( "■ 1 ed itorial ”v
A new kind of
penny arcade?
Wednesday, an Associated Press story came over
the wire reporting that a club in New York City honors
people who shoot other people by awarding them with a
plaque and $200 cash. The club, called the Federation of
Greater New York-Pistol and Rifle Clubs, has a member
ship of 6,000 people.
The federation recently gave its “Courageous Citizen
Award” to a Brooklyn delicatessen owner. The owner,
WHEN FACED WITH THREE ROBBERS, WRESTLED A
GUN AWAY FROM ONE OF THEM AND PROCEEDED
TO SHOOT ALL THREE. The robbers are now reported in
critical condition.
Said the deli owner: I’m not sorry I did it, and I’d gladly do it
again. I’m tired of punks who go around robbing people.
Another award was given to a former Texan police officer
who shot and killed a mugger near his Hilton Hotel suite.
The Texan, who was visiting New York at the time, ac
cepted the plaque, but was not offered the money. The
reason: his gun may have been illegal in New York be
cause it was registered! in Texas.
Several other citizens who were offered the prize de
clined to accept it.
The federation, which has been offering these com
mendations for about nine months, explains that the award
system is intended to encourage citizens to use guns to
repel intruders.
Lord, it’s great living in Oregon.
V.
Letters
Letter wasn’t cute
After reading J.l. Glover’s letter
(January 18, 1978) refering to the
article on Marilyn Osgood-Knight,
I was inspired by Glover’s
thoughtlessness to write this let
ter. If I could view her letter objec
tively, I might consider it a clever
piece of satire, but not when it is at
the expense of an individual.
Perhaps Glover thought that the
analogy presented was a cute
idea, but I have yet to consider
anything “cute” that shows ignor
ance and a basic lack of sensitiv
ity.
Glover refers to the “courage”
of Osgood-Knight and by this I
presume she means the courage
of a person to engage in a very
deep questioning of herself and
her feelings. If Glover is disturbed
by Osgood-Knight’s thoughts
about gayness and by her condu
sions, then Glover should have
the courage to speak openly, in
stead of disguising her opinions in
racist language.
Whatever the specific intent
of her letter, Glover has certainly
indicated that she does not under
stand the tastelessness doth of
playing with hurtful stereotypes
and of seeking to degrade the sin
cere efforts of an unusual woman
who has faced a difficult conflict
and has begun to work out a per
sonal solution.
While Osgood-Knight’s “com
ing out” was an unconventional
one, her example makes an im
portant point: that gay people are
individuals and that their lives may
not be expressed in terms of
stereotypes or according to other
peoples’ models.
Lisa Reitzes
Graduate, Art History
-_._-opinion
Defense practice meaningless
Submitted by
Doug Barber for the
Lane County Mobilization for Survival
This opinion statement is in response to the simu
lated nuclear attack ' drills” held last week by civilian
defense officials of Oregon.Washington. Alaska, and
Idaho.
Each year the federal government wastes $120
million of the taxpayers' money on its civil defense
program against nuclear war. Here in Lane County
our Civil Defense officials will plav their part in the
charade. They will try to act out their roles, what they
would do in case of a nuclear attack.
What they will not do is play act what would really
happen were there a nuclear war—die. Death is what
happens when nuclear weapons are used and death
would be the result of a nuclear attack on this coun
try. A recent study, quoted by the Carter administra
tion, concluded that no one can win a nuclear war.
The study’s conclusion on an all-out nuclear war with
Russia — that the United States would suffer a
minimum of 140 million fatalities and the Soviets 113
million — was similar to those of past reports.
Do these officials honestly believe that fallout shel
ters and canned food reserves will protect us? What
water would we drink?What plants would be left to
produce the oxygen we need to live? When a nudear
weapon explodes, radioactive fallout falls through
the atmosphere to soil and water and is absorbed by
plants and eventually in to human foodstuffs .The
hazardous quality of fallout does not decrease during
the journey; it multiplies so that by the time it reaches
the food supply it is capable of even more damaging
effects. Is this the food we would eat when the can
ned goods in these toy fallout shelters are gone?
Fallout shelters and civil defense officials playing
“nuciear wars” are no security against nuclear an
nihilation. The only action which would provide any
security at all is nuclear disarmament. The Mobiliza
tion for Survival is working around the world for
human security which we know will only be ours
when the nuclear bombs are dismantled, when we
put an end to the arms race, stop producing in this
country and exporting to other countries materials for
nuclear weapons under the guise of nuclear power,
and begin using our wealth and resources for human
needs.
We call upon the U.S. government to support the
U N. Special Session on Disarmament in May 1978
That support needs to be more than rhetoric. It needs
to include actions such as those listed above and a
priorities change from the present billion dollar com
mitment to the War Department to financial backing
for arms control and disarmament.
It is time that we say no to this nuclear insanity—that
we say no to the federal governments' spending $130
billion on new weapons and preparation for war and that
we call a halt to wasting $120 million dollars on mock
nuclear wars when civil defense could be fulfilling its
important function of preparing the community for
natural disasters.
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---—Mulligan s Stew
Tick-tack-toe on Capitol Hill may be a good idea
By HUGH A. MULLIGAN
AP Special Correspondent
WASHINGTON — Sen. Alan
Cranston, the liberal Democrat,
has worried out loud on several
occasions about California voters
thinking they've been
shortchanged in the U.S.Senate
because he and conservative
California Republican
S.I.Hayakawa disagree so often.
“I keep hearing we cancel each
other out,” Cranston recently
complained to an interviewer. He
said he found the phrase “cancel
out" particularly irksome because
it implied that Californians wound
up without a say on many issues.
Instead of fretting about
California's one-on-one situation
in the U.S. Senate, it seems to us
here in the Think Tank at Column
Control (the nerve center for ideas
whose time has not yet come and
may never) that the good senator
could be onto something really
big.
Some serious thought should
Pqita A
be given to the prospect of more
senators cancelling each other
out more often.
Cranston came up with some
statistics on roll calls showing that
he and Hayakawa really only dis
agreed about half the time, or on
55 percent of the votes, but his
legislative aides, probably out of
fear of being canceled out them
selves, failed to come up with any
solid research on what the nation
and its taxpayers would gain if
senators were permitted to cancel
each other out like old postage
stamps.
Surely there must be other
combinations of senators, even
within the same party, who disag
ree often enough to cancel each
other out and thereby spare the
nation their oratory and their
franked handouts on the great is
sues of our times. If half the
senators canceled each other out
even half the time, Washington
wouldn’t be a half-bad place.
In almost any session of Con
gress, even with a new man in the
White House, only about a half
dozen really major issues stir up
the populace enough to get a con
versation going in the lull between
Sunday afternoon pro football and
the “Six Million Dollar Man.”
So far this session the real
lapelgrabbers seem to be the
Panama Canal, abortion and wel
fare reform, President Carter’s
energy package, his urban policy
and his assault on the three
martini lunch among other tax ha
vens.
Think of the newsprint, the ban
quets, the paid political broad
casts and the travel expenses that
could be saved, plus the wear and
tear on speech writers, reporters
and anchor men, if all those
senators whose minds were made
up in advance on any issue just
canceled out with a distinguished
colleague on the opposite side
and both stayed home mending
their fences, tending their rose
gardens or denying all in their
memoirs.
Senatorial tick-tack-toe could
even cross state lines to find
another zero worthy of cancelling
out and if applied to the House of
Representatives with its member
ship of more than 400 the
cancelling-out process could save
enough money for everybody on
the White House staff to get his
limousine back.
Cancelling out is nothing but a
refinement of 'pairing," the cus
tom borrowed from the British
House of Commons whereby U.S.
congressmen overdue at the den
tist or their lovenest or the di
vorce court during a key roll-call
vote pair off with an absentee on
the opposite side of the aisle.
Cancelling out on issues, rather
than just pairing off for voting,
would bring the added fallout of
canceled speaking engagements,
canceled hearings, canceled TV
talk shows and canceled junkets,
since all those in favor of and op
posed to the Shah of Iran, the de
volution of Scotland, the new or
the old regime in Namibia could
cancel their reservations and stay
home.
"Meet the Press” might have to
scrounge around for uncanceled
uncommitted congressmen, but
the nation would be spared the
splendid redundancy of senators
debating the natural gas bill in
their living rooms.
An emotive issue with a wipe
out factor might leave either
chamber without a quorum on
roll-call days when party discipline
cancels out all but the mavericks
and the uncanceled majority, but
those left would face the chal
lenge of debating with members
whose minds hadn't been made
up in advance. There might even
be days when senators would be
on the edge of their chairs in rapt
attention while someone had the
microphone instead of waving at
hometown delegations passing
through the gallery or studying the
chandeliers in deep meditation.