Thursday, September 18, 1995
Pcgo 4
Dally Nebraskan
UntoraHy of Nbr Lincoln
Mmcoki'o defoliation
Retailer short on foresight
L
vcters could find
Jrry chs!cs cn the Ksv. 4
tilht: esriiwS to ri up vith
3
btcsj to 15, a tis cut the
ilea till tj ca the
tict If Uxctb rrtdlrr Oil.
?czzA ca it foist 4,743
tistsrss ea a petition by
CctsicT. A!t fce lite tress,
citi m to xa itty need
C3-fftnCt piJ&ISj C$f their
Fo UXL trti, If cqr, ire
Dcr to rrcsJ the cbra
tosa errs Dt 10 jsrs O
tra its ttzzj vzn put in. Est
If lis tires ere tiien cut now,
s drrJcra trs i?ill seeia a
to kxitlzz zrJ hzzir.t pbee.
LfcccIJts tho-lJ decline to
dp the psUttera or, If the tee
KbJC3 the fcsllct, vote the pro-
Powell ka't the first business
person to fiver perking over trees.
A group cf business people in
Des Moines heve been fighting
for several months to save park
ing spaces. The parking removal
was ordered to allow two extra
lanes of traffic and make the
Iin a paragraph. .
Scholarships taxed
The time is 8:25 a.m. and your
typical student is driving
frantically through the uni
versity psxldrj lctslockbg far
a psrkir.2 izs. The ustoisStf
k3 a fcu cf evercdlhg thdr
crrry tisut the ctrrisgprifcj
: O The. (feiha Wcrld-Ikrt!i
reported hzt wrsk thst Hetrsska
fcri one of the highest percen
tr'cs of men filing with the
czlzctlve service. The paper
reported a 89 percent filing rate.
Ikt bad. Those who do not regis
ter lose many benefits from the
government including any form
cf financial aid.
O The Chronide for Higher
Euccticn reported that many
students receiving scholar
this fell may have to pay
new taxes on put of the money, .
' if CcRresspssss3thetax-refora :
bill as expected The till b:pc::3
taxes on the portions cf scholar
ships and fellowships th&t do not
cover tuition and certain other
Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials represent
cMcid policy of the fall 1986
Diily Nebraskan. Policy is set by
the Ddly Nebraskan Editorial
Ecird. Its members are Jeff Kor
fedik , editor, James Rogers, edi
krfiJ p-3 editor; Gene Gen
tnrp, nsning editor; Todd von
JelTKorbelik, Editor, 4721766
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Gene Gentrup, Managing Editor
Tammy Kaup, Associate Stirs Editor
Todd vn Kampen, Editorial frig' Assistant
stretch safer, but the business
people argued that the loss of
cn-street parking would scare
customers away.
Both the Des Moines business
people and Powell don't see
parking garages or off-street
parking lots as solutions to their
problems. But garages or. lots
provide more spaces on a given
block of land and shoppers
are more likely to be closer to
their store than if they have to
search for an on-street parking
Here importantly, the trees
Esske downtown Lincoln more
sttrsctive to residents and vis
itors alike. It's more pleasant to
wdk downtown with trees around
because they make the area more
colorful and less confining than
the average "concrete America"
business district. Also, if the
trees come down, Lincoln's beau
tiful Christmas-light display would
hsve nowhere to go.
Adding trees to Lincoln's
downtown was a good idea 10
years ago. They've become so
much a part of the downtown
scene that it would be -a shame
to take them out in the name of
more concrete. Let's not mess
with a good thing.
expenses.
The Chronicle reported that
some campus officials have begun
to worry that many students
rsdi ksve to take out loans to
pry the new taxes. They argue
tfesl it does not make sense for
&s tttmX government to do
thit would require
stunts to borrow more.
The till prcvldss tn ir.tcrcst
b3 trht It's a bit urxsusl to
he t& brrcr csnsy to piy for
taxes ca a schobrship.'Schokr-
ships cmtle studentsi to esse
the Cnsacial hsrdshipsicf echocl
not increase thent.
O The Chronicle also repor
ted that women are flocking to
graduate school in record num
bers, and many are specializing
in fields that were dominated by
men a dozen years ago. As a
result, when higher-education in
stitutions look for replacements
for the large number of senior
professors who will retire within
the next 15 years, plenty of
female faculty members will be
avsilabl e. . ? '' ? , , , ; ,
DHL is one of those institu
tions. If the trend holds true,
Nebraska my see more women
prcfisscrs. It looks promising.
Kampen, editorial pcs assist
ant and Tammy Kaup, associate
news editor.
Editorials do not necessarily
reflect the views of the univer
sity, its employees, the students
or the NU Board of Regents.
Cvetnsii
Insatiable appetites
Modern culture turns the idea of
freedom on its head in advancing the
first fundamental of popular Ameri
cana: Freedom means license. Irres
pective of the politician's label lib
eral or conservative the maximization
of pleasure is held to be the primary
goal of human life. While modern con
servatives and liberals disagree on how
society's whims are to be indulged, the
fact that politics should be directed
toward this end goes unquestioned.
In the land of consumption, the
appetite is God. In times gone by, a
critic might have argued that "cove
tousness" characterizes our culture.
"Covetousness," there's a term rarely
heard today it smacks of the archaic,
sort of like "fornication" being used to
describe "intimacy" between two un
married people. Of course, given that
the tenth commandment is "thou shall
not covet," one might expect the idea
to receive more attention than it has
especially in a nation as churched as
ours.
Yet even among this group in mod
ern America, the notion that cove
teousness is a sin receives slight ack
nowledgement (probably because it
hits too close to home for the American
Christian). An aged Roman Catholic
priest reportedly once noted that even
after decades of hearing parishoners'
confessions, he had never heard anyone
confess to violating the injunction a
gainst coveting.
But social rather than theological
reflection is the stress here. And the
social implications of a culture of cove
ters is profound. George Will brooded
in his essay "Statecraft as Soulcraft,"
that "modern political philosophy has
transformed a fact (man's appetitive
nature) into a moral principle: Man
should be allowed, even encouraged, to
do what he most desires to do..."
Well, since maximizing pleasure is
the priority of our society, one would
Royko Hunt-ing for some answers
in case of the singing millionaire
One of the strangest people ever
I've met as part of my job was
H.L Hunt, the oil tycoon who was
once considered the world's wealthiest
man.
In his twilight years, Hunt, who
seldom spoke to reporters, would call
me when he visited Chicago and to be
interviewed.
It wasn't clear why he wanted to talk
to me, although I wondered if he
planned to convert me to his way of
thinking, which was so far right that he
made Barry Goldwater sound like a
pinko.
For example, one of his pet political
theories was that a person should cast
as many votes as he had dollars.
That, of course, would put the selec
tion of presidents and Congress in the
hands of a few billionaires like Hunt,
which he thought was only fair. He
didn't see any logic in a guy who was
broke casting a vote.
We'd sit in his hotel suite, sipping
Coke he shunned liquor while he
reminisced about how he had started
as a young poker-shark in Smith prn
J Illinois, bought Texas oil leases, and
Sometimes he sang. That's right,
sang. He had written and published an
awful novel about his ideal society
where the rich had the votes and he
composed a song to go with it.
He would iir.g in an off-key, reedy
voice, bobbing his head to achieve a
tremolo. An audience cf one, I'd listen
to one of the world's richest men tweet
ing like a plurap-faced bird.
1 even took kizn on a radio news show
I used to do in the morning. Dan Price
the co-host, said: "Who's this?" I said:
"H.L. Hunt, the richest man in Amer
ica. He is going to sing for our audi
ence." And Hunt did. About a dozen listen
ers promptly phoned to ask if their
keep Americans from
that, overall, people today are
much happier than those in years past
who were confined by strictures against
ostentatious displays of wealth and
such. Yet the opposite characterizes
modern cultures.
Take, for example, the goal of all
polit icians, namely, increasing the stan
dard of living. While a reasonable per
son might expect satisfaction to increase
linearly with the provision of material
goods, the insidious covetous
ness of modern America has resulted in
an actual decrease in satisfaction. This
is particularly true in today's world due
to the existence of "provisional goods,"
to borrow a phrase from UNL professor
Wally Peterson.
In his article "Power and Economic
Vo )
jim j
Rogers
Performance" Peterson explains the
role of positioinal good as creating the
irony of unfulfilled consumers in the
midst of an over-abundance of goods:
"Because many more people are able to
purchase goods and services once avail
able to a few, the quality of these posi
tional goods by ever larger numbers of
people causes them to lose their uni
queness, which is to say that the indi
vidual can no longer feel superior to
others by consuming them. ... All too
often, the fruit of material economic
progress is frustration, despite the fact
that market capitalism has been extra
ordinarily successful in satisfying basic
material needs..."
The cruel irony of Western material
ising is that the more we have, the more
radios were malfunctioning or if we had
gone nuts.
I never was sure what to write about
Hunt after our interviews, other than
that he was quite the oddball. This
didn't bother him, but he took offense
when I wrote that he wore a cheap suit.
He mailed me a tailor's receipt for
$800. 1 wrote back that I might become
a tailor.
Hunt is now gone. He died In 1971,
leaving most of his billions to a herds of
children he sired by four wives. He was,
incidentally, a bigamist When you
have that kind of money, who bothers
with minor legal details?
And today I can't help laughing
when I think about Hunt and his politi
cal theories, and the plight that his
Mike
Royko
three most famous sons are in.
As you probably have read, a bunch
of banks are suing the Hunt brothers,
Lamar, Nelson and Herbert for more
than $770 million in unpaid loans.
They got into hock for this incredi
ble sum because their greed boiled
over a few years ago. Already billio
naires, they secretly tried to corner the
world silver market, figuring they could
tJ?t the price 8ell d Pk up a
few billion more.
But before they completed the
scheme, the silver prices slumped and
they wound up losing a few billion
instead.
So they had to go to several banks
and ask for a billion-dollar loan to cover
i fii
is society
realizing pleasure
others want, and the more others have
the less satisfied we feel. So we buyyet
niuie uiu Mtuic, dim want, and want
Human relationships in this sort of
society draw frightenly dose to the
"Life-and-Death struggle" found in He
gel's "Phenomenology of Spirit" (as
interpreted by Boston University pro.
fessor, J. N. Findlay): "(E)ach subject
wishes to be the sole centre of active
universality and to risk all in asserting
his claims. Such a policy, however
threatens to deprive each subject of
the recognition he demands, and hence
the struggle develops into one for a
sovereign position among actively uni
versal subjects, all others being wholly
subordinated to this one (Lord and
Bondsman). But this one-sided aspira
tion is also self-frustrating, since the
recognition one receives from a pale
reflex of oneself can be no true recog
nition, and will in fact impoverish the
receiver..."
So today our society is composed of
individuals envying others, and begrud
ging others' successes. While life in
centuries past may have been "nasty,
brutish, and short" today's life, in spite
of "all" that we have, may truly be
much worse: Perhaps hell is where the
heart is.
Our forefathers, if they can stand to
watch the pathetic sight of this neu
rotic society awash in a guilt of mate
rial possessions these same forefathers
didn't dream possible, must watch the
sight with profound grief. After all,
.unlike us, they labored and sacrificed
so that we, their children, could have a
life better than theirs. Their grief is
caused by the one attribute that they
could not leave us but that we should
have learned for ourselves: sense enough
to be grateful for what we do have
rather than covet what we don't, and
sense enough to avoid the vanity of
enthroning our bellies as the national
deity.
their losses.
If you've dealt with banks, you might
think that would be an impossible
request. Some working stiffs can't per
suade banks to lend them the price of a
new siding job for the three-flat.
But banks are eager to please cus
tomers like the Hunt brothers. What's
the problem, boys? You tried to comer
the world silver supply and got caught?
Hey, no problem. How many hundred
million you need?
Now the banks are upset because
the Hunts aren't keeping up with their
payments. And they're trying to grab
some of the Hunt oil companies.
Being labeled as deadbeats might
embarrass some people. But the Hunts
were indignant. They turned around
and sued the banks for suing them and
have asked for billions in damages. The
rest of us might think about that route
not making the mortgage payments,
then suing the bank for being pesty.
The Hunts have also tried to avoid
losing their main stash by placing
much of it under bankruptcy court pro
tection. The high-priced lawyers and federal
judges will have to thrash out who owes
what to whom; And ' the, ntf? thing
about this drama is that no matter who
loses the Hunts or the banks - they
probably deserve it. .
But if the Hunts are eventually
wiped out, as some financial experts
predict, it might cause me to rethink
my opinion of old H.L's political ideas.
In the old man's perfect society,
anybody without assets who showed up
to vote would be given the bum's rusn.
If they go broke, that would be the fate
cf Lamar, Nelson and Herbert.
1SS3 Ey The Chicago Tribune
Distributed Ey
Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Eojitotoalhilltjefprize-wiiiningcolumn-
Ut for the Chicago Tribune.
