Rain how Kowiii
PowerbaU odds don’t play fair
I learned a fine lesson yesterday.
Satan led me to the top of the
mountain and showed me all the
riches that could be mine. And
what did I do?
I bought a Powerball ticket.
I wasn’t going to; I never have
before. But the jackpot was up to
$100 million. One-hundred million
clams. That’s a whole lot of
seafood.
You know what I could do with
that much money? A lot. You know
what I wouldn’t do? Take my finals,
come to work, send in rebates.
I knew my odds of winning were
bleak — 30 kazillion to one. I knew
I was more likely to get my own
late night talk show than to win
3> iuu million.
But my bad luck is amazingly
bad, so my amazing good luck
should be kicking in any day now.
Besides, someone has to win; so
why not me?
I’ve been good. I’ve brushed my
teeth and kept my room clean. I’ve
tried to stay away from fried foods.
I’d be a great kazillionaire.
I’d give lots of money to charity
and I wouldn’t marry Ivanah
Trump or Tom Arnold. I wouldn’t
play polo.
So when everyone in the office
was running down to U-Stop at
7:45 p.m. to buy a ticket, visions of
expensive playthings danced in my
head.
I caved. I forked over my dollar
— a weighty portion of my paltry
salary — and gathered around the
television at 10 p.m.
And of course, I lost. Did I think
I would be rewarded for my $1 sin?
I will never win. I could purchase
every combination of numbers and
still lose.
Powerball combines three things
beyond my comprehension: balls,
numbers and gambling.
But my bad luck is amazingly bad,
so my amazing good luck should
be kicking in any day now. Be
sides, someone has to win; so why
not me?
If it involves balls, I can’t do it
(get your mind out of the gutter
unless you’re thinking bowling).
Pinballs, basketballs, ball bearings,
you name it. A dodgeball almost
knocked me unconscious in the
fifth grade. (What sort of bizarro
game makes you throw things at
people, anyhow?)
As far as Powerball is con
cerned, I don’t even know how it
works. But at least there’s no
kicking, throwing or stupid
uniforms involved.
And numbers? I took a class in
probabilities in high school. I
stopped trying midterm when even
I could figure out I would “prob
ably” fail.
When they announced the
winning Powerball numbers, it took
me a full four minutes to figure out
if I had any (I did have one, I
think). Numbers despise me. The
number “19” once spit on my
grandmother’s grave.
And finally, the third dastardly
element: gambling.
Ever since I was a wee one, my
mother taught me not to gamble.
“Don’t gamble,” she said, “you
really shouldn’t gamble.”
She made me feel guilty when I
played with my grandma’s Bingo
chips (okay, so she didn’t die).
Besides Grandma, no one in my
family gambles. There are plenty of
social alcoholics and people with
eating disorders, — I even suspect
that my cousin sniffs glue — but
we’re pretty high and mighty when
it comes to gambling.
1 know nothing about gambling.
I don’t know when to hold ‘em,
when to fold ‘em. I don’t even like
Kenny Rogers.
But I have an addictive personal
ity. I can never cat just one potato
chip. I’m already sinking 60 cents a
week into that Red Cross coin drop
at Burger King. I’m probably
already addicted to gambling, even
as we speak.
I jaywalked today when I
probably shouldn’t have, and I
probably shouldn’t have said there
were alcoholics in my family. But
these risks seemed strangely
exciting.
I don’t want to be a gambler. I
don’t need a new pair a shoes. I
don’t want to lose my shirt, my
house, my car, my birthright.
I want a long full life with no
involvement in any 12-step pro
grams. I don’t want a big oF pot of
debt and despair at the end of this
Rainbow.
Rowell h a senior news-editorial, adver
tising and English major and a Daily Nebras
kan associate news editor.
It is difficult to concede, but
Nebraskans have something to
learn from that societal mess we
call California.
This past Election Day, Califor
nians found Proposition 187 on
their ballots. (Proposition 187, for
those who don’t know, is the
proposal to deny schooling, welfare
and most health care benefits to
illegal immigrants.) And those
same Californians overwhelmingly
approved the measure by a 2-1
margin.
How could this happen, liberal
elitists cried. How could this
“racist, nativist” measure pass by a
59 percent landslide?
Maybe it was the issue of law.
For years, law-abiding Californians
saw their federal government
ignore its constitutional duty to
protect U.S. borders. So Califor
nians, by themselves, decided to
combat the 1 million illegal aliens
crossing into California each year.
Or maybe it was the issue of
economics. Perhaps taxpayers of the
Golden State were tired of paying
S3 billion every year in welfare for
illegals who resided in their state.
Then again, maybe it was
neither of the above. Perhaps this
vote was about more than money or
law.
In the days before the elections,
Californians watched Mexican
government officials plead for the
defeat of Proposition 187. CNN
showed 2,000 demonstrators
marching in Mexico City in front of
the U.S. embassy, chanting
“Damned Gringos!” Across town,
rioters trashed a McDonald’s to
vent their rage at the measure.
Sadly, southern California
looked a lot like Mexico City.
On the campus of California
State University, Hispanic mobs
demonstrated against Proposition
187 by draping themselves in
'■*. Mexican flags. Others burned the
American flag.
On one occasion, a group of
Hispanic teens in San Diego beat
and bloodied an elderly man who
Most disturbing is that with this
rapidly changing ethnicity in
America comes a steadfast refusal
of the new immigrants to assimilate
to the country they now call home.
waved Old Glory in support of his
country. Then they burned his flag,
too.
No, this was about more than
money or law. At the heart of the
Proposition 187 debate lies the
warring ideas that all Americans
hold about the most divisive issues
of our time: race, culture and
national unity.
The reason Proposition 187 won
by a landslide was that Californians
disliked what they were seeing in
those demonstrations. Nor did they
approve of what they encounter in
everyday life.
Wrote David Halberstam,
prominent chronicler of late 20th
century America: “There is a
cultural anxiety about the speed of
change that America doesn’t look
and feel like it used to.”
The statistics prove Halberstam
correct. Although America,
according to the U.S. Census
Bureau, was of 90 percent Euro
pean descent in 1950, whites may
be a near minority in this nation
come 2050 — because of exploding
Hispanic and Asian populations via
immigration.
Most disturbing is that with this
rapidly changing ethnicity of
America comes a steadfast refusal
of the new immigrants to assimilate
to the country they now call home.
In today’s America, ethnic
militancy and solidarity are at an
all-time high. The great American
melting pot is suddenly more like a
bowl of tossed salad, as the old
institutions of assimilation are
wasting away.
Every vote for Proposition 187
was a vote to give Californians the
right to shape the character of their
own state and country. Each vote
was a show of force against the
immigration onslaught that their
own federal government refuses to
address.
The majority of Californians
have this idea: If America is to
survive as “one nation, one people,”
we need to bring a temporary halt
to all immigration — legal and
illegal — so that we may assimilate
the tens of millions who have
recently arrived. We need to get to
know one another, to live together,
to learn together America’s lan
guage, history, culture and tradi
tions. We need to become a new
national family before we add
another 100 million to our congre
gation.
We need to destroy this idea of
hyphenated Americanism.
Looking back on the 20th
century, we see that all the great
multinational states — Czechoslo
vakia, India, the Soviet Union,
Yugoslavia, South Africa — have
cither broken apart or are in bad
shape.
Is America immune to all this?
Californians have answered
already. Now the rest of us must do
the same.
Karl is a junior news-editorial and po
litical science major and a Daily Nebraskan
columnist
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