steffy. Opinion Page Editor Frank Smith, Cit\ Editor Sue Krenek, News Editor Ken Sury, Sports Editor Editorial Policy / hr liuiiiilitin is ;i iion-|>i nilt. sc‘if-sup|)nriin^ ncu spiipci opoi - ;iic Texas ANvM aiui Bi \ ;m-( Sta- tion. Opinions expressed in 77ie liu/cilinii are those ol the editot ial hoard ot the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinions o! Texas A&M adi nil list rat ot s. lac tilt \ oi the Board ol Regents. /Vie JiniliiJion also seizes as a laboratory newspaper loi students in reporting, editing an Reed McDonald. Texas AX-.M l nixc'isitx. College Station TX 77.S4.T Credit where it's due Tei r\ Waite, emissary for the archbishop of Canterbury and hos tage negotiator extraordinaire, deserves more credit as hero than world opinion and particularly more than his native England seems willing to give him. Waite, acting on his own, already has secured the release of two French hostages and one American hostage in Lebanon — a feat the hostages’ governments have been trying in vain to accomplish. The Anglican envoy has given the Reagan administration a much-needed release valve to the high-pressure hostage situation. The administration has been doggedly determined not to nego tiate with terrorists. Although according to accusations hurled Sun day by Congressional leaders at the Reagan administration, this pol icy recently may have been scrapped in favor of a hostages-for- weapons exchange with Iran. It is essential in deterring future kid- napings. If one terrorist group finds such tactics work against the United States, countless similar attacks would follow. 44 /Ip'! r Searching for televised oasis in multi-channeled wasteland “H But the policy also has restricted the ability to win the release of those already captured. Waite has provided a unique solution to this foreign policy dilemma. His theological background has given him an understanding of Moslem perspectives and principles that other Western diplomats have ignored. Waite is able to negotiate while re- spec T g Ik se belief s, instead of trampling them. He lias become an effective liaison between Free World governments and Third World terrorists. The recent charges by The Times of London that Waite has been used as a decoy by the United States to focus public attention on the hostages is absurd. The last thing the United States wants is to shine an undue spotlight on the terrorists’ exploits. The administration’s primary concern is the release of captured • Ur >• Waite has made more progress in the last few weeks .ue al government has made in the last few years. just the other night, I was sitting around the house wit It not li ing I o do. "That might seem strange since it’s nearing crunch time for tests and other academically related items, hut I’m graduating in December so I’m apathetic toward my studies. I already had listened to my Pink Floyd albums and wasn't really in the mood for the Violent Femmes. So, I de- Craig Renfro It’s time Waite received credit for his altruism. He has shown us that even the most dire situations can be resolved not with violence but with skillf ul diplomacy. He is truly a hero of our times. t ided to watch television for lack of any thing better. Since m\ roommate and I have never splurged for t able television we only receive one channel. To resolve this lac k of choice I decided to visit a friend and see what was on his tele- Nothing describes sudden rush of freedom when opression lifts It’s amazing how manv channels there are it) chose from. What’s even more amazing is that out of the 30 or so channels there really isn't anything worth watching. One of them is pureh for advertising, one is just weather and one even lists what is on all of the othei channels. I here's a sports channel, icli- gious channel. Spanish channel and. worst of all. a pop music c hannel with stupid looking hosts. But I was determined to find some thing entertaining, which automat ic alb ruled out the “Big I hree” networks. When your options are such wonder ful shows as “The Fall Guy,” “Dynasty,” “Hotel,” “Magnum P.I.,” “The Equali zer ’ and “The New Mike Hammer,” you 'havfc only one' choiceshoot the television. However, we decided to check out “The New Mike Hammer.” We really wanted to see if Stacey Reach was going to snort any cocaine. Since he didn’t, at least not on the show, we soon became bored with this choice. For a change of pace we deck watch the Spanish network. Wear make out much of the dialogue, appeared that the leading maled ter f ell in love, or maybe it was lust a voluptuous female. But therewa small catch. |ust as the action wa! ting hot and heavy some other guv i into the room and began shouting vioush he was not pleased Ikc;iu> shot them both. At that point uc ized the show was too much like "Da so the- search beiran anew. reii da Lai agi tha adi ing it tl sav I can say: pie One day, Yuri Orlov, the Soviet dissident, was in bitter Si b e r i a n exile, not knowing when he would be freed. A day later, he was moved to a Mosco w jail a n d within a day he was winging his way to the United States. He met Richard Cohen with the president, made statements to the press, hugged other exiled dissi dents and, probably, fought for his san ity. The next day, in the only way he could, he tried to turn back the clock just a bit. In the ways of Russia, he went to pick mushrooms in the woods. Anatolv Shcharansky also experi enced psvchic G-forces for which there is no parallel. One day he was in a KGB jail nd a day later he was borne on the sho Users of his new countrymen to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He even had a new name — the Hebrew Natan fen lie Russian Anatolv. And how about 1) avid Goldfarb? Old and sick, a leg lost at Stalingrad and a toe to gangrene, he was hisked out of Russia on the private pla of industrialist Armand Hammer. His son was at Newark Airport to greet him.. Is there an\thing in the world to com- ’ re to these experiences? Men have teed f rom prison before, exiled their countr\ before, returned ♦ o i exile a cl, even, managed to keep themselves alive as the liberating armies approached the gates of places like An twit/, the "corpse factory” of Han- Wendt’s unforgettable phrase. But vents, as disc ombobulating as •' were, approached slowlv and with uin ‘ ! Auschwitz, the guns could •a he distance; the behavior of giards changed. Even Noah in his is tipped bv a non-ret in ning dove that the waters of the flood were reced ing. But the contemporary world is unfor giving in its abruptness. The dissidents are rocketed out of the Soviet Union. They can breakfast in jail, lunch on an airplane and have dinner in the United ue irk States. To the cameras, they fake sanity, pretend they know what’s going on, but they cannot. They have been moved across time and place, from imprison ment to freedom and from one culture to another. The meaning of their life has been altered, maybe obliterated. Is it permissible to eat well when, just hours ago, your fellow prisoners were maybe not eating at all? Can you laugh in free dom when, before, you could not laugh at all? Can you yearn for creature com forts, television sets, cars? Can you chase a skirt? Nap? Do nothing? Paradoxically, journalists who have tasted similar disconnected experiences write nothing about it. We simply do not know how. Some of us know what it is like to cover a w'ar one moment and then, a day later, be back in Washing ton. A colleague remembers going al most directly from Vietnam to a Wash ington Redskins game. He was stunned. There were 50,000 people w ho seemed to care only about the Redskins. The place he left behind smelled of fear, pain, anguish, death. The war raged in my colleague’s head while, on the play ing field, a bunch of men fought over a football. A journalist can cover African famine and eat in Paris that night. In Vietnam, it was possible to cover the fighting by day and, only hours later, enjoy a shower and a bed with clean sheets. The journalist insulates his emotions by pro fessional calling: Someone’s job is to make war; someone’s job is to cover it. Some of the world sits dow n to eat w hile some of the world starves. That, of course, alw'ays has been true. But not until recently was it true for a single per son in a single day. We hesitate to write about it because we didn’t know quite what to make of it: Are the thoughts profound or are they banal? After he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Elie Wiesel said he still felt guilty for having survived the concentration camps while so many — his own family included — did not. Why should he live when all the others died? For more than 40 years, the guilt has clung to him like a chill for which there is no blanket. He is forever the disengaged observer at the football game, the one who wonders how so many can cheer when, just hours away, so manv others are dying. Liberation for Wiesel was no sudden thing. But the sudden cascade of free dom, the turning of a jail-house key that opens a new land with a rush — that is something that as vet has not been de scribed. Time has been altered, space diminished and the prisoner, suddenly freed, is imprisoned in a wholly new ex perience. He smiles, says thank you and, after the strobe lights of photographers have turned cold, locks himself in to keep out what he cannot understand. It is time to pick mushrooms. Copyright 1986, Washington Post Writers Group So we flipped through the guide to see what other adventures television had in store for us. We landed on “The Green Berets.” This movie is guar anteed to bring out the American in ev eryone. John Wayne, portraying his usual heroic character, killed hundreds of Viet Cong and defied death at every turn. I think this was Richard Nixon’s favorite movie, at least until w r e lost the war. Then he burned the home video along with several hundred other tapes. The movie was too “Hawkish” for me, and we decided to push onward through the televised fog. Next we came upon a religious pro gram. A lunatic preacher with a ton of hair spray holding his brains together was ranting and raving about how we will all go to hell if we don’t change out ways. However, w'e can avoid this eter nal damnation if we make a tax-deduct ible donation of $100 or more. At least that’s what the preacher said, so it must be right. Next we came upon the “Dr.Si Show,” that wonderful call-in (on where vou. the viewer, can heart West heimer s view s on anytliinjffe oral sex to teenage masturbation. One callef asked the tloTlhr How* could persuade his wife to have sex the dinner table. 1 he good doctors that the man should tell his wifetlui what he really wants to do, audit really loves him she will oblige. If didn’t work, Westheimer suggestedi the couple pretend it was a game c all it “meat and potatoes.” The next callei . also male, asked | he could get women into bed with on the first date. I wanted to wail see w hat she would say because noil I’ve said ever worked. However,! ran out and the show was over.Tool lie mil Bv this time I realized the siiiialil looked dim. We flipped through channels a few more times just we missed something, but of touts j didn’t. My friend said it was likethisf ery night. You search for someilt worth watching, but you never f| find it. I’m fortunate not to have thispr i! J lent with my one channel. It’st stuff over and over so I don’t t'l bother turning it on. The Violent Femmes sound pit good right now. Craig Renfro is a senior journM major and a columnist for The Baif ion. Mail Call All for the T-E-A-M EDITOR: the State of Texas,” which was merely a glorified Republican rally, we are questioning both the motives; integrity of this program’s sponsors. During the I 985-8b sc hool year, 1 wrote a letter to 1 he Battalion direc ted toward the Aggie Football T-E-A-M. I c] noted a verse of scripture from 1 Corinthians 9:24. This verse says: “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one rec eives the prize? Run in suc h a way that you may w in.” We feel thoroughly enlightened by Barton’s perspec tives, which ranged from Mama Barton's first-tinifI straight-ticket Republican vote to Joe’s old room in Legeii [ I fall. Then came Sen. Phil Gramm who public ly endorsed Barton — in a non-partisan manner of course. It seems this letter did some good. Maybe this letter will remind everyone that this is a new year, and we all must start a new race. This race includes the Cotton Bowl, our school work and dedication and our walk with God through thick and thin. Let’s keep up the good work this year and in the years to come. However, we were most impressed with Vice Presidenij George Bush, who simply gave up being non-partisanasilf proved to be too difficult. Of course, he was encouraged by pal Bill Clements who was quite adamant about retiring “of what’s his name.” So student body and Coach Jackie Sherrill, let’s all carry the Fightin Texas Aggie Football T-E-A-M to the Cotton Bowl in 1986-87. Gavin Jones ’87 Rally non-partisan? EDITOR: In effect, we wonder how this program could have been anything but partisan. To the best of our knowledge ! we thought that political rallies were not allowed in Rudder Auditorium. Are we sadly mistaken, or does an invitation by Political Forum, to the vice president allow the Republicans to do whatever they want? Kristen Phillips ’89 Gina Russo ’89 Sara Wall ’89 T he purpose of MSC Political Forum is to increase political awareness through non-partisan programs. After attending the “Panorama of Republican Perspectives on Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The ediu) |lill l staff reserves the right to edit letters for style and length, but willitwj every effort to maintain the author’s intent. Each letter must be sign J and must include the classification, address and telephone number ol il 1 '" writer.