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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 28, 1992)
Opinion Battle lines Money needed at home to fight drugs rn a city far, far away, the latest installment of “Drug Wars” concluded Thursday. An apt title for President George Bush’s so-called drug summit would be “Empty Rhetoric Strikes Back.” Bush met with six Latin American leaders this week in San Antonio to renew pledges to combat narcotics, a problem very much on U.S. voters’ minds this election year. “Make no mistake — defeat the traffickers, we will,” Bush said in a Yoda-csque grammatical style. But so far, Bush appears to have been able to do little to stop those evil drug lords, who, much like American tobacco growers, make their living by producing addictive substances others choose to use. The president said there had been significant progress on the drug problem during his administration. He claimed drug use among young people was down 60 percent and cocaine use had declined 35 percent. We’re not sure where Bush got his figures, but looking at the alarming rise in drug-related crime over the past few years, it’s difficult to believe that any substantial gains have been made. Even if his numbers are right, obviously the drug-use decline isn’t enough. Bush apparently agrees, although the Yale graduate put it better than we ever could. “We’ve got lots to do,” he told reporters. Bush said that he and the other leaders talked about improv ing their efforts to develop alternative crops to give Latin American coca growers an economic incentive to stop growing drug-related crops. banners who once grew coca in Bolivia arc exporting pine apples and bananas,” Bush said. While this may be true for a few model citizens, pineapples and bananas just don’t have the street value in America that crack enjoys. As long as that is the ease, the coca fields will continue to dot the landscape in Bolivia and elsewhere. What Bush seems to neglect while he fights the drug prob lem on other continents is that the people who use the drugs arc right here in America. Voters may like the idea of passing the blame to some faceless Columbian, but as long as Americans arc willing to pay the outrageous amounts of money they waste on drugs, little will change. Instead of giving more money to Latin American govern ments such as Peru, whose human rights record is far from perfect, efforts should center on this country. Education and money should be spent on groups most likely to fall to the temptation of dnig!s back home. When drugs aren't profitable to raise, they won’t be grown. Meanwhile, Bush has people such as Ecuadorian President Rodrigo Borja lining up for funds America simply can’t afford to waste. In what almost sounds like a threat, Borja said his country did not produce coca but he must have additional U.S. funds to keep his country from becoming a drug producer. Instead of focusing voters’ attentions on the trafficking he calls “a new kind of transnational enemy,” Bush should face up to the true enemy and use the force he commands here at home. Saved life worth less freedom As a father, I feel 1 must respond to Brian Allen’s column on the manda tory scat belt law (“State tries again to strap us in,” DN, Feb. 25). While acknowledging that scat belts make a driver safer (i.e. save lives), Mr. Al len considers seat belts an “inconven ience” and believes he should be able to make the choice to wear or not to wear seat bells. What is a life worth? Is the “slight decrease in the highway death toll” worth the mandated seat belt law? How about if that life is one of your future children? My wife and I have chosen to wear seal belts our entire adult lives. By selling the example, my teenage daughters now automati cally wear theirs when they drive. They are not sheep, but they have formed a life-saving habit over the past 17 years. Adults who “choose” not to wear seat belts set a life-threat emng example lor ihcir children. Mr. Allen stales that people are supposed to follow their own preferences as long as they do not interfere with the rights of others. The state has a right to protect our children — no one argues with child abuse legislation. Those who do not use scat belts and teach their children not to use scat belts fall in the same category. I couldn’t care less whether insur ance rates change because of this law, if the end result is one less death. Mr. Allen would have all Nebraskans held up as freedom-loving and the conse quences be damned. This is one per sonal freedom I would happily see eroded in the name of our future generations. Britt Watwood graduate student education -EDITORIAL POLICY Staff editorials represent the offi cial policy of the Spring 1992 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its mem bers are: Jana Pedersen, editor; Alan Phelps, opinion page editor; Kara Wells, managing editor; Roger Price, wire editor; Wendy Navralil, copy desk chief; Brian Shellito, cartoon ist; Jeremy Fitzpatrick, senior re porter. Editorials do not necessarily re flect the views of the university, its employees, the students or the NU Board of Regents. Editorial columns represent the opinion of the author. The Daily Nebraskan’s publishers arc the regents, who established the UNL Publications Board to super vise the daily production of the pa per. According to policy set by the re gents, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its students. ' j -'O' I uwi; -m\s -nHE v'u-hir^ M9 rt'EM’ N VET 60 -BUT MS* to GET H\\S 'rtHOEE. ^ MESS OVER Wt\. . MARK FAHLESON Federal funding of arts lunacy Chalk one up for the American taxpayer. Last Friday, thanks in part to the prodding of Republican patriot Patrick Buchanan, John E. Frohnmayer was sacked as chairman of the Na tional Endowment for the Arts. In a tear-jerking ceremony, Frohnmayer announced his involuntary resigna tion to his staff by singing the old Shaker song “Simple Gifts” and re citing poetry. “I leave with the belief that this eclipse of the soul will soon pass and with it the lunacy that sees artists as enemies and ideas as demons,” Frohnmayer said. “Lunacy” is correct. However, not with regard to this so-called hatred towards artists and the avant-garde, but rather the lunacy in how far our federal government will stretch the Constitution’s mandate of providing for the “general welfare.” Thanks to Frohnmaycr’s belated removal, the time has come once again to debate the lunacy of government funding of the “arts.” i nc endowment was created dur ing Lyndon Johnson’s frce-lunch “Great Society" as a way of paying homage to that exalted patron of the arts, John F. Kennedy. Its staled goal is to educate and foster an apprecia tion for the arts. Since its inception, the NEA budget has grown exponen tially, now hovering at more than SI70 million annually. For years, the NEA survived with little or no scrutiny, quietly going about its business of doling out lax dollars to innocuous arts such as symphonies and operas. However, as the NEA began de voting greater amounts of attention, and with it, cash, to “performance art” and photography, cries of indig nation spewed forth as the taxpayer funded projects began trampling upon the religious, moral and cultural con viclions of Americans. That is, the NEA’s patrons. The endowment has come a long way in how far it would go to provoke anger. Originally, those projects deemed “controversial” were, although wasteful, relatively harmless. In 1977, for example, Sen. Wil liam Proxmire gave one of his famed Golden Fleece awards to an NEA sponsored event in which artist Le Anne Wilchusky went up m an air plane, threw out colored streamers of crepe paper and filmed them as they gravitated to earth. Such “art” pales in comparison to the garbage that is given governmen tal sanction today. Recent NEA disbursements include the now-infamous homo-erotic, bull whip-up-lhc-anus photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, the urine-sub Censorship is when the fovernment savs. “You can’t sav that.” not. “We won’t pay for that." merged crucifix of Andres Serrano and the pom star who inserted the speculum into her vagina for the audience’s viewing pleasure. Whatever happened to Norman Rockwell? There arc some other real doozics as well. Little of what our state-ap pointed connoisseurs have chosen on our behalf with our money has to do with art as much as it docs with poli tics and the deconstruction of the Western, Judco-Christian values upon which this country was founded. Some funding is purely political. The Dance Theater Workshop in New York City received $530,700 in NEA funding last year. It ended the year with a display by artist Lee Brozgold. His show, entitled 40 Patriots/ Countless Americans,” consisted of skull-like “death masks” of such conservatives as George and Barbara Bush, Cardinal John O’Connor, Gen eral H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Justice Clarence Thomas and even Bob Hope. Behind each mask hung the flags of groups such as Queer Nation, the Green Party and the Prisoner Rights Union to represent “the countless Americans offended or maligned by the particular patriot.” Said Brozgold to the Washington Times, “They represent the old order. ... They’re outdated_They should be dead.” Some funding is plainly profane. Herd at the University of Nebraska’s Sheldon Art Gallery, one could view “Tongues Untied,” part of the “Point of View” series that received $250,000 in taxpayer funding. I wasted a Friday evening watch ing this stomach-wrenching porno drama about the “African-American gay community.” The film featured such sordid topics as homosexual sodomy, buggery and the joys of cross dressing. Other funding is simply racist. The straw tnat DroKC rronnmaycr s duck came in the form of “Queer City,” a magazine that recently received a $5,000 NEA grant. Within this feder ally subsidized publication was a rap poem celebrating a black gang rape of a white woman in Central Park. Any challenge to NEA funding evokes the fallacious cry of censor ship. As far as I know, no constitu tional right exists for artists to have their work paid for out of the public kitty. Where critics fail is in their inability to recognize the gargantuan difference between censorship and sponsorship. Censorship is when the govern ment says, “You can’t say that,” not, “We won’t pay for that.” As author Tom Wolfe has observed, “I think the National Endowment for the Arts is one of the great comic spectacles of our time. You only have to imagine some poor, rejected for mer NEA artist going to Voltaire or __ Solzhenitsyn, and saying, ‘They’re attaching strings to my money! 1 went to the government for money for my art and they’re attaching strings to it! ’ The horse laugh that even Solzhenitsyn — who is not given to horse laughs— would have given them would be marvelous to hear.” The problem goes far beyond me fact that such “art” can be considered racist, profane and pure political propaganda. Art has become what ever anyone calling himself an artist wants it to be. I could take off my clothes, rub chocolate all over my body, run around naked and sing “I Am Woman” and declare that I am an “artist” deserving of NEA funding. And that, my friends, is ludicrous. Recently, with the predictable bellowing of censorship, the NEA actually began scrutinizing its appli cations. The Endowment killed a $25,000 grant to Franklin Furnace, a New York performance group. Franklin’s appli cation included a videotape of one ol its performers, Scarlet O, whose per formance opens with a discussion ol gender, followed by a disrobing and an invitation to the audience to rub lotion on her. Art critics such as Christopher Knight have warned that the NEA, by delving into the validity of grant applications, is evolving into a U.S. version of a Ministry of Culture, a parochial instrument of government policy. He suggested that if artists could not exert greater control over the public purse, then the government should put an end to the National Endow ment for the Arts as we know it. So be it. Fahleson Is a third-year law student and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.