Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, August 3, 1988
Opinion
Giving hope is the only cure for the hopeless
Last
summer I
was in Houston
serving chicken
fried steak and
longnecks trying
to save money for
the fall. During
that time I worked
along side a
woman I’ll call
Joan. She was 37,
smart and well
read, but she had
Jill
Webb
never looked for a better paying job
than the sports bar where we were wait
ing tables. Joan had a lot of problems
that our society tries to solve. Her boyf
riend beat her up; she drank constantly;
she smoked three packs a day. She had
dropped out of high school 20 years
earlier, and she had given up on herself.
people we are trying to help like chil
dren, we are furthering their own dev
astating assumption that they are help
less. Many times it is easy to assume that
people who have a lot of problems, es
pecially mental problems, are some how
less grown up than we are. We tiptoe
around them with our wise words and
thoughtful ideas, acting as if they heard
our plans for them they would go to
pieces. Everyone has a valuable opinion;
we need to listen to the people we are
trying to help. An extention of being an
adult, and the next way to give hope is
giving people real responsibility.
Ever the naive idealist, I tried to help
Joan. I told her she could get her
G.E.D., apply for a student loan, go
back to school, and get a better job and a
new life. I listed ways she could become
independent. I gave her books on how
to get out of abusive relationships. I
even offered to give her some money
and let her stay with me until she could
find a place of her own. But Joan just
laughed away my suggestions. She said
it was too late for her, so after countless
frustrating attemps to help her, I left
Joan alone. The last I heard she was liv
ing with a man who had threatened to
kill her.
People without hope need to began to
feel that things just do not happen to
them, that they can made things happen
to change their lives. Responsibility is a
privilege on one hand and a necessity on
the other. It is a privilege because free
dom comes from responsibility, and it is
a necessity because everyone needs to
feel that they matter, that what they
contribute in this life makes a difference
to others. An individual’s function in so
ciety cannot be overlooked because what
we are to the rest of society is an impor
tant aspect of life. Similarly, people
without hope need to feel as if they are
part of humanity.
Joan needed something none of my
ideas or any government programs
could give her— hope. Until people like
Joan get hope, then they will never en
ter the struggle to improve their lives.
We need to send hope checks with wel
fare checks. We need to serve hope in
our soup kitchens. Social workers need
to carry lots of hope. There are several
ways of giving hope, but none are as
easy as writing a check or giving advice.
For some reason we like to separate
ourselves from those who need our help
the most. We seem to have an irrational
fear that hopelessness is contagous, that
if we associate ourselves with “those”
people that we will somehow be haunted
by their problems. We have to develop a
sense of unity among humanity that our
industrial society has started to strip
from us. Even people we have not met
need to matter to us. They need to mat
ter just because they are people, because
they have feelings and dreams and chil
dren and because they need hope.
The first way to bring hope is to treat
people like adults. When we treat the
It is easy to say “if I were you.” I used
to think, if I were Joan I’d leave that
jerk. I’d get a little apartment and go to
school and work until I dropped if I had
to to make some kind of happy life for
Mail Call
I really will give Y.O.U. money
EDITOR:
Now that the summer is over, the students in the Y.O.U. program are
preparing to return home.
Before you leave I would like to take a moment to say that personally I am
very glad to have had you on my campus and to know of your program. I feel
that your program contains the essence of what Aggie Spirit is all about: to
use one’s resources and abilities to help those with the potential and desire to
succeed but who have not been shown that their destiny is controlled only by
their own vision and dedication. Your lives are in your hands and you have
now been shown that you can do with it as you will.
Although you do not know' me and I do not know you personally, I would
like to make an offer. When you graduate from high school you will all follow
different paths. Some of you will go to vocational school, some of you w ill en
ter the work force immediately, some of you may enter college. A few of you
will return to A&M. To those of you that pursue higher education at my
Alma Mater I will provide financial assistance, to the extent possible, so that
you can concentrate on your studies and not where your next meal is coming
from.
Dale Adams ’88
Keep your fire to yourself
EDITOR:
It is extremely disturbing to know that the firemen can park anywhere
they please, without getting a ticket, when students have to pay money and
only get to park in student lots, which are being minimized by construction.
So you say “Park in a different lot!” Well, I do not feel like taking the shuttle
back to my dorm. If I knew I w'as going to be taking the shuttle, I would not
have spent the money on a parking permit. Back to the firemen situation. It is
bad enough that they take our parking places, but when we do finally find a
place, as we are walking by them we get whistled at and perverted gestures
are made. This may seem petty to some people, but to those of us who do not
enjoy their unnecessary comments, it is very annoying!
Jennifer Jones ’92
Cara Murray ’92
Lorri Walker ’92
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myself. But I cannot make those kind of
statements anymore because I realized
that I’m not Joan— I have hope. If Joan
were like me she WOULD leave, but she
is not me and I have to accept that and
try to help her on her own terms. It is
not going to do any good to treat people
who need hope as we would be treated,
becatse people who have lost hope do
not see things the way that hopeful peo
ple do. If they did they would not feel so
trapped. We have not lived the hope
less’s lives and until we do we can’t say,
“if I \a ere you.”
It seems like the conservatives’ solu
tion to the hopeless problem is to do
nothing and let the people get motiva
tion from suffering. This does not work.
Hopeless people are used to suffering,
they think it is their lot in life, and they
just end up getting worse and worse.
The liberals’ solution is to give the hope
less lots and lots of money. This only
wastes money and makes the general
public angry at the hopeless. Neither so
lution does anything to get at the root of
the problem. They are simply cop-out
solutions. I think what we need to do is
start listening to these people. We need
to start talking to them to find out why
they feel this way, what they really need,
when they began to feel that tomorrow
was not going to be any different than
today. We need to find out what made
Pic
ndig
them give up, lose hope and
purpose in their life.
Without hope there can beno
nesss, and it is a tragedy that some
pie go through their lives miserablt
can make things better for peopt
treating them as adults, givingthci
sponsibiltiy, and accepting them as
of “us” not one of “them.” NoneofcBrear
solutions is as easy as pattingoure nust
on the back for making a donate
saving “work harder,” but as long!
are trying to listen, to learn, toon
reach out to people and help, theii^ irn {>
will be hope.
Jill Webb is a senior secondary^
lion major and columnist For lk\
talion.
Te
nust
ystei
ohn
He
umi
aid
ino
hanj
“T
Censorship won’t save the dayr
I don’t know if
you’ve noticed,
but there’s a terri
ble odor coming
out of the office
building at 5 1
West 52nd St. in
New York — the
der, while the bloodied knife is falling
from its hand.
Robert
Dowdy
Guest Columnist
home of CBS-TV, the self-proclaimed
Messiah of TV journalism for the past
40 years.
I thought that when CBS cancelled
the “Smothers Brothers Show” in 1969
from Administration pressure (pressure
which the network euphemistically
called ‘public interest’) and then re
instated the Brothers in prime time
nearly 20 years later, that it had learned
its lesson. To wit: it recieved its license
to control a portion of the airwaves with
one proviso: this authority over the
most powerful medium ever created is a
public trust that can never be compro
mised.
The show in question is “The New
Adventures of Mighty Mouse.” I can
hear you snickering in the back.
“Mighty Mouse” is, quite simply, one of
the funniest half-hours on television,
despite its Saturday morning slot. It and
“Pee-Wee” are the only two not pushing
a product — either dolls or breakfast ce
reals — and they are the only two with
intelligence behind them beyond know
ing how to thread an animation ma
chine. “Mighty Mouse” is surreal, anar
chic, funny and (dare I say it?) can only
be appreciated by adults. It would get
better ratings behind David Letterman.
“The principal thrust of thiscpsj
is to show the redeeming quality of j
and kindness,” said LeMaster.'‘ThJ
nothing in the story line, the dialed
the behavior of Mighty Mousei
would suggest otherwise.”
Referring to the censored franief
imator Ralph Bakshi said, “Thestj
seconds of footage have been takeil
tally out of context by individuals
seem to be searching for sinister!
tones in a cartoon . . . Nothingcoulj
further from the truth.”
But, I digress. Cut to the chase, Rob.
Well, kids, they’ve done it again.
The Rev. Donald Wilson, head of the
conservative American Family Associa
tion, complained that during one epi
sode Mighty Mouse looked as though he
was snorting cocaine, when in fact he
was sniffing a flower “in typical cartoon
fashion,” as described by CBS’s Enter
tainment President Kim LeMaster.
Quite true. But who made thei
sion to cut the scene out of theepisl
Rev. Wilson? No. It’s not his prop;!
Bakshi? No. He’s under contract
CBS, and must ultimately accept!
network’s decisions concent]
censorship. That leaves only onecuj
CBS, w h (4 has bucked undel
censorship pressure, and screweditt|
dience in the process.
Not only do I have to put up with
Brent Mussberger blabbing his banal,
and often very partial, commentary
about every sport known to man, re
gardless of whether he knows anything
about said sport; not only do I thank
God that I have cable television, so that I
am not in thrall to the CBS Entertain
ment Division. Now, one of my favorite
shows on CBS — one of the few worth
watching — is being censored. And
CBS, through it all, is denying the mur-
I’ve seen this particular episode three
times, and can vouch for LeMaster’s
comments. It’s no more harmful or sug
gestive than any of the other surreal epi
sodes.
Now I know that CBS doesn’t gfI
damn about its responsibilites to I
public and, specifically, to itsever-d'|
tiling audience. Does CBS wonder:
more and more viewers are switcM
cable to watch the thirtieth rerunW
But whether or not he is snorting co
caine is irrelevant. The episode has been
censored. And what is scary is that CBS
is denying something which has ob
viously taken place. Here are some ac
tual quotes:
classic movie or turning off the set J
getting some fresh air? Ifs because 1 ;
any endeavor, as the stakes get I
and higher, the temptation to coni[j
mise gets easier and easier.
Robert Dowdy is a May graduate.l
currently a freelance writer in
ton.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breatl
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