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Daily Nebraskan
Tuesday, February 23, 1982
Editorial
'More-to-life' image
changing with time
The women's movement has suffered some serious
erosion in the last year or two. The Equal Rights Amend
ment, no matter how valuable and worthwhile it would
be, has become something of a dead letter. Statements
emanating from Washington these days indicate that
government officials are in favor of "equal rights" in the
same abstract, noncommittal way people are for "good
health ' and "peace." It is the mealy-mouthed voice of
dynamic waffling, of trailblazing inertia.
Gone along with the force of the women's movement
are some very positive images of women who had decided
that there was more to life than getting married and
having babies, women who had worked their way into the
sciences, journalism, politics and athletics. Now we arc
being asked to ignore those images and replace them with
the likes of America's sweetheart, Nancy Reagan.
Certainly Nancy Reagan has taken her share of digs
since her husband carried her into the White I louse, and a
case could be made that she is less helpless than her image.
But, as Ronald Reagan has been able to amply demon
strate, your image sometimes can do as much for you as
your actions.
Nancy has recently made an effort to modify her image
by coming out against drug abuse, but this is hardly a dar
ing maneuver. After all, what is she going to say, that she
favors drug abuse? The whole affair is a far cry from the
independent thoughts of Betty Ford and the Steel
Magnolia, Rosalynn Carter.
Nancy Reagan is the foremost example of the new
domesticated woman, but hers is hardly an isolated case.
The cover of Time this week, for example, features former
Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith. What has she done to merit
this kind of attention, you ask? Oscar nomination? Nope.
Running for mayor of Beverly Hills? Never. Jaclyn Smith
made the cover of Time because she is pregnant.
tlven taking, into account the importance of the Time
story for which Jaclyn Smith was the teaser (the second
coming of the baby boom has extremely important social
ramifications), this cover seemed a slap in the faces of all
of those women who are trying to do something more
with their lives than manufacture babies. The wave of
press reports hailing the remarkable achievement of Prince
Charles and Princess Diana in the baby-making field
have the same effect.
To 'Time's credit, they hunted down some career
women for the article, to help dispel the myth that
motherhood and careers are mutually exclusive. The prob
lem here is that, like Smith, these women were nobodies
in the eyes of Time magazine until they had babies. Where
are the reports about women who have not had babies?
The implication is that for a woman to lead a full life, she
can have a career if she wants one, but she must have a
baby.
To suggest that American women have gone back to
the "barefoot and pregnant" era would not only be
simplistic, it would be wrong. Women who lived through
the 70s cannot be made to pretend nothing happened
then, that nothing changed. To hold up domesticity and
motherhood as the bold new vistas for women hardly
seems like progress.
r
O.K..
SEE WHAT THIS
BABY (AN TAKE,
MOTE CUT .
aim NATIONS
HIGHWAYS!
Act of the '80s: Marry money
For those of you who have been worrying about how
to succeed under Reaganomics, there is boffo news from
the Big Apple.
There in the heart of capitalism, a few hardy, brave
entrepreneurs are teaching the one true way for the
average working girl or boy to still make it big, yes, even
in today's bleak business world.
For a mere $21 investment, more than 200 souls are
spending an occasional Wednesday night in a school gym-
Ellen Goodman
y
nasium in Manhattan's west side learning how to realize
the updated American dream. They are taking an adult
education course called: "How to Marry Money."
What is so marvelous, so wonderfully refreshing about
this educational endeavor so few miles from Wall Street is
that at long last someone has discovered and is willing to
share the secret of making it in the Reagan era. People no
longer teach how to follow Horatio Alger's route to the
top; they teach how to meet Horatio now that he's up
there.
Marrying for Money has the symbolic course (of
action) for the Eighties.
To begin with, there is the perfect teacher. Who could
be more appropriate for this class than a woman who
earned a master's degree in social work in 1973.
Today, social work is the auto industry of the profess
ional world. As the anti-poverty programs of the Seventies
turn into the anti-poor programs of the Eighties, a lot of
us have wondered what on Earth would become of the
social workers without a society to work in. Joanna Stei
chen, the "professor" of How to Marry Money, is a role
model in the recycling effort. By just a slight change of
perspective, this soul has landed a teaching job - no mean
feat in itself - and a job that gives hope to the hopeless.
Of course, the whole class works only because greed
has finally come out of the closet. Not long ago, people
would have been too embarrassed to actually sign their
own names at the registration desk.
Now the motto of the day is "My Money is OX..
Your Money is O.K." and spouse-shopping seems no more
outrageous than mortgage-shopping. As a female compu
ter consultant and student told a reporter in the class
room: "I'm here because of plain old greed .... I can't
think of a better hedge against inflation than money."
There is a woman after your own pocketbobk.
This is not just an isolated event, a single class, I am
sure. Marrying "up" fits the new Reaganomics too per
fect not to catch on. This is the ultimate financial-planning
program. Moreover, it takes place exclusively in the
private sector and depends solely on private enterprise.
It is even, you might say, a volunteer self-help effort.
A highly practical economic idea, it isn't mucked up
with all sorts of liberal emotionalism. And it has a certain
traditional support. Who, after all, can forget the grand
motherly advice of past centuries: "It's just as easy to
fall in love with a rich man as a poor man."
But what is most important about this pilot program
is that it offers the only possible method left under Rea
ganomics for the redistribution of wealth. If you can't
tax 'em, marry 'em. It is clearly in the public interest to
support the intermarriage of classes ... as often as pos
sible. If a graduate of "How to Marry Money" meets one of
the Fortune 500, we can only approve their marriage.
If they argue, we can only applaud their divorce, pre
ferably in a community property state.
Having thus halved their wealth, with any luck each
will meet other members of the lower classes and start
all over again, until the Fortune 500 are the fortunate
50,000.
Continued on Page 5
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Church should not be blamed for overpopulation
Tliic lotfor ic in rAcnnnfo ii tta irfilo V! MiHl-a,w A Jl .a t . . , 1 - ...U:U f 1 l-f I c . . . .
This letter is in response to the article bv Matthew Mil
lea (Daily Nebraskan, Feb. 19) concerning the Roman
Catholic Church. Millea is critical of Pope John Paul II
and the Catholic Church's teaching on contraception, yet
I doubt that he has ever read "Humanae Vitae" (Of "Hu-
Guest Opinion
man Life", which is the Church's official document on the
regulation of birth) or even remotely understands the doc
trine on which it is based. As a point of clarification, the
Catholic Church does not believe the Pope is infallible in
his person, but only in his teaching of Christ's doctrines
on faith and morals.
Millea states that "the Church's stance on contracep
tion goes back not to the years of St. Paul and St. Augus
tine, but to the 1930s." This seems to imply that the
Church should have had a stance on contraception in the
times of St. Paul and St. Augustine, and that the relative
newness of the stance invalidates it. Yet there was certain
ly no need to take a stance on contraception in these ear
lier times.
Earlier societies were not as "affluent and secular" as
our own. They did not attempt to alter and control the
natural order which God established for man's nrocrea-
tion. Pope Pius XII had great foresight when he predicted
in the 1930s that acceptance of the contraceptive mentali
ty would lead to future acceptance of the abortion ment
ality. A fairly accurate prediction, considering there are
over one million abortions each year in the United States
alone.
According to the Catholic faith, the sacrament of mat
rimony, in its fulfillment of God's design, should be kept
open to the procreative function that is innate to it. The
Church also teaches, in "Humanae Vitae," the necessity of
"the exercise of responsible parenthood and the full rec
ognition of the husband and wife's duties towards God,
themselves, the family, and society, in a correct hierarchy
of values."
Millea's Malthusian fears are not new ones. His ridicu
lous pretense of blaming them on the Catholic Church is
certainly unfounded, however. His statement that "Not
only has the Catholic Church cut itself off from the in
dustrialized world, but it has helped to doom the entire
world" is nothing less than absurd. He should base his
writing more on facts, and less on misguided opinion.
In his book The Human Prospect, Robert L. Heilbroner
states that many countries in the world are at or near zero
population growth, and that some are even at negative
population growth. It is true that many of the Third
World countries are vastly overpopulated and impoverish
ed, but the answer lies not in forced sterilization and mass
distribution of contraceptives, which many cultures nei
ther want nor know how to use oronerlv. Those countries
with an overabundance of wealth and technology must
help to feed and educate the underdeveloped nations so
they can learn to produce their own food and develop
economies that can support their cultures.
In her book How the Other Half Dies, Susan George
brings out that the world food problem is not due to pop
ulation pressures, but rather to large multinational corpor
ations that exploit the underdeveloped countries and
don't equitably distribute the abundance of food in the
world. The book points out that there is plenty of land
and agricultural capability to feed all the world's hungry,
if only those countries who have it would assist those who
don't.
Millea says that the "Church needs to mingle intelli
gence with nature," yet he leaves out the essential element
in both - God. He states that "God gave man the intelli
gence to overcome the harshness of nature's laws." God
also gave man, in the Bible, the laws by which to guide his
intelligence. The Catholic Church follows the laws that
Christ gave us to help us follow the natural order God es
tablished for man. It is when man ignores God's intelli
gence, and relying solely on his own intelligence tries to
establish a new set of laws governing that which God has
entrusted to us. that he separates himself from God and
embarks on a losing battle.
Jay Vankat
Senior
Accounting