The Battalion
OPINION
Tuesday, July 11, 1989
Mwevues
Ftr-r
HUD: taking fro
poor, giving to ric
Ooooooo, are you reading this HUD
stuff? Good Lord. Talk to me about
ethics, Mr. Gingrich. Now here’s how
cynical I’ve gotten — if these people had
been ripping off the Pentagon, I
couldn’t get real worked up about it —
ripping off the Pentagon, everybody
does it, it’s practically a national pas
time. All that happens when someone
rips off the Pentagon is that we don’t get
to build another nuclear weapon. Big
deal, we already have 20,000 of the
damn things. (Actually, sometimes peo
ple who rip off the Pentagon fix it so we
send American soldiers put to defend
the country with weapons that kill them,
but that’s another story.)
Molly
Ivins
Syndicated Cob
remember her? Bushalsos;
doesn’t have any political ini
Sure, probably Ms. Dean c
know Bush was deputy chiefofi
George Bush when he was vice
dent and later became deputy!
director of bis presidential camps
Hanging up on dial-a-porn
There’s alot of talk in Washington
about how to somehow regulate or get
rid of the dial-a-porn business.
In case you’re not familiar with dial-a-
porn, it is where you dial a telephone
number for a fee and somebody on the
other end answers the phone and talks
dirty to you.
Kids can call. That’s caused a lot of
the concern.
I do think I know a way to put dial-a-
porn, out of business, thus ending con
cerns and complaints, not to mention all
the fun kids are having. Here’s my the
ory.
Who likely keeps dial-a-porn in busi
ness are men who enjoy being talked to
dirty by women. It follows then that if
more women would learn to talk dirty to
the men in their lives, there wouldn’t be
a need for dial-a-porn.
I put my theory to the famous sex ex
pert, Dr. Norma Feelgood, to see if she
thought it had any merit.
Lewis
Grizzard
Syndicated Columnist
“Most certainly,” she said. “It is true
zat many men are excited by bawdy lan
guage and it is also zat many women are
not comfortable speaking in such a
manner.”
Before I went any further, I asked
Dr. Feelgood if all sex experts spoke
with an accent.
are there certain do’s and dont’s in this
area?”
“First,” said Dr. Feelgood, “a women
should make sure to use correct gram
mar.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.”
“If a woman use, say, wrong tense or
incorret antecedent, zis could break the
mood,” she explained.
“And one more thing,” she contin
ued.
But ripping off HUD? Rich, Republi
can consultants stealing money meant to
house the poor while homeless people
wander the streets? What I want to
know is, after James Watt got $300,000
for making three phone calls, did he
give a quarter to a homeless person the
next day? We’ve got families on the
streets of every city in America and
these people are using the money to
build golf courses? As Mr. Welch said to
Sen. McCarthy, “Have you at long last,
sir, no sense of shame?”
“It worked for Dr. Ruth,” she replied.
“I figure vat do I have to lose.”
“Why,” I continued with Dr. Feel
good, “do some women feel uncomfort
able talking dirty to their lovers?”
“Because rqany women are never ex
posed to such a thing in their early years
and feel inadequate in zis area,” she re
plied.
My question was, “If a woman is will
ing to learn a more erotic vocabulary.
“Please, go ahead,” I said.
“Never say to your lover, ‘Make me
feel like a woman, big boy.’ ”
“Why not?”
“Man might stop lovemaking and say,
‘OK, go make dinner.’”
And the interesting thing is, they
don’t. Don’t know if you watched James
Watt’s testimony before the committee
investigating this mess, but he smirked
all the way through it. This guy Freder
ick C. Bush (no kin to the President,
who has named him ambassador to Lux
embourg, not one of your hardship
posts) is sitting there telling the commit
tee that he didn’t lie the first time he ap
peared before them — he was merely
inaccurate and incomplete and he for
got. Like, when he said he didn’t know
Deborah Gore Dean, the executive assis
tant to HUD Secretary Sam Pierce, he
like, forgot that he used to take her out
You know, stealin’s one thing;
f rom widows, orphans and thei
poor box is generally considered!
form of activity. It wasn’t enoup
the Reagan administration cut)8I
out of spending on low-income li!
they had to steal w hat wasleft?T(
golf courses? There has neverbet
mystery about why homeless p
started appearing on the sites
America during the Reagan admi
tion, it’s real simple cause ande!
we stopped building low-income
ing and the result was a lot of hoi
people. That in addition toinstiiw
policy that was cruel and stupid
same people would then steal wk
left is something that leaves me
can’t think of the right word fork
have a real strong stomach.
I thanked Dr. Feelgood for backing^ to dinner and have her'over to his house
up my theory, and she wanted me to and that. “I don’t have a very good
mention if you want to know more in memory,” says he. Bush’s consulting
this area, be certain to read her forth- firm got more that $600,000 in consult-
coming book, “Sex: An Oral history.” ing fees and contracts from HUD, cour-
Copyright 1989, Cowles Syndicate tesy of Ms. Dean, and this guy doesn’t
Meanwhile, the Texas Legislatuil
already taken care of the whole]
burning issue and no one neecj
worry about it anymore. 1 don’ll*
why the rest of the country doesniB '
to the Lege for the kind ofleadersl* 1
always provides on the important is® '
but surely you, mah fellow Tei®
knew the Lege would not leaveusH r
protected when the Supreme court* t
so likelv to rule that flag-burningi® f
gal.
No problem. The Lege passed tip
this session making it a defense in a®
sault case if the vk^tim of the assault®
desecrated a flag just prior totheatH
In other w'ords, in the Great state, iiiB
gal to beat the hmm-hmm outofs*
one who burns the flag. A solutions
is far more sensible and satisfyinglij
messing with the constitution.
Some Food Services policies hard to digest
Texas A&M has one of the best large-
scale food services in the nation, and
probably the best food services of any
college, for its size, in the world. A
member of the Food Services’ sales team
told us that last year A&M Food Services
won a national award for providing the
best food services for a major organiza
tion (including universities, corpora
tions, government agencies, etc.) in the
nation.
Yet any program has room for im
provement, and there have been many
complaints around this campus about
our own Food Services.
Timm
Doolen
Juliette
*Rizzo
In fact, Food Services gives many stu
dents indigestion. Not even ROLAIDS
can spell relief for the students whose
lives and pocketbooks are affected by
the continuous changes they must try to
stomach. Now don’t get us wrong. It’s
not the quality of the food (although af
ter three years of dining on-campus a
little more variety would be nice), it’s the
quantity and price that we find repul
sive.
“special.” That doesn’t make much
sense (or cents either).
It was also noted that four skinny
chicken strips ($2.95), an ice-cream-
scoop-sized glob of overcooked maca
roni and cheese, some limp stringbeans
and a plastic cup full of orange juice cost
$5.43 (that’s approximately $.98 a
chicken strip). So much for quantity.
seem to get rid of all the money she had
left on her Aggie Express card. When
all else failed, she broke down on Satur
day (the last day of finals) and decided
to “charge it” (the act of purchasing mis
cellaneous food items from the Under
ground Store, thus subtracting the re
maining sum from her $50 balance). To
her dismay, the remaining Aggie Bucks
were already deleted from her account.
Due to new food service policies, the
remaining money expired Friday, the
last day of the first summer session. Our
staffer was left questioning what day is
actually the last day of the semester: the
last day of classes or the day of the last
final? Are students not supposed to eat
well-balanced meals before taking on
the hardest test of the semester? Food
services failed to sufficiently display
signs informing students as to when
their money would expire. They say it
was clearly printed in the summer
schedule book. It may have been docu
mented in the class schedule book, but
who really reads that publication in
depth? And how many Aggies keep the
booklet after registering?
The big question is: what happens to
the many dollars the University covertly
rakes in from expired meal plans? If a
student is continuing his education the
following semester, why doesn’t the
money carry over?
And why doesn’t the University use
the money it rightfully receives for
more economically sound purposes?
put the money into improving the
ity of the food.
Also, several times throughout
long semesters, the cafeteria worl
dress up in silly costumes — a ritual
simply isn’t cost-effective or necess
Likewise, the Sunday brunches theoi
cally provide us with better food,bull
lines are much longer and the foodi*
that much better than usual.
Food Services, in order to keeptk
student clientele, needs to realize tl
several improvements need to and
be made.
Why do the cafeterias have to make
us eat in front of the Academic Building
two or three times every semester? In
stead of spending all the money to drag
the chairs, tables and cooking facilities
to the Academic Building, they should
A way to students’ hearts (as
their pocketbooks) may well be throtj
their stomachs.
Timm Doolen is a junior comp'-
science major and a columnist. Julit'
Rizzo is a junior journalism major
opinion page editor for The Battalion
While looking for an entertainment
scoop for another section of the paper, a
fellow Batt staffer (a very cool one) no
ticed that a Taco Special, consisting of
three tacos, could be purchased for
$2.75 in the MSC. He also noticed that
individual tacos could be bought for
$.75 each. Therefore, three tacos would
be $2.25, $.50 less than the so-called
Quality also seems to be lacking at
times. In the spring of 1988, a friend
was eating in Sbisa bit into a bone in his
doughnut. He didn’t report it, but to
this day he gets queasy around pastry.
Food Services also left its mark on yet
another poor college student. This time
another staff member, after taking six
other staffers to lunch, still couldn’t
The Battalion
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Ellen Hobbs,
Editor
Juliette Rizzo,
Opinion Page Editor
Fiona Soltes,
City Editor
Drew Leder, Chuck Squatriglia,
News Editors
Steven Merritt,
Sports Editor
Katny Haveman,
Art Director
Hal Hammons,
Makeup Editor
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