Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 15, 1994)
September 15, IFICE September 15, 1994 Opinion The Battalion ?M 1 i m sell images, not products fjimmicks make every item look like buy of the century : ive by the North lext “six years, nil Col. Ray was he] fferent POW camp; ful “Hanoi Hilton,' o brainwashingat. id torture that wot POWs underwent fcpihe other day l '»niiTvf Ioqq nPflfinfro I * , , -x i ountless r their arms until of socket - an inji operations today, it he would keep r to himself and FRANK STANFORD Columnist Ir. Hopmann if war, somehows, i their lives. spotted a large . sign on the idow of some all business. It fed, “Get better pdes.” My initial ught was, “Hmm, s in the Corps of Imust be one of those ,han this!” Htoring places.” But |on closer scrutiny I noticed it was a martial arts academy. A martial arts academy?! Now, we’ve all seen “Rung Fu” re- s, and are amazed at how powerful Eastern mental training be. We’ve also seen Steven Segal open up a can of oop-ass on four or five guys who happen to be wielding an [tire set of Ginsu cutlery. This stuff is pretty impressive to able to keep goiJ§v the least. But to advertise a martial arts academy like a ied with the sar;BP^ an Graduate Exam Course is stretching it just a tad. How- a faith in God,ahi er > we , sa y it>s J ust ions they learned]'^ advertising, tin’ Texas Aggie 1 We!!, advertising ■ this country has dze and honor k,■If™ ™ >° d ." " r opmann,and Rail l: i ve . g ?f e , n 80 n u , n 'Ruical, that every i ps wi e o .. ^ ra j ges q Ues tions innal wreath lay* tohowFm being ? n y j 0n rri he Sirapsc: fooled. Even when I uid. he ceremoE* n k j made the gm promptly at p Urc hase of the century, doubt plagues me until two or I do not want this:B ree f r iends verify my good fortune. More often than not, a C orps event,k|i’ m told that whatever I bought was cheaper somewhere •sity*wide event-;,[else. Even more frequently, I am told I didn’t need it in the veryone for whom Erst place. Advertising just draws me in. T)Ws put their lire J We’re so surrounded by what I call, “I must be stupid” adver- one’s liberty that ping gimmicks, we hardly notice most of them. I’ve divided ) preserve. ibem into three categories. y is the least we™ The first, “Subliminal messages”, were big in the news a he courage andpe; few years ago, or 10 maybe. There was a big legal stink over such odds, and the [advertisers using them in their ads. These messages were or them. Biought to be unethical because they are pictures or direc- d dearly for the i v es that are below the conscious level of a person, but are so enjoy - give l | ron S enough to influence their actions. serve. I F° r instance, in the ’50s, theaters edited films and added iu are not forgotter. jf Pew random single film frames of food, soda, people eat- . ■: : ing or words like EAT! to subconsciously motivate the U-r Matt Segreslis ® ewer concessions. Although no one was able to de- manaeementm-te dtlae ra P i(11 y moving images, they bought significantly pore food. This practice became illegal at some point, but IMH k still used to a lesser degree. A current method of sending subliminal mes sages is found in liquor ads. Artists airbrush breasts, phallic symbols and other sexually at tractive images onto a photo of booze and ice. One of the more current methods of sending subliminal mes sages is found in liquor ads. In particular, the top selling porno graphic periodicals - OK, “girlie books” - have often contained full page photographs of glasses of booze with ice. Because of the light refraction and the multiple distorted surface areas, artists can easily airbrush female breasts, legs, hair, phallic symbols and other sexual images onto the photo. Sometimes fruit is displayed in these ads, sliced in such a way to emulate a Georgia O’Keeffe painting (ask an art person). For some reason, that sweaty glass of vodka on the rocks just looks so-o-o-o good. Other popular ads are a little less sneaky, but still quite powerful. Enter “bogus photograph ads.” There’s nothing hid den in them, but the image is a big lie. Take pictures of hamburgers for example. Portraits of ham burgers is more accurate. They have beautiful, puffy, glisten ing buns with perfectly proportioned dressings and vegetables, all matched and color coordinated to make you want to eat the picture. No hamburger ever looks like that. The meat, which is mostly pureed gristle - technically 100 percent pure beef, because of its bovine origin - is much smaller than the photo beef. The lettuce and tomato are always placed halfway off the burger, soaking the al ready drenched, smashed, grease-paste of a bun with even more liquids. A pho tographer once told me the “model” burgers’ buns are rubbed with Vaseline to make them shiny. What a farce. “Association” ads are very popular right now. My fa vorites are the ones for pain relievers and beer. Beer ads are the simplest. If you buy this beer you will score with beautiful women. End of message. Drug commercials are complex in comparison. They fre quently place a well-known soap opera doctor in a library to tell you that the drug is scientifically proven. Everyone knows it’s Dr. Bluff Granite from the “All My Superficial Children” cast. He’s never opened any of those books; he knows NOTH ING about medicine - except his cocaine habit. They’re paying him specifically to trick us. We’re such suckers. Other medicine ads feature a striking woman, over 35, with an extremely frumpy hairstyle and outfit. Her dress is usually a dark color with white trim high on the neck. She’s not sexy. She’s serious, straightforward but caring, and reminds you of Sister Mary Francis Aquinas. She would not lie. But she might reach out of the screen and beat your hand with a ruler if you don’t buy her pills. Frank Stanford is a philosophy graduate student The Battalion Editorial Board Belinda Blancarte, Editor in chief Mark Evans, Managing editor Jay Robbins, Opinion editor Jenny Magee, Assistant opinion editor > ; Editorials appearing in The Bat! reflect the views of the editorial board. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other Battalion staff members, the Texas A&M student body, regents, administration, faculty or staff. Columns, guest columns, cartoons an letters express the opinions of the authors. Contact the opinion editor for information on submitting guest columns. * flpfIPP « WM : Strike - No Ball Fans lose more than anyone else This fall the leaves will change in New England and kids will carve pumpkins, but there will be no World Series. Yesterday the acting commissioner of Major League base ball, Bud Selig, canceled the rest of the season, leaving it the first year since 1904 without a World Series. This incident highlights the absurdi ty of the strike. Who cares about players’ salaries and owners profits if they are not even going to play the game? Rather than accept a compromise or at least agree to table talks until after the pennant races, the players and owners have destroyed the whole season. Some desperate fans even hoped President Clinton would issue an executive order to resolve the crisis. Ironically, this year’s players and teams exhibited some of the best games and talent in decades. The op portunities to set dozens of new records are now lost permanently. The average salary of professional baseball players is $1.2 million. Yet, they fight against a salary cap. Players have said they will go back to playing immediately and sort the rest out later if the owners give up on the plan, but even that sugges tion failed. The owners claim 18 baseball franchises are losing money and that without a salary cap they cannot re main competitive with clubs who can afford large payrolls. Owners have backed down during the past to pre serve the game, but now have chosen to stick to their demands. Unfortunately, the real losers in the game of con tract negotiations will be the fans and those who depend upon the in dustry to make a liv ing. After all, the fans are the ones who truly fund the sport. Busi nesses in cities who do not have other profes sional sports teams also will suffer losses. And there are people to blame. The players and owners are both at fault, and next year’s fan appreciation day - if they are playing by then - might as well be a declaration of the clubs’ hypocrisy.The owners and players have lost millions of dollars and countless unique opportunities for legendary plays. It is anyone’s guess as to how many fans the game of baseball has lost. Crime bill builds base for inner-city social programs I •mxMtk-. ■•rTw.wn rr* -ttfli- ac^ v=5c JT — ^ J-~- So-called 'pork' provides needed opportunity for better education, decreased crime, personal excellence dd! ents Y 3S 5. and n Service, I magine going to an overcrowded, underfunded public high school in the inner city. Imagine that your school barely has enough money to provide you with outdated, beat-up textbooks, much less give you anything extra, like centrifuges and chemicals for your chemistry class or art supplies or dance instructors. Imagine your reaction if the federal government were to give you all of this and more. It has. The much-debated crime bill passed on Tuesday, bringing with it not only more law enforcement, but also some severely-needed social programs. Opponents see no need for these programs. They are simply “pork” thrown in to appease Democratic constituents. Is prevention really wasteful spending? I don’t think so. Inner-city kids are supposedly the most at-risk to become involved in crime. What in particular makes them more susceptible than members of other neighborhoods or social groups? It all boils down to money. Less money equals less opportunity for education. Even though everyone is provided a “free” public education, in poorer areas this education is ridiculously substandard in relation to the education provided in richer ones. The richer kids have the chance to work in labs, sculpt clay, play instruments and participate in a huge number of other activities that go beyond the scope of the three R’s. This may not seem important on a superficial level. After all, it’s just fun stuff - not as necessary to education or life as algebra, right? Who needs art class? The fact is, we all need some sort of release from the difficulties of daily life. These kids have to risk scorn from their peers just for wanting to attend school every day. Some have to worry about whether they’ll make it home okay or whether they 11 get enough to eat that night. Daily life for these kids must be very difficult. School doesn’t provide an escape .rom their problems when there’s always the 'ear that an armed person might make it through the metal detector that day. Inner-city kids can’t escape to a big backyard or to the local fitness center for fun like their middle-class peers. So, some become involved in illegal extracurricular activities, thus perpetuating the problem. The new law package provides money for youth employment skills, community youth academies, gang prevention services, Boys and Girls Clubs and dozens of other groups to provide educational opportunities not available in the school system. These programs offer a way to learn how to stop the cycle of crime and to have fun in a safe environment. Perhaps the most controversial provision of the crime bill is the proposal LYNN BOOMER Columnist for a midnight basketball program. Critics say that it’s silly because no good kids would be out at midnight, and those who are don’t deserve any special favors and should be kept in by a curfew. If curfews were as effective as the detractors of the bill would lead the public to believe, we would already have seen a significant decrease in crime. President Bush visited a midnight basketball league in 1991 and gave his seal of approval. “The last thing midnight basketball is about is basketball,” he said at the time. “It’s about providing opportunities for young adults to escape drugs and the streets and get on with their lives. It’s not coincidental that the [area] crime rate is down 60 percent since the program began.” Time reporter Margaret Carlson argues that the reason midnight sports came under No one is forced to be a criminal, but it takes a strong person to live in an environment that contains gang warfare, drug dealers and poverty, and not become mentally trapped. Republican fire is that “they realized that they could recapture the law-and-order issue for themselves by stalling the bill.” This may be a valid point. After all, President George Bush had no problem giving midnight basketball the Republican seal of approval. Critics have argued that the crime bill is too costly to taxpayers. It’s too costly to fund these social programs, especially when the beneficiaries are just a bunch of punks who probably belong in jail. The real cost is to human life, whether victimized by crime or denied the same educational opportunities as peer groups. No one is forced to be a criminal, but it takes an extremely strong person to live every day in an environment that contains drive-by shootings, gang warfare, drug dealers and poverty, and not become mentally trapped. It’s hard to believe that the average middle-class kid, caught in a similar environment, would have the mental strength to survive, much less excel. Perhaps with the new programs, more average inner-city kids will find that inner strength. Their success would be priceless. Lynn Booher is a junior English and psychology major iff soroynT w want MkT\ Mail C^l Bonfire builders have rights, too It has become fashionable, in these modern times, to have a cause and rail against it as a perceived injus tice. That we have lowered the standards as to what is an “injustice,” and therefore cheapened the word it self, seems to have been ignored in the rush to attack traditions, and the status quo. What was once consid ered our “personal freedoms” has now been replaced with the more nebulous “Rights,” and these rights have apparently now been changed to read, “Anything that annoys me or inconveniences me in any way, or I find contrary to my wishes, is not to be allowed.” Such intolerance is self-belittling and crass. Bonfire. It seems that just to say the word is tanta mount to asking its foes to attack you verbally and through the administration. I will never forget a meeting last year about Bonfire Wake-Up policy, in which a man stated, “I party Friday nights, and I come home drunk at two in the morning and ready to crash, and like you guys getting up and stuff wakes me up. I got rights man.” In credulously I asked if he was going to go watch it bum; at his answer (yes) I asked if 20 minutes of noise on a Satur day was too much for him to give to the effort of building it. He didn’t answer. But another gentleman did say he wasn’t going to watch it and wanted nothing to do with it, therefore he shouldn’t be annoyed by us going to “screw” around. “Fine,” I said, “so what you are telling me is since you aren’t going, the other 450 of us shouldn’t.” I thought that this year would be a bit easier - after all, we had already hashed out our problems with the admin istration, hadn’t we? Not so. That the building of Bonfire is sanctioned and encouraged by A&M is well known; but to the local area housing offices, it is a pain in the neck. When we return, our boots are muddy and we smell like trees. Sweating and bleeding and blistered and loud, we make our way to the cafeterias and talk endlessly about how big this log was or who broke an axe. Trails of dirt and wood chips in our wake, we hang our “Grodes” to dry outside, sing ribald songs and look forward to next week end when we will do it all over again. Friendship, hard ship, determination, and Aggie spirit, it’s all there. So, un fortunately, is the mess. TTie offices of the administration don’t see it, but our housing coordinators do, and they are not amused. When you add to this the vocal minority of students who disapprove, you have an area office more than willing to bend over backwards to place restrictions upon Bonfire, to ensure the rights of others. (Read that as also alleviating the mess and headache they go through). Gentlemen, and ladies, I say enough! Suck it up! We will cut the trees; you can watch Saturday cartoons. We will load the logs; you can watch “Roseanne.” We will stack the logs, you can sleep far from the Tag-lines. We will build it ... you will watch. We do not mind, we are happy to do these things and proud to be a part of a glori ous tradition. Just don’t place further obstacles in our way, Our aching backs, our sleepless nights, our blistered palms and weary arms are enough. Notice one thing, however: the tired but self satisfied smiles on our faces as it bums, tears on the faces of best friends who were once strangers, and the little guy who said he wouldn’t have anything to do with Bonfire and shouldn’t be bothered, wearing a Bonfire shirt, and watch ing it fall. (Bet you thought nobody would notice - we did. We were proud to have you there friend, we are all Aggies, and look at what we have ALL done.) Wayne (Pops) White Class of’87 and ’97 The Battalion encourages let ters to the editor and will print as many as space allows, tetters must be 100 words or less and in clude the author's name, class, and phone number. We reserve the right to edit fetters Address letters to: The Battalion - MaUCafl 013 Reed McDonald Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-1111 Fax:(409)845-2647 F miMi- '' v ' C-t» w»t|.