tuesday, december4, 1979
page 4
daily nebraskan
pro
Moral advertising judgments not DN's job
Each semester the Daily Nebras
kan is criticized for accepting various
advertisements which some persons
believe should not be printed. This
semester, advertisements for X-rated
movies and for the Central Intelli
gence Agency have come under
especially heavy fire.
A letter to the editor in Monday's
Daily Nebraskan, for example,
charged that the paper, in accepting
such ads, is "abdicating its social
responsibility." It also claimed that
the paper, accepts "any kind of ad
which fills up a page."
The Daily Nebraskan, however,
does not accept for publication any
kind of ad. The advertising policies
of this newpaper come from several
sources.
Some of our advertising policies
are set by the UNL Publications
Board. The board, consists of five
.students appointed by the ASUN
Senate, two faculty members
appointed by the Faculty Senate and
two professional journalists appoint
ed by the Chancellor. According to
the Guidelines for the Student Press,
adopted by the NU Board of
Regents, the board acts as the Daily
Nebraskan's publisher.
.Because the editor changes every
semester and the advertising manager
every year, the policies change
through the years, but historically
have been liberal. .
Although most local papers will
not publish photos or art with ads
for X-rated movies, the Daily
Nebraskan editors . believe - that
In that role, the board selects the
Daily Nebraskan editor and the ad- - i tf rttai
vertising manager and sets policies .K& ZwL.r,) iTniik the local
which must be followed by them.
One such policy forbids the Daily
Nebraskan from accepting advertise
ments for over-the-counter contra
ceptives. Another Publications Board policy
sets guidelines for the format of poli
tical advertisements.
Policies concerning the remaining
papers, it is unlikely that children
regularly will read the Daily
Nebraskan.
The art, itself, is restricted how
ever, so that it is not obscene. This is
a subjective judgment, of course, but
we try to restrict photos to, show
little more than cleavage.
The criticism that the Daily
advertisements which appear in the Nebraskan, by running such ads, is
Daily Nebraskan, are set by the promoting sexism is erroneous, me
editor and the advertising manager. Daily Nebraskan neither condones
mm
Many recent editorials and letters to the
editor have dealt with the crisis in Iran.
They have looked at the Islamic side, the
both sides.
Before I can make a qualified judgment
on the situation, I need to know the
answers to several questions. I can't believe
Mohammed really taught that the deaths of
49 persons is more important than the life
of one. Is this one of his teachings, and
what Moslems believe? I can't see that the
shah has been any worse than the
Ayatoilah is now. He. is advocating kid
napping, murder and extortion and worse
than that, he's saying it's all OK because
it's being done in the name of God. If that
is OK for the present leader of Iran to do,
then why shouldn't the shah be left alone?
How does the Ayatollah's disregard for
human life differ from the shah's practices
during his regime? It looks like one and the
same to me.
I would also like to know who is trying
these Americans as spies, the Iranian
government, or the Iranian students who
instigated trie Embassy takeover? If the
answer. to this question is the students,
then who is running Iran? As 1 understand
the meaning of the word "student", they
usually have nothing to do with the way a
country is run. especially a dictatorship.
And if this is true, who would be prosecut
ing the shah, the students? Again, I'm sure
that students usually do not play that large
a role in Iranian government in normal
situations. Why should this change now?
Continued on Page 5
50RRV,HAM
a srecAL
PROSeCUT&RlS
R&VieWfNSiOUR
nor condemns the productions and
services that appear in its advertising
space. 0
If the Daily Nebraskan were to
reject ads for X-rated movies because
the movies promote sexism, we also
would be forced to reject ads for
bikinis on the same basis.
The Daily Nebraskan simply
cannot make moral judgments on
every advertiser. If we could, we
could reject advertisements for poli
tical candidates whose beliefs differed
from our own -simply because we
felt their ideas are detrimental to
society.
Society is best served if it has a
wide range of ideas from which to
make its opinions and judgements.
For us to impose our moral code on
others by restricting that informa
tion would be the greatest abdication
of social responsibilities imaginable.
UnUedSM humiliation
Washington-However the hostage crisis in Tehran is
eventually resolved-by words or by guns-it needs to be
understood that the past weeks have not been a time of
national humiliation.
As we have watched the ayatollah and his mob-some
burning the American flag, others carrying out the garbage
with it the heated cry has been, "They're humiliating''
us." No disgrace could be worse, it is said. The world's
mightiest power stands by in mute helplessness while a
deranged old man gives it the business. v
The trouble with the humiliation argument is that for a
nation to be humbled some authentic pride had to be
present in the first place.
What is America proud of in its relations with the
Iranian people these past decades? That our government
engineered a coup in 1953, that our money and weapons
went In staggering amounts to the shah who used them to
kill,' imprison or exile tens of thousands of his country,
men, that we looked away when groups like Amnesty
International repeatedly documented the repression, that
we rejoiced that the shah and his Washington ambassador,
Ardeshir Zahedi, were darlings of the international party
'circuit?
THOSE WERE MOMENTS for us to feel humiliation.
Our ideals were disgraced. The wounds to the nation's
honor were real, not the perceived shame of the past three
weeks. If Khomeini h is lost his senses, many Americans
thought fiat Jimmy Cirter lost some of his two years ago
in his eel brated New Years' toast to the shah as "an is
land of stability in an unstable world."
. Those v. ho take prido in America's authentic strength
its impulse for generos ty, compassion and justice-have
felt humiliated before by our foreign policies. In the past
10 years, some of the tyrants bolstered by" our weapons
and investments have been so conspicuously brutal to
political retaliation for inflicting an embarrassing defeat on
knowing of them: Somoza in Nicaragua, Park in South
Korea, the shah in Iran. Less known but still part of the
American network are a string of other despots, from
Videla in Argentina to Marcos in the Philippines.
wM Of rtOFLC WHO
COHS TO THtl
THCCfi AKf &(N6lS ANb
FAN rC , PfOPLI
TO PlOt UP QTHCt
... NOT TO MEMTIOM
IH05C TO
F0H6CT I
. When foul-ups occur and a government we have been
propping up totters and falls as in South Vietnam in
1975-we can revert to a mean-spirited foreign policy.
AS JAMES Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine,
writes: "Since the War ended, the U.S. has pursued a
policy toward Vietnam marked by vengeance and
political retaliation for inflictin an embarrassing defeat on
the most powerful nation in the world. The U.S. govern
ment has yet to take any responsibility for the massive
destruction it caused, has refused any reconstruction aid,
and has even sought to block aid to Vietnam from other
countries and private agencies. . . This continuing political
assault against Vietnam has exaggerated the country's al
; ready difficult task of rebuilding its war-torn land and has
greatly contributed to the refugee problem,"
In recent weeks, the Stone Age lobby-the inheritors of
the Vietnam-era thinking that we should bomb Hanoi
back to the Stone Aghas had all it could do to bite its
tongue, It recalls how he-man Gerald Ford didn't let
America be pushed around in the Mayaguez case. In that
display of diplomacy by gunfire, Ford saved 40 captives
and sent 4 1 rescuirs to their deaths.
THAT WAS TRUE national humiliation. A weak
nation provoked a strong one Into the greater weakness of
Irrational violence.
The fury with which many Americans are damning the
ayatollah is a reminder that nations, as well as persons,
often take refuge in painless finger-pointing rather than
endure the anguish" of sclfxamination to see where the
. blame really does lie.
The taking of hostages by the Tehran students was a
blatant crime. And assuredly Khomeini is a violence -prone
fanatic. But he is victimizing America, not humiliating us.
L p5liSular madness is part of the instability that has
brutalized the poor and the powerless in Iran for decades.
We are being burned by the fires our on leaders created,
it is a moment not for humiliation, but awareness.
IcM 179, Th Whlnflton Port Company