Wednesday, January 26, 1983
Daily Nebraskan
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Dear Ann Landers:
I am scared stiff that the entire population is going
homosexual and mankind will be doomed. Wherever one
looks, there is exploitation of sex. It's on TV and radio, in
magazines, books, newspapers, the theater and films.
Pornography is everywhere. I'm afraid we are going to be
come so jaded that no one will be interested in normal sex
anymore. Could this be the day of reckoning the Bible has
warned us about? Will a nuclear bomb be dropped by lord
Dave Milo
Mumgaard
knows who and blow up everything and everybody, so the
world can start anew? The prospect of total destruction
boggles my mind. What do you see ahead, Ann?
-Sweet Thunder
Dear Sweet:
You've mixed your fear of homosexuality with the
danger of nuclear holocaust. Two subjects any more
diverse would be hard to imagine ... on the other hand,
the threat of a nuclear holocaust is very real. Methods to
prevent this insane form of mass genocide should take pre
cedence over everything else. If we don't solve this
problem, there won't be any others - because there won't
be any people. (Lincoln Journal and Star, Jan. 30, 1983)
Ann Landers knows her stuff. She speaks from in
controvertible logic that, after the commencing of nuclear
warfare, there will be absolutely no problems to worry
about. Including sex.
This is not to say that I consider sex, in itself, a
problem. But many people do, running around wringing
their hands and wailing about how sexual permissiveness
will be the death of this great nation. Our morals, decay
ing like clockwork, will some day reach such a deplorable
condition that, as Sweet Thunder suggests, perhaps it
would be best to blow us all up and start over. Yet Will
Rogers saw through this, by saying that so many times as
our country has been said to be going to hell, it's a
wonder we hadn't got there yet.
True, people in the United States seem to have a vast
curiosity about sex and anything sex-related. This is a re
sult of the early Puritanical days, when sex was buried
under the idea that it was something smutty and some
how unnatural. We expend considerable energy worry
ing about moral decay while watching our buried urges
exhibit themselves in all sorts of bizarre (and frankly
disgusting) ways.
This massive denial of basic humanity leaves a very dis
honest and disillusioned nation, more unhealthy because
of repression than otherwise. One can simply read Shake
speare, with all his fun and clean references to sex, and
realize that the Puritans and the Victorian Age really did a
Guest
Opinion
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Disabled wmt acceptance, not telethon
id
Telethons. What are they? Hours and hours of sophisti
cated electronically televised begging and pleading, de
humanizing people with disabilities. Telethons, as they are
used now by local charities, are a waste of time.
Tin's weekend I watched the United Cerebral Palsy tele
thon. Forgive me, dear professors, for wasting valuable
time, but I hoped this year's telethon would have been
different. It wasn't.
This year's telethon still pictured cerebral palsy as
something to be defeated because, as everybody who
watched the telethon knows, it is a "crippling" condition
that should be whipped - for mom, hotdogs, hot apple
pie, Anthony Steels and the Huskerettes.
It still had celebrities spending 99 percent of their time
making people feel guilty by playing on their sympathies
and tugging at the audience's heartstrings. I think it's
called emotional blackmail.
One actor from the TV show "Dynasty" said:
"Please give to United Cerebral Palsy so that thousands
of unborn babies have a bright and promising future."
I have cerebral palsy, and my future is bright and
promising. In May I will get my degree in journalism (not
that a degree in journalism will make my future all that
bright and promising) and have a good chance of establish
ing a writing career. I'm far from being hopeless or help
less. -A man who was mildly effected with cerebral palsy was
asked by an interviewer:
"Gee, you don't look like you have cerebral palsy."
Tire implication was clear: people with cerebral plasy
look disfigured and unattractive.
The same announcer then said: "Please give in the fight
against UCP."
In a way, his comment wasn't too far off base. If UCP
continues talking about folks with cerebral palsy instead
of letting them tell their own stories their own way, with
out being considered as being "exceptionally courage
ous," I might consider establishing a telethon to eliminate
the organization.
You may ask after reading this column, "What can 1 do
to help people with disabilities if telethons are so bad?"
Just accept people with disabilities. Don't regard them
as disabled, but differently abled. Support building
designs that have ramps, and bells that enable deaf people
to know that elevator doors are opening.
I appreciate the Huskerettes standing in the Centrum,
guarding the fhhbowl. I would appreciate it even more if
one of them cime up to me and offered me a chance to
develop a give-, nd-take relationship with her.
I do not need a well-meaning celebrity begging for
money for me on television, nor do I need people's
sympathy. I need to be regarded as a person who is
capable of being useful.
Bill Rush
senior, journalism
1
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trick on our being above-board about sex.
Yet the modern day Puritans continue their rampages,
unfortunately "with little consistency. Readers Digest, that
fount of wisdom, regularly features pieces on how morally
depraved our country is, while by my own count their last
four issues have had outer covers featuring shapely young
women wearing skimpy little outfits and doing stretching
exercises, beneath headlines screaming about how to make
yourself a better lover. And this past weekend, Right-to-Lifers
picketed Planned Parenthood, calling for less fund
ing to Planned Parenthood while also demanding we
illegalize abortion, pushing it even farther out of mind and
sight. Yet these people have profundly misread what
Planned Parenthood is all about. Education and aware
ness will eventually do more for eliminating abortions
than the force of unobeyed law.
I conclude with D.H. Lawrence (as well as advising
Sweet Thunder that she has less to fear from homo
sexuals than from nuclear bombs): "So we can dismiss the
idea that sex appeal is pornography. It may be so to the
grey Puritan, but the grey Puritan is a sick man, soul and
body sick, so why should we bother about his
hallucinations?"
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475-3741
2530 O. 5Wt
Lincoln, Tie bfiMO
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