Friday, April 10, 1987
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
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Jniversity ol Nebraska-Lincoln
1771
Demolition will
Revelations from America's
Moscow embassy indicate
that U.S. debuggers have
been using flyswatters to stop a
bug infestation problem that
would have overwhelmed the
Orkin man.
Surveillance is part and parcel
of superpower relations. Irrespec
tive of the status of what used to
be called detente, any halfway
reasonable person would expect
the Soviets to take advantage of
opportunities to listen in on sen
sitive embassy conversations.
Or at least so you'd think. But
the U.S. embassy currently under
construction in Moscow is ap
parently so infested with elec
tronic bugs that only gross
negligence could have been the
reason.
The naivete of the U.S. in the
matter is so complete that one
would think the designation "Evil
Empire" occurred in a different
century. For example, materials
used in the construction of the
Jim Rogers
Letter
MLO)
"Bug problem? What bug problem?"
'Unreasonable' student protests ticket.
George Bernard Shaw once said,
"The reasonable man adopts himself to
the ways of the world, therefore all
progress depends upon the unreasona
ble." In hope that this is indeed the
case, I am going to be an unreasonable
man with respect to a recent parking
ticket I received in one of UNL's stu
dent lots.
The ticket was for not having a hang
tag, and it carried a $3 fine. My hang
tag was on the dash and not hanging
from the mirror. I remove the hang tag
from the mirror every time I drive as is
required by state law as quoted to me
by the Nebraska State Patrol in a
phone conversation on April 7, 1987.
When I appealed my ticket (the
appeal was denied) Richard Young,
chairman of the Parking Advisory Board,
stated that the State Patrol said it was
OK to drive with the hang tag up. When
I talked to the State Patrol, they knew
of no such statement made to Young.
Young lied
I feel that this ticket is merely an
effort to raise more revenue and serves
Letter Policy
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Jeff Korbelik, Editor, 472-1766
James Rogers, Editorial Page Editor
Lise Olsen, Associate News Editor
Mike Keilley, Night Nines Editor
Joan Rezac, Copy Desk Chief
kill bugs dead
embassy were get this
prefabricated off the construction
site by Soviet workers with no
American supervision and moved
onto the site intact to be fitted
with the other sections.
Evidently the prefabricated
materials are so replete with
surveillance mechanisms that
debugging could occur only with
the complete destruction of the
materials. Additionally, electronic
surveillance experts indicate that
the Soviets are so far beyond the
U.S. in bugging technology that
the American debuggers wouldn't
even know what to look for. Thus
there's no guarantee of a complete
debugging.
As loathsome as it sounds,
only the destruction of the current
building and the construction of
a new one holds any possible
hope for a reasonably secure
embassy. In this instance, no
amount of Raid is going to kill
these bugs dead.
and Tom LauderDaily Nebraskan
no purpose for parking enforcement.
This whole incident reminds me of a
case four years ago when a student
parked in a stall backwards and received
a $10 ticket. She lost her appeal and
then complained in a public forum (the
Daily Nebraskan) and eventually had
the policy changed A lot of people park
in stalls backwards now. It is this hope
of a policy change that leads me to be
unreasonably stubborn in this situa
tion. It is my hope that they no longer
will give tickets for hang tags or will
get rid of hang tags altogether.
I am to graduate this year, and if I
refuse to pay this ticket, I understand
it will leave my university account in
the red and jeopardize my graduation.
This just might be for the better.
I feel that the responsibility for this
ludicrous ticket policy ultimately resides
with Ronald Roskens. Please, I ask that
you take appropriate actions to resolve
this matter.
Daniel D. Bousek
senior
industrial engineering
Readers also are welcome to submit
material as guest opinions. Whether
material should run as a letter or guest
opinion, or not run, is left to the
editor's discretion.
Decline m EesLgsno. Empire
Hypocritical veneer of establishment slowly chipping away
"The cancer of time is eating us
away. Our heroes have killed
themselves or are killing them
selves. The hero, then, is not Time,
but Timelessness. "
Henry Miller
If anything, the late '80s will be
remembered as a time of transition
when the hypocritical veneer of the
political and the religious establish
ment was slowly stripped away and
exposed for everyone to see in all its
sensational glory.
According to former U.S. ambassa
dor to the United Nations Jeane Kirk
patrick, Ronald Reagan has been
attacked by "orgies" of allies for his
shady dealings in the Contragate scam.
She told Nebraskans in a speech last
weekend that Ronnie is indeed a good
man after all. He lowered inflation and
unemployment, she said.
But the truth cannot be concealed,
Jeane. Beneath those baggy jowls and
that smarmy smile, Reagan is a conniv
ing soul seething with subterfuge and
deception. Many of us knew that all
along and ContragateIrangate (you
choose the moniker) proved it.
Many of us also knew that Reagan's
good friends Jim and Tammy Bakker
had some dirt under their rug a
sprawling, monetary Christian theme
park called Heritage U.SA. Reagan
once appeared as a guest on their "PTL
Club" show and praised their actions.
Jim and Tammy often lambasted the
decadent youth of America and branded
them a sinful breed who indulged in
illicit sex and drugs. Hypocrisy sur
faced when we all learned about Tam
my's addiction to drugs and Jim's liai
son with his secretary, Jessica Hahn.
You can bet our allies laughed even
more about the "Pearlygate" scandal
Now our enemies have seen an oppor-
Judge calls surrogate motherhood
'alternative reproduction vehicle'
One sentence among the thousands
in the 121-page decision read in
the New Jersey courtroom re
mains incontrovertible: "There can be
no solution satisfactory to all in this
kind of case."
Not even Gilbert and Sullivan could
have tied all the loose ends and con
fused identities of the Baby M drama
into a single happy ending. So Judge
Harvey Sorkow chose to do his best in
the interest of the baby.
He focused precisely and exclusively
on the child produced by this artificial
union of Mary Beth and Bill. She would
be Melissa, he ruled, daughter to the
Sterns. And Mary Beth Whitehead would
have no rights.
I do not envy Judge Sorkow's role,
the awesome power he exercised in
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tunity to start making accusations
about America. On Tuesday, The Asso
ciated Press reported that the Soviets
claim the deadly disease AIDS is all
part of an experimental warfare plot
designed by the U.S. government. The
Soviets are, of course, making it up,
and they know that they can get away
with such idiocy because the fall of the
Great American Empire is upon us now.
Scott
Harrah
It's now official. The knee-jerk con
servatism that has reigned in our red,
white and blue kingdom has finally
been knocked down on its knees, and
its advocates are groveling before the
masses, making excuses and trying to
stand up again. But the rest of the
world is glaring down at Reagan and his
proteges all ready to kick Ronnie's
administration the minute it tries to
stand up. Kirkpatrick and people like
columnist William Rusher are there to
defend Reagan in front of his critics,
but when they open their mouths, they
just sound like babbling fools.
"I think it's useful to have the
Democrats in control of Congress be
cause it reminds the American people
what the Democrats would do if they
were in the presidency," Kirkpatrick
told Nebraskans, then added: "Thank
God we have a president who will look
out for our heritage."
In his syndicated column, William A.
Rusher said, "I think it's time that
Reagan's many millions of supporters
around this country came out of their
this custody case. Judges aren't per
mitted the luxury of endless ambi
valence. Finally they must decide and,
though his judgment of Whitehead was
brutal, Sorkow's choice of the Sterns
was wise.
Ellen
Goodman
But I am much less comfortable with
the second half of Judge Sorkow's
ruling, much less comfortable with his
support for the contract and concept of
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bomb shelters and denounced the Iran
Contra investigation for the cheap liberal
Democratic grandstand it has become."
Rusher and Kirkpatrick have become
the paradigms of conservative reaction
to these scandals. They have lost all
sense of reason and have resorted to
such cheap measures as blasting Rea
gan critics with a litany of grotesque
"pot shots."
Reagan supporters and followers of
the pre '60s era right-wingreligious-right
ideologies have nowhere to turn
when it comes to justifying their actions,
so they hit the media and the liberals
below the political belt with name-calling.
The media has been chronicling the
Contragate and Pearlygate scams with
what Reagan and Jim Bakker fans con
sider a "tabloid" sensibility. But what
they fail to realize is that these scan
dals are sensational in nature; the
press is merely telling the facts. Hypoc
risy is inherently humorous it doesn't
need a load of eye-popping National
Enquirer headlines to induce laughter.
The years of McCarthyesque politics
and Bible Belt morals are gradually
coming to an end as each new piece of
scandal hits the public and makes
people question the national mood
that has dominated the arena since the
beginning of the decade.
"As the gilt edges of Reagan's reign
peel away, Ivan Boesky makes yuppies
yucky, the pendulum is swinging back,"
journalist Walter Kirn muses in the
May issue of Vanity Fair."
The political clock has been struck,
and now the pendulum is quivering as
Reagan tries desperately to hold it
back in its right position in these final '
hours of the '80s generation.
Harrah is a senior English and speech
major and the DN Arts and Entertain
ment editor.
surrogacy. If it holds, we may have more
Melissas and more, not fewer, characters
in search of a conclusion.
In his opinion, the judge called
surrogacy an "alternative reproduction
vehicle that appears to hold out so
much hope to the childless " The
end result, children for the childless,
was the primary value.
But I wonder whether he heard how
these words echo to many of the rest of
us. An alternative reproduction vehicle?
An ARV? Isn't this what has been so
troubling about the whole matter?
Those of us less focused on the child or
the children hear the mechanistic
language, and flinch at the idea that
there are women ARVs who will
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