The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, March 30, 1998, Image 9

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    The Battalion
[onday • March 30, 1998
TATE OF THE UNION
trouble for the Twinkles
;
roposed junk food tax infringes on Americans’right to feeding themselves with fat
.4
Donny
Ferguson
columnist
merica, you re
too fat. Not only
are you fat,
$re too stupid to do
about it.” Blunt
that is the mental-
5ehind the newest fad
he Health Police —
“Fat Tax.”
Allknowing, all-car-
slcial engineering
•■counters like Yale
chologist Kelly D.
wiu'll and graduate
dent E. Katherine Battle want to tax junk
Jd,(subsidize healthy food and regulate
. fir sugary cereals, snacks and other
virjjoally-enhanced munchies.
Ton see, Americans aren’t pudgy because
a. actually like to eat Ding-Dongs and a Skit-
and whipped cream pizza, we’re portly be-
se i) we can afford to eat fatty food, and b)
re loo stupid to know any better,
inter the “Fat Tax.” Inspired by the public
tiins and social engineering success of the
yhooed War on Tobacco, those just to the
oljtobaccophobes are hell-bent on impos-
thcir granola-munching, sweatin’-to-the-
ies lifestyle on those of us Whataburger
kars know by name.
fhey don’t want a nation of Roger Eberts,
ry Whites and Liz Taylors who can buy
lent whatever they want, they want to
Id a nation of Kate Mosses and Susan
vt^rs by careful manipulation of our col-
dve pudgy pocketbooks.
Hopefully, President Clinton will take ac-
i against the Fat Tax and back up his actual
Estatement, “I don’t necessarily regard Me
na Id’s as junk food. They have salads.”
||5iving government the ability to regulate
our daily diets raises some scary questions.
Just how far can they go in enforcing the Fat
Tax? Will we see headlines like, “Agents Raid
Home of Marlon Brando, Seize 400 Kilos of
Snickers” and “Mayor McCheese Nabbed in
FBI Tax Sting?” Can government really meddle
in the everyday habits of its citizens?
What began with an attack on tobacco has
grown into a war on junk food. The two oper
ate on the same premise, Americans are enjoy
ing themselves with a product detrimental to
their health and something must be done to
stop it. Although the assaults on smokers
played well in the media, the spaced-out war
on snackers has exposed the health police for
what they are: meddling do-gooders overstep
ping the boundaries of government control.
As long as they are turning the government
into a national nanny, proponents of the Fat
Tax should go the whole nine yards.
We need a Mediocrity Tax to raise prices on
John Tesh CDs and Denver Nuggets tickets. Af
ter all, someone could easily produce a study
showing children who are repeatedly exposed
to inferior music and poor outside shooting
grow up with lowered expectations.
Hiking prices on Spice Girls tickets and
charging a hefty fee to watch CBS program
ming is the only way to save the children.
A world plagued by lower-back pain needs a
Bad Shoe Tax.
Everyone knows Big Shoe has covered up
the health risks of bad soles and marketed
their products at innocent children with
slick Joe-Camel-like techniques like naming
them “Hush Puppies” to exploit kids’ love of
cartoon animals.
Americans should be taxed to the point
where we all must walk around in nothing but
Easy Spirits and those brown clodhoppers
they sell in the back of Eckerd’s.
If Fat Taxers give government the power
to regulate what we put in our mouths, our
lives will be forever changed for the worse.
If government were to seize full control of
the snack food industry, buying a nine-pack
of McNuggets could require lengthy paper
work and a cost-benefit analysis.
The Trix Rabbit could be hauled in
front of a Senate committee to testify on
sugary cereal and its effect on obsessive-
compulsive disorders.
Most importantly, we should tax obses
sion with power.
By making people who want to tax to
bacco, junk food and restrict other free
doms pay higher prices on office space,
phone rates and supplies, the rest of us can
get on with our lives without looking over
our shoulder for a bureaucrat or whiny
“public interest” activist wailing about it.
The Fat Tax proposed by pointy-headed,
croissant-munching, do-gooder intellectu
als has taken the absurdities of government
regulation of health habits and thrust it into
the spotlight.
If government could successfully manage
anything, tax preparation wouldn’t require a
NASCAR pit crew-like team of lawyers and
accountants and Social Security wouldn’t be
in worse financial shape than an Amish
computer company.
After 200 years of fighting oppression,
winning two world wars, becoming the
planet’s leading superpower and inventing
arena football, Americans have earned the
right to eat whatever they want, no matter
how sugaiy, fatty, gooey or whatever the
nugent-to-caramel ratio.
Donny Ferguson is a junior political
science major.
RSPECTIVES
m
(ids are society's responsibility
m Jf
Michelle
Voss
columnist
IF
;oiuchil-
mio vio-
K, and
do not
'e.
Afew
Ago, a
Ty
Isas
I was
doa
rrilii nightmare when a grue-
ae shooting at an Arkansas mid-
tschool killed five people and in-
fed 10. What is shocking, however,
ha i the suspects in custody for
^ shooting are two adolescent
| one is 11, and the other is 13.
j'essed in camouflage and armed
jjprifles and pistols, the boys
led the school’s fire alarm, then
I neighboring woods, fired over
shots at students and faculty. After-
s, the boys were found running
|rd a van stocked with more guns
imunition.
It is becoming painfully obvious
it we are neglecting our children.
K Arkansas Governor Mike
ckabee aptly stated, “It makes me
mot so much at individual
Iren that have done it as much
Bigry at a world in such a thing
1 happen.”
pr society is not progressing
i our children are committing
brutal acts of violence.
Our society is not civilized when
our children kill.
The fact that the two words “chil
dren” and “kill” are found in the
same sentence should be enraging.
Why didn’t someone know these
boys had a van full of ammunition
and weapons? Why didn’t some
one sense they were acting pecu
liar? Why wasn’t someone listen
ing to these children?
We cannot rely on our public
school system to be the answer to
these questions, they are miserably
failing to reach out to our children.
The simple fact is, we are not
giving our children the attention
they need — at home.
Some may call it a decay of fam
ily values — whatever that means.
Some might say feminism is to
blame, since fewer mothers stay
home — that’s just being overly
simplistic.
Others might point to our vio
lence-saturated media as a catalyst
for violent behavior — but that’s
just a scapegoat.
America has a national crisis,
and we do not care.
Regardless of the label one might
use to explain our national crisis, it
all boils down to the fact we have a
lack of love for our children.
But rather than take on responsi
bility as individuals and communities
to give more of ourselves to our chil
dren, we have created partisan issues.
Partisan issues that serve as
campaign platforms and fuel con
gressional debates, all to no avail,
our children are still suffering.
Pitting conservative against lib
eral on issues such as national
child care or national standard
ized testing, we think in terms of
budgets, popularity ratings and
reelection campaigns.
We forget about our children.
Yet, we, our generation, will be
starting families soon.
We have the chance to actually
change something for the better
in America, we can be there for
our children.
We can shake the American ad
diction to materialism by forsaking
the BMW and the ritzier neighbor
hood so one parent can stay home
with tlie children to discipline and
to listen, to know what is happen
ing in their lives.
Otherwise, we will begin to fear
our own children.
We are not a just society when we
rob our youth of love and nurturing.
This is not the job of the state,
and we will decay as a culture if we
allow our government to raise our
children.
We must realize our future will
be bleak if we neglect our children.
We cannot allow chaos to be our
children’s care giver.
Michelle Voss is a sophomore
English major.
Nfeluctoith
REWEMBiR, he goes
J
PERSPECTIVES
Entertainment not cause of tragedy
C
Beverly
Mireles
columnist
I hildren screaming. Blood
flowing. Lives ending.
It sounded like a report com
ing from Bosnia, or Rwanda, or
any other country that Ameri
cans routinely ignore. But some
thing happened that Americans
couldn’t ignore like they had the
all the others. Because it oc
curred on our own soil — some
thing happened at an elemen
tary school in Jonesboro, Ark.
Fifteen people were serious
ly wounded, and tragically, five people — four stu
dents and a teacher who threw herself in front of the
group in order to shield them. They were victims of a
seemingly motiveless crime.
I first heard this horrible information while
watching CNN. The news anchors repeatedly re
ferred to the boys as snipers. But they were children,
just like those they murdered were children.
Then, the news anchors cut to the footage of the
scene. It first showed the sheriff. He cried as he re
counted what had happened. Pain showed in every
crease on his face. Sorrow swam in his eyes.
The witnesses were visible behind him, slowly
rocking back and forth, still in shock. Some had blood
smeared on their clothes and hands. A few looked out
into the surrounding area, but it was clear that they
weren’t seeing anything. They were reliving it all,
mentally.
One of the officers was wrapping yellow “Do Not
Cross” tape around the school’s brick pillars. Yellow
police tape gives everything the impression of being
“off”; it casts the look of disaster. But it looked partic
ularly painful on the elementary school.
After seeing file footage a few times, as CNN cy
cled the story over and over for the rest of the night,
something close to anger swept over me. I wasn’t
particularly angry at the two boys, more confused to
wards them, but I was angry that something like this
happened — at a school no less — and that everyday
life had once again been thrown into chaos because
of a crime without reason.
Perhaps I was just searching for answers. Every
one was. The next day, the governor of Arkansas
blamed “a national culture of violence fueled by film
and television” for the boys’ murderous impulse. It
didn’t really matter if he was right, it was good poli
tics in a time of moral crisis. People were looking for
something to blame, and those entertainments we
find so delightful on a normal basis seem foul under
the limelight of tragedy.
Blaming doesn’t seem to help, though. This is the
fourth killing by children/adolescents in the past two
years — if movies are truly the problem, the solution
to end all this madness is found easily enough.
But they aren’t to blame, we are. Lack of humanity
does not come from watching television, or movies,
or whatever is the fashionable scapegoat these days.
It comes from replacing human emotions with tele
vised ones. It comes from making the peripheries of
life, like TV and movies, the mainstays. Maybe “Must
See TV” isn’t to blame, but our fascination is.
We are the ones who made fiction more impor
tant that nonfiction. It’s the reason why people can
watch the evening news without flinching, and yet
be moved by a “tragic” episode of “ER.”
Being angry at the entertainment industry is very
easy, but it isn’t effective against tragedies of this
magnitude. And as those boys sit in a juvenile deten
tion center, a painful reminder of how murderously
cruel we can be to each other, politicians and the rest
of us should keep in mind that TV can’t cause this
kind of damage, only people can.
Beverly Mireles is a freshman Microbiology major.
MAIL CALL
Aggie hospitality
appreciated by visitor
I have heard a great deal about
Texas A&M, about its traditions
and its history. However, since I
am not a student here, I have nev
er quite understood the way peo
ple revere A&M. I came here for
spring break and was shown the
Chicken, Kyle Field and most im
portantly ... the Bird. The people
said Howdy to me and I have been
really impressed with your school.
When at the Bird for the first of
several times to come, I left my
purse with all my important be
longings and a great deal of cash.
It wasn’t until late that night that I
realized it was missing. When I
called my parents in Kansas, I dis
covered that a member of the
Corps of Cadets had found my
purse and had notified them.
James Eagleeye arranged to meet
me and returned the purse with
out accepting the reward. James
saved my trip and for this, I want
to thank him and extend my sin
cere gratitude.
I still don’t understand all of
your traditions. I hear “whoop”
and talk of “good bull,” and I don’t
think I’ll ever catch on. But I do
know the students on this campus
are friendly, honest and proud of
their school. I think you have a
great deal to be proud of.
Cate Pugh
University of Kansas
Class of'99
Line-item veto not the
problem, President is
I can see how Stewart Patton can
come to believe the line-item veto is
ineffective. It can be difficult to dis
tinguish the line-item veto’s ineffec
tiveness from President Clinton’s in
effectiveness. My advice: keep the
policy, lose the President.
Eva Darski
Class of'98
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may be submitted in person at 013 Reed Mc
Donald with a valid student ID. Letters may also
be mailed to:
The Battalion - Mail Call
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College Station, TX
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Fax: (409) 845-2647
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