Opinion
Pun-ishment
Flap over Kerrey joke overblown
Clarence Thomas may have unleashed a monster.
Several weeks after the trauma of the hearings on his
confirmation to the Supreme Court, public figures’
sexually off-color comments apparently have become a politi
cally vogue subject.
During a political “roast” last weekend, Democratic presi
dential candidate Bob Kerrey repeated a joke about two lesbi
ans. The comments apparently were recorded by a television
microphone.
On Tuesday, Kerrey apologized for the incident. He admit
ted that the comments were inappropriate.
From the backlash that Kerrey’s comments generated, how
ever, one would have thought that he had defended the joke.
Gay-rights activists condemned Kerrey for the incident. One t
group organized a protest at his campaign headquarters.
Obviously, the joke was blown out of proportion.
No one is defending insensitivity toward gays and lesbians.
But to call Kerrey homophobic on the basis of an impromptu
remark — a joke that he didn’t even invent, but merely re
peated — is going too far.
Bob Kerrey is not David Duke. Few politicians have as good
a record as he does on issues of minority rights. Demonstrating
in front of his headquarters is an attention-grabbing move that
has little factual basis. Even worse, it could mislead the public
into thinking that Kerrey is some sort of cad because of a bit of
overblown banter.
Ironically, Kerrey was in San Francisco on Tuesday to tour
an AIDS clinic.
* One campaign appearance docs not prove Kerrey’s sensitiv
ity. But AIDS has often mistakenly been considered a “gay”
disease. Kerrey’s tour of the clinic shows that he is aware of
the political implications of AIDS awareness.
Jokes often are an accurate reflection of the bigotry that a
society harbors. They can be targeted at any number of stere
otypes, from sexual orientation to hair color.
But jokes can also simply be harmless, meaningless forms of
humor, coarse, perhaps, but with no cvikintcnlions.
, In Kerrey’s case, the two seem to have met. Yes, his remarks
1 were tasteless and — especially for a politician — highly po
litically incorrect. They should not, however, derail a candi
dacy based in part on values that arc the opposite of what
Kerrey displayed in a few minutes of indiscretion.
— E.F.P.
1 __I
-LETTERSTSe editor
Real health care concerns
neglected on national level
This letter is in response to the
article by Jean Lass (“Official: Insur
ance requirement needed,” DN, Nov.
13) on the proposed insurance re
. quirement for University of Nebraska
Lincoln students. I found the piece
both discomforting and typical, in
that the individual promoting the
proposition is herself an insurance
representative. However, this rebut
tal will address two other points of
concern.
First, to support the subtitle*,
“Requirement seen as growing trend,”
Lass quotes Jim Mitchell. Mitchell,
through his position as associate di
rector of student health at the Univer
sity of Virginia, has credibility, but
not enough ethos to simply accept his
statement regarding the alleged “trend”
without statistics. More to the point,
the only well-supported portion of
the article was backed up with star
tling figures offered by the American
College Health Association. This
brings me to the second concern.
The statistic that approximately 3
million students have no insurance is
another indicator of the real trend.
With Congress currently debating the
social dilemma of Americans with
out access to affordable health care,
why not address ways to provide
medical assistance to all citizens
»instead of suggesting that those whe
can’t afford premiums be made tc
anyway in order to pursue highei
education? In other words, suggesi
solutions, not further complications
to an already immoral condition.
Steve Sanci
Lincoln
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GARY LONGSINE
Duke simple to understand
The call comes when you least
expect it. It came for me at
7:30 Friday evening, at a party,
no less.
* “We’re going to Louisiana. Would
you like to go?”
“Absolutely. When do we leave?”
“In about an hour."
“OK, I’ll be ready.”
1 hung up the phone, feeling as
much like a mercenary as I could
imagine. I would join the fight for
truth, justice, and the American way
on little food and less sleep — ready
togoany where. When the call comes,
there is no time forreflcction. Evil
has been sighted, and must be chal
lenged, or at the very least, moni
tored.
After 10 hours in the car, 1 wasn’t
sure I was up to the task. After 15
hours in the car, 1 knew I wasn’t up to
it. My faith in the battle for truth was
undermined by Paul Harvey.
I knew that evil had already won.
Whether it won this election didn’t
matter. Evil doesn’t really need David
Duke; it has Harvey.
Harvey discovered the truth about
global warming and shared it with his
listeners in a piece that led, “the sky is
not.,. falling.” Paul Harvey speaks
in ... ellipses. I don’t know ... why.
Harvey has been saying for years
that global weather is loo compli
cated for scientists to understand, and
that therefore we don’t need to pay
attention to the crackpot global-warm
ing theories.
but balurday he trolled out a new
study that shows that plants grow
faster when exposed to higher levels
of carbon dioxide in the air. Old stud
ies show this, loo, but it always looks
better to trot out a new study.
In a bold leap of lunacy, Harvey
said the areas where famines happen
are regions where there is no industry
and which don’t produce enough
■ carbon dioxide to sustain productive
agriculture. Harvey declared that the
industrialized areas of the world, where
food is plentiful, arc also the leading
producers of carbon dioxide.
^‘jYes, you arc not hallucinating,”
mylravcling companion said, “Paul
Harvey just claimed that food short
age is caused by low carbon dioxide
j levels in underdeveloped nations.”
Paul Harvey says stuff like this all
the time. His popularity is a direct
measure of the true extent of stupidity
in our nation. Ignorance uber alles.
After more than 20 hours in a car,
. I witnessed a more sobering example
in the Baton Rouge, La., Hilton, Duke’s
campaign headquarters for election
night.
Instead of a bunch of obviously
fascistic Nazi-Klan members, I saw a
Instead of a bunch of
obvioush fascistic
Nazi-Klan members.
I saw a hotel full of
ordinary, average
people. They were all
white, though. All the
non-white people in
the hotel were press,
police, or hotel em
ployees.
hold full of ordinary, average people.
They were all while, though. All the
non-white people in the hotel were
press, police or hotel employees.
Sipping a very expensive vodka
sour in the hotel lounge, in a portion
open to the lobby, I watched as Lou
isiana awaited the election results. I
overheard some racist remarks — many
more than I have ever heard at a
political function, but mostly from a
few loud-mouthed young men in the
lounge.
One I remember vividly. As the
first results came over the lounge
television, showing Duke trailing early
at 30 percent of the vote, two young
men were commenting. One said, “It
ain’t over till it’s over.”
The other said, “Yeah, it ain T over
till the last nigger sings.”
Looking around, I didn’t sec any
one who was visibly bothered by this,
or even seemed to notice, except one
of the two people I came with. The
other one wasn’t in the lobby, as he
had gotten into the main ballroom to
listen to Duke’s speech and witness
the event up close.
He saw a man with a sign that said,
‘ I voted for ‘D’ Wite man, not ‘D’
Wrong Man.’’Nobody in the ballroom
seemed to be bothered by that, either.
Governor-elect Edwin Edwards and
others claimed a huge moral victory
for Louisiana and the country w ith his
election. I say it is a political victory,
but a humiliating moral defeat.
More than three-fourths of Louisi
ana’s 2.2 million registered voters
showed up to vote, ul those, almost
four of 10 voted for Duke, a former
Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, only six
days after the New York Times ran a
front-page photograph of him wear
ing the uniform of a Nazi brown-shirt
and holding a large sign that said,
“Gas the Chicago Seven ”
Duke claims he was never really a
Nazi. He attributes the uniform to the (
indiscretions of youth. His youthful
indiscretion apparently covers the
period of his life from age 19 to the
time he decided to run for governor.
I attribute the uniform to the igno
rant following of a hateful philoso
phy
I attribute the swastika on his
armband to extremist views about the
nature of social problems — views
that include, but are not limited to,
the hatred of other races and relig
ions.
I attribute the brown shirt and tic
to a belief in political strength achieved
through militaristic organization —
not poor fashion sense.
1 doubt that Duke has undergone
any sort of meaningful philosophical
conversion from evil to good, or even
from evil to less evil. I am skeptical
partly because intolerance — an inte
gral part of Nazi and KKK philoso
phy — is also generally a part of
fundamentalist Christianity. In fact,
bom-agains arc often hostile to Ca
tholicism, Lutheranism, Methodism
and other brands of their own reli
gion.
Duke says that we live in a cnris
tian nation and that all people should
be Christians. Obviously, if Duke were
in charge, Mormons, Jews, Muslims
and atheists would not be welcome
here. Maybe not even Catholics.
His supporters say he is “misun
derstood. I understand him well.
Duke’s views arc extreme, and he has
made no effort to hide them, until
recently. If this sounds familiar, it
should. It seems that re-writing one s
political history has become an ac
ceptable practice, now that President
Bush has done it twice, Clarence
Thomas once. (Is anybody else here
gelling whiplash from Bush talking
about tax-cuts that we can’t afford.)
If Duke had been another Edwards
— a run-of-the-mill crooked politi
cian — instead of a Nazi, Louisiana
would have seen a record low voter
turnout.
Dining later, in a Baton Rouge
Cajun restaurant, I looked around.
There were about 40 people around
me. About sixteen of them voted lor a
Nazi. Louisiana uber allcs.
Longsinc is a senior economics and inter
national affairs major and a Daily Nebras
kan columnist.