Page 2yThe Battalion/Friday, June 19, 1987
Opinion
ungs
burning tobacco leave M
Why do people
smoke?
Since the first
time cigarette
smoke stung my
eyes and made my
clothes stink, I
have wondered
how people can
Paula
Vogrin
enjoy smoking cigarettes.
As a non-smoker, I can’t begin to
understand the pleasure smokers derive
from sucking in the smoke of burning
tobacco leaves.
Some of you may be saying don’t
knock it till you try it. Well, I’ve tried it,
twice, and I’m knocking it.
I was nine years old when I had my
first smoke. I had a friend named Eileen
whose mother was a chain smoker.
She’d light one cigarette with the
burning butt of another.
One day while Eileen and I were
playing Barbies, Eileen’s mother went to
the bathroom and left a cigarette half-
finished in the ashtray. Eileen and I
decided it was time to take that first
glamorous puff. I picked up the
cigarette, and knowing I looked cool,
inhaled like it was my life’s first breath. I
ended up on the floor choking and
gagging—I didn’t look too cool.
That experience scarred me for the
next nine years of my life. I avoided
cigarettes and cigarette smoke at all
costs.
Then, when I was 18, I was out with
some friends. We’d had a few drinks,
and we thought we’d buy some
cigarettes and smoke and be cool (of
course). As I was lighting my Virginia
Slims Menthol, visions of a nine-year-
old me choking and gagging on Eileen’s
kitchen floor crossed my mind.
“I will not inhale,” I thought.
I was busy taking very small drags on
my menthol, trying my hardest to look
like I was enjoying being cool, when I
became aware that my entire mouth —
the teeth, the tongue, the gums and
even the uvula (that thing that hangs
down like a stalactite from the back of
your throat) — reeked of 1,000
ashtrays.
1 drank a beer, I drank some water, I
drank a coke, I chewed some gum.
Nothing worked. I had a case of funky
mouth that would not. be cured.
When I woke up the next mornin
could have sworn my mouth was fill
with that sandy stuff you find in mal
ashtrays.
Thus ended my smoking career.
Forget all that stuff the surgeon
general says about smoking being
hazardous to your health — if knowi
the physiological effects of smoking
enough to deter you, take a good lo
the next person you see puffing on a
cigarette.
Is it humanly possible to look cool,
sophisticated or glamorous blowing
smoke through your nose and mouth?
Aesthetic reasons alone should be
enough to convince people not to
smoke.
Have you ever seen an appealing
ashtray?
Do crushed butts make sidewalks
more attractive?
Do the contents of car ashtrays in
parking lots make the walk to your car
more pleasurable?
Does the aroma of cigarette smoke
bring about fond memories of spring
rains, freshly cut hay or blooming
flowers?
When smoke is wafting around the
workplace is it easier for everyone to do
their job?
Does billowing cigarette smoke
enhance an eating experience at an
expensive restaurant? How about at
McDonald’s?
Does smoking make your breath
fresher?
Does smoking keep your teeth white?
Does smoke soothe your eyes?
Does cigarette smoke make you]
hands and fingers smell better?
Does cigarette smoke makeyouil
clothes smell good?
Does breathing in thecigareittJ
of others make you healthier?
Does smoking improve your
performance in sports?
Are people more apt tolikeyotJ
smoke?
Do people like to kiss someone,!
just finished a cigarette?
Do cigarette ashes makeyourui
look better?
Do cigarette burns enhanceiht|
appearance of upholstery?
Do cigarettes help prevent Ion; |
cancer?
Do cigarettes reduce your chare
heart disease?
Are smokers less likely to suffer j
attacks?
No.
Why, then do people smoke?
Paula Vogrin is a senior jour,
major and a columnist /brThe
Battalion.
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Colorless isn't dull Gr<
I’m a black and
white man. I’ve
always been that
way, and I’m not
about to change
now.
Lewis
Grizzard
I don’t want to see John Wayne:
‘‘Sands of Iwojima” in any otherol
besides black and while.
I think TV was
better back when
it was all in black and white.
That has to do w'ith the faettk
World War II, itself, was a goo
fashioned black and white war.
versus Evil. Everybody knewwta!
stood.
HOWOLD ARE YOU, YOU
YERVEKTS. SIXTEEN?
sevt
WYOUR BARENTS KNOW
ABOUT*? Vf ATS1HEIR
FHONE NUMBER?
I ENUOY
COURSEUNS
TEENASERS
You know somehow Perry Mason was
wearing a blue suit in the courtroom,
despite the fact it looked black on the
screen.
I even prefer my newspapers to be in
mostly black and white. If I wanted to
read a comic book, I would have gone
out and bought one.
Throw a bunch of greens andp
and reds and yellows into “Sands
Jitna” and World War II, and will
come out with is John Wayne ii
(Ireen Berets,” which wasindoti
was a terrible movie; and View,
which also was in color, and wasa
terrible war.
1 don’t like any newspaper that looks
like a third-grader got loose in the
paste-up department with a box of
crayons.
What are they going to do next
old movies? Dub in BobNewhaiti
in Charlie Chaplin movies? Lettlif
guy take over the ranch in thosed
westerns?
Guatemala: the big deception
It also concerns me when 1 see a color
weather map in a newspaper and
Florida is yellow and poor Minnesota is
blue.
We should stop colorizationofi
films right now before it gets out(
hand, and if Congress doesn’t do
anything about it, you can.
David W.
Spence
Guest Columnist
During the two
years I have spent
in Guatemala as a
Peace Corps
volunteer, my
opinion of my
work, and of the
country in which I
work, has become muddled and
confused.
This, I realize, is as it should be.
The projects I carry out in my village
visibly affect change. I do, however,
wonder whether that change is always
toward the overall betterment of the
villagers. Are the firewood savings to be
had by installing the mud stove I
promote worth the disappearance of the
open hearth, the traditional focal point
of family interaction?
The uncertainty surrounding my
work also surrounds the changes
currently taking place in almost every
facet of Guatemalan life — from the
recent democratization of its
government to the corruption and
extinction of the twenty-five indigenous
languages spoken by highland Indians.
Any change brings with it loss and gain,
but who decides when loss is
outweighed by gain?
While I was on home leave in May,
my family presented me with a
collection of recent newspaper articles
on Guatemala. Perusing them, I found
that the ambivalence toward change
here that should be cultivated by the
press is instead being substituted by a
ready-made portrait of the infant
democracy, her heroes and villians
depicted in black and white.
This is a disservice not only to
Guatemala, but also to ourselves as a
quasi-informed public.
Eighteen months ago Guatemala
formally broke from a string of military
regimes which left 30,000 political
deaths in its wake and a psychological
scar on the populace that will never
fade. President Vinicio Cerezo, the first
popularly elected leader in more than
thirty years, faces the Herculean tasks of
bolstering Guatemala’s dilapidated
economy, of changing her international
image from that of a champion of
human rights violations to one of a
respectable republic, and of insuring
some measure of internal security at
home — all this while wrestling with an
unfettered military.
The tendency of the U.S.
government is to divide the players in
this drama into those who have
something to offer America, and those
who don’t. The tendency of the press is
to divide them into victims and
executioners, and to pit them against
each other time and time again on the
front page. In a typical story on
Guatemala, like the three-page spread
run in the Houston Chronicle on May
17 and 18, three-quarters of the text
consists of a rehashing of yesterday’s
atrocities, which conveniently colors the
remaining quarter devoted to current
development. No new perspective is
offered. Readers are horrified and
papers sold.
Almost never are the subtleties of
Guatemala’s struggle told, subtleties
that would bur the pre-packaged image
of the country painstakingly prepared
by journalists and politicians. That
Guatemala’s last elected government
was toppled in 1954 by a CIA-
orchestrated coup fostered by U.S.
business interests could be damaging if
mentioned. That the Guatemalan
army’s anti-insurgency campaign of the
early 1980’s, though ruthless in its
tactics, was enormously successful is
inconsequential. That the strikes,
protests and attempted coups which
periodically paralyze Guatemala are, in
President Cerezo’s own words, the
necessary “music of democracy,” would
only confuse readers.
The image that Americans are
offered of Guatemala, and, I suspect, of
other countries like her, is not, in its
clarity and conciseness, true to the
reality it purports to depict. In truth,
things are maddeningly confused, but
somewhere in the process of presenting
the facts, those facts are over-orgainzed.
However, the fault does not lie solely
with the press or with politicians. After
all, journalists are purveying their facile
journalism to a buying public, and
politicians are spouting their spiels to a
voting audience. If we see world events
in tonal absolutes, it is because we
choose to. Certainties are more easil
grasped and manipulated than
ambiguities.
Were we not intimately involved
countries like Guatemala, this
complacent stance might be accepta
But we are involved. Allowing our
government to meddle in the politic
diminutive countries, we thus obliga
ourselves to understand those count
as well as possible. That obligation, a
present largely ignored, demands t
we look beyond stereotypes and fals
certainties and into the intricacies a
ambiguities which embrace the trut
David W. Spence is a Peace Corps
volunteer and a guest columnist for
Battalion.
People who live in Minnesota have
enough problems just trying not to
freeze to death without some newspaper
weather map showing how blue
everything is where they live compared
to all the warm, yellow Floridians.
Do what 1 did. I was watching!
Cagney in “Yankee DoodleDandf
other night and some fool hadcofc
it.
I like black and white movies a lot
better than color movies, too. When
movies started showing up in color,
that’s when movies got out of hand and
stopped making a lot of sense.
I calmly walked over to my TV
found a knob marked “one-color
button.” I pushed that littlebutto
then found the knob marked“bri
and turned that, too.
Nobody ever got naked in a movie
until there was color. And nobody made
stupid movies you couldn’t understand
like “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
You know what happened?‘Vail
Doodle Dandy” was back in t
white, as the Lord obviouslyintenu
to be.
I said all that to say I agree with
Woody Allen, who has complained to
Congress that colorizing old black and
white movies by computer is a terrible
thing that must be stopped.
Your set will probably allowyt*
the same thing, and 1 thinkthatisi
simplest solution to this entire mar
Let Congress get involved and]
Wayne will show up some night®
show wearing pink.
Copyright 1987, Cowles Syndicate
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