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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 22, 1988)
Page 2/The Battalion/Friday, April 22, 1988 Opinion a®, He’s back, bigger and better than ever Sue Krenek The aging poli tician, jowls sag ging and h a i r graying, sits in a TV studio await ing the interview. The public could easily be forgiven the impression that it’s just awak ened from a horri ble nightmare, the kind you know will return again and again despite your hopes to the contrary. Richard Nixon is back. In a queer kind of political redemp tion, the only president to resign from office has been popping up on “Meet the Press” and “Today” as well as in the pages of Time, Newsweek and The Economist. Once there, he pontificates about foreign policy and the presi dential candidates, a group of men who must be salivating over the amount of media attention Nixon can garner at will. Nixon’s comeback is startling — and significant — because political forgive ness is a tricky business. Just ask Gary Hart. Hart’s on-again, off-again candi dacy is proof positive that Americans aren’t quick to set aside moral blunders, no matter how many grand ideas the politician wants to trumpet. Paradoxi cally, when a job-related goof occurs, we have no qualms about offering absolu tion — just ask the people who want to pardon Ollie North. Nixon may sense that the time is ripe for his return, that the statute of limita tions has run out on Watergate. More likely, he realizes that he now exists in a strange half-light: Hoping for reve lations about the past, we will allow him to make his pronouncements about the future. In his appearances, he’s done a little of both. Where the past is concerned, Nixon remains fiercely unrepentant. During a “Meet the Press” appearance, he conceded that the Watergate break- in was wrong but called it “this small thing” compared to his accomplish ments concerning China and the Sovi ets. And as for Vietnam? According to Nixon, his worst mistake was not bomb ing rnd mining North Vietnam much sooner. Nixon’s predictions for the future have been no less provocative. Although he told the Wall Street Journal that George Bush lacked the “independen ce” and “drive” to be president, he has since gone on to predict that Bush will be the next office-holder. And he seems to be picking up Jesse Jackson’s colorful language when he critiques the Demo crats: “The best politics is poetry rather than prose. Jesse Jackson is a poet . . . Dukakis is a word processor.” So why are the pronouncements com ing now? Time may have healed many wounds, but if it alone could account for Nixon’s rise from the ashes, Ted Ken nedy surely would not be far behind. But Kennedy, whose actions at Chappa- qu id dick preceded Watergate, still finds his presidential aspirations thwarted. probably permanently. During his 1980 campaign, fundraising efforts went awry when those asked to donate started writing back to say they would never contribute because of Mary Jo Ko- pechne’s death. Still, time is undoubtedly a factor. Americans simply are not as outraged over Watergate as they once were, a fact that may also be attributable to the scan- dal-of-the-week character of the Reagan administration. And Nixon’s goals are at once more and less ambitious than Ken nedy’s: He is seeking not to be a once and future president hut to be an eldei statesman, which could be more danger ous. The real reason for Nixon’s reap pearance may be the wavering of the Reagan Revolution’s ideals. With the Democrats holding the majority in both houses of Congress, Reagan’s efforts at meeting conservative goals have met with mixed success. And the limited re sponse to George Bush demonstrates that charisma, not widespread belief in conservatism, was probably the Ip Reagan’s success. The Republican Party, then, t need of an elder statesman loan.] and ref resh its ideals. Nixon issed the post through his endless inter,J and appearances. Like Gary Hat: 1 mav find Americans so disconcetltj his sins that they refuse to heary all. More likely, he will find avoitrj himself, especially in foreign polio I It would be senseless to ignory on’s ideas simply because of his pa long experience gives him insitli may not be available elsewhere.E, the same time, we can’t ignored that, as president, he demomtnt disdain tor the Constitutionune® bv any before or since. We must consider his ideas.Wti also consider the mind from whirl came. Sue Krenek is a senior jounulm: and editor o/The Battalion. Somtimes it’s a problem being a good liberal When my wife suggested a vaca tion to Mexico I said no way. “I don’t do Third World countries,” I said. “Mexico isn’t a Third World country. It’s an emerging indus trial nation.” “That means it’s a Third World country with air pollut ion. I don’t want to go someplace where the people are conspicuously poor; I’m a liberal. Even less do I want to go where the most famous cultural reward is diar rhea.” “That is a stupid, insensitive, unin formed thing to say. It may even be rac ist. The culture of Mexico is consider ably older and richer than ours. The Mayans were building temples to shame the pyramids when your ancestors were inventing the lard sandwich.” She had me there. I’d overplayed my hand and I knew it. I fought on for a bit, just to keep up appearances, but before long I was stacking suitcases on the front porch, waiting for our ride to the airport. The phone rang. It was our driver; she’d been taken ill. “See!” I said. “You can’t even help someone go to Mexico without getting sick. It’s an omen.” “Right,” my wife said. “Come on Marco Polo; we’ll go to plan B. Load the luggage in the car. We’ll park it at the airport.” I did as I was told. The plane tickets were non-refundable. Soon we were on our way to Cozumel, an island off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula in the Garribean Sea. The flight was typical for this day and age, much like what a trans-continental bus ride used to be. It was supposed to take seven hours; it took 12. If you ever want to know anything about the Hous ton airport, ask me. I’ve got it mem orized. We finally got to Cozumel. I should have known better than to worry about vacationing in a Third World country. This was not Third World Mexico, it was Tourist Mexico. Cozumel is one of those apparent paradises that poor countries construct to relieve people form rich coutries of superfluous wealth. It is, in most re spects, a perfect place. The hotels are modern, the food excellent, the sea su perb, the weather irreproachable and even the water is drinkable, a lot of it. If there is crushing poverty in Cozumel, it is doing its crushing well out of sight to the visitors — almost all American and European — who flock to its shores in enriching hordes. “This isn’t bad,” I said to my wife over a pina colada after a snorkling session. “Bad? It’s an MCM musical,” she said. “All that’s missing is the young Judy Garland.” Which, ultimately, is the problem. If you want a nice place in the sun to re cover from winter, you can hardly do better than Cozumel. It’s lovely. But it has roughly the same relationship to Mexico as a Chinese restaurant in New York has to China. It offers you the fla vor of Mexico — it looks and smells — without requiring you to struggle with the reality of Mexico. You don’t have to speak Spanish; people speak English. You don’t have to fend off beggars; there are none. You don’t have to deal with air pollution; the sky is stunningly blue. The bathrooms are clean, a lot of them. I began to feel guilty. I’m a liberal. “I never thought we’d wind up as Ugly Americans,” I said to my wife on the third day. “You’re going to ruin this for me, aren’t you?” she replied. “We used to sneer at Americans who would go to foreign countries without speaking the language and stay in hotels filled with other Americans and com plain about how they couldn’t get a de cent hamburger. All that’s left to us now is the complaint about the hamburger. We’ve become the jokes of our youth.” “Oh yes, you’re going to ruin it, I can tell.” “I watched one of the cruise ships come in yesterday. It was filled with old people, people in their sixties and sev enties. They came parading off that white boat, ready to spend an entire day plumbing the mysteries of Cozumel. They were loaded onto buses and driven off somewhere. That’s us in 10 years; 15 at the outside.” “I’m getting a headache in my left eye.” “I can see it now. Nothing is going to be spared us. Pinochle, shuffle-board, charades, bingo, we’re in for the whole nine yards. I’ll bet that before we leave I’ll ask a shopkeeper how much an item costs in real money. I thought, it was going to be different, somehow. I thought we were going to be more like William Powell and Myrna Loy. “I’m going upstairs to the room. When you get this out of your system, you can come up and join me. But not before.” She left and I ordered up a pina co lada and contemplated the unfairness of life. That’s the trouble with being a lib eral. You realize that if life were fairer, you wouldn’t be doing as well as you are. Copyright 1987, Tribune Media Services,Inc. Donald Kaul Mail Call Something is better than nothing EDITOR: In response to the Mail Call in April 14, I merely want to shed some light on faulty accusations directed at the social Creek organizations. So, what’s the problem? I’m NOT in a sorority or service fraternity, and I think you have completely misunderstood the purpose of the social Greek system. It is just that — SOCIAL — which is fine. They don’t HAVE to donate ANY money to charity or have any kind of fund drives at all! I personally feel that a net income for the needy of $316.00 is much better than $0.00, don’t you?! Sure sororities and fraternities put on fund raisers to have fun, but there’s a lot more work involved than you think. They donated long hours to setting up a Haunted House for MDA, Derby Day for the homeless and Songfest for the Brazos County Rehabilitation Center, in addition to many others. Not only do they donate their time, but the expense of materials and advertising often comes out of their own pockets. They don’t have fund raisers solely to party, they choose to donate to a charity because they care. I know all about Alpha Phi Omega and what it stands for as well. Let me inform you that however CREEK their letters may look, they were established and exist solely for the purpose of cleaning up highways, painting houses and other service projects. I think that’s fine too, but the fact remains that something is MUCH better than nothing at all. Don’t you think? Nancy Butler ’89 Where’s the money go? EDITOR: I’m writing this in great concern about my wallet, I which lias grown thinner than my patience. 11 hascof* I my attention that A&M,our great institute of high learning, has become an institute of higher earning! made it through parents' weekend, which 1 thought" 1 ' I going to be fun and inexpensive. As it turned out, every time our parents turned ar^H they had to shell out a few more dollars. Thevarietysh’H the air show (which was free last year), casino night,)’# 1 1 name it. I’m sure they wondered where that$900(and I rising) they paid for the closet with desks we live int'G I It’s going for more dorms due to the huge, money- ij spending freshman class A&M is letting in. It’s going I-'’H football coach who is making more than the President®■ the U.S. It’s sure not going for our convenience (and! ■ wouldn’t call a six-level parking garage in Bryan convenient). I also have this dream of forming an arm 1 B forty thousand A&M students to go to Rother’s,loup B the University Bookstore, etc . . . all the places thatsel fl books to us at a 500 percent markup and buy them l® 1 B with Mexican pesos, tear their walls to the ground and ■ spoon-feed the scraps to the owner. Corey Lokey ’99 Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editor^ serves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will makervn' 1 - maintain the author's intent. Each letter must be signed and nwstincUh sification, address and telephone number of the writer. The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Sue Krenek, Editor Daniel A. LaBry, Managing Editor Mark Nair, Opinion Page Editor Amy Couvillon, City Editor Robbyn L. Lister and Becky Weisenfels, News Editors Loyd Brumfield, Sports Editor Jay Janner, Photo Editor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspa per operated as a'community service to Texas, A&M and Bryan-College Station. Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the author, and do not necessarily rep resent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, fac ulty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Department of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. 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