Commentary
Thursday, February 23,1995 Page 5
Seize the opportunity to speak ]
For the seventh consecutive day,
I am the woman with no voice.
What a great benefit for the world!
In serving the world with my
silence, hopeless signs and occa
sional hoarse whispers, I found it
very funny when people started
whispering back to me. It’s weird
how these people, who can speak
perfectly well, start whispering
back to you. But it is weirder in
this weird world when people, who
can speak perfectly well, fail to
speak up when the situation calls
for it.
Let me take you to a Greyhound
bus station in a small town some
where in northern Florida. It was
mid-May 1994.1 was on my way
back from Gainesville after
checking out the school to where I
was considering transferring.
Like all Greyhound buses, the
bus was making innumerable stops
and it was just another stop in a
nameless town. But the difference
here was the view out of my
window.
I looked out of the window and I
saw, beyond the lines of smokers
and people who got up to simply
stretch their legs, a woman sitting
at the very edge of the site who was
obviously upset. She was sobbing
uncontrollably, hitting herself hard
on her forehead, muttering some
thing indecipherable. I was watch
ing her soundless agony through
the glass window, and so was just
about everyone else.
I was at a loss for what to do. I
had just gotten started with this
long “American experience,” and I
had been warned repeatedly to be
CAREFUL, especially in Florida,
and to be wary of strangers.
My first instinct was to go to her
and find out how I could help. But
the fear and uncertainty of being in
a strange part of a foreign country
kept me immobile. My second
Vennila Ramalingam
thought was that the others defi
nitely would help or, at the very
least, do something.
But during the 10 minutes my
bus stayed in that station, nothing
happened. Nobody went to her.
Everyone just stood out of the way
and pretended not to notice, while
watching out of the comers of their
eyes. The one woman who did go 4
to her took a hasty retreat.
But as the bus wheeled away,
someone mentioned that the police
and the emergency medical care
were apathetic and were pointing
fingers at each other. And I also
noticed, as we were pulling out of
the station, that there was blood,
around the woman in need. She was
bleeding, and people just shrugged
when I tried to draw their attention
to it.
The bus left the town and I
carried my guilt with me. I wish I
had spoken up. I wish I had done
something.
Tuesday was my brother’s 20th
birthday. I wanted to call him and
wish him a happy birthday. I
wanted to tell him how proud I was
of him. I wanted to assure him that
everything would be all right.
Currently, he is going through a
“Do I really want to be a doctor? Is
this what life is all about?” stage.
Above aH, I wanted to tell him that
I loved him.
I thought about the number of
times we had fought and I had said
mean things to him. Countless. I
was trying to remember the
occasions that I had said how much
I valued him or how much he
meant to me. Not many.
When I had the opportunity to
say that I loved my brother, I
screwed things up by fighting over
the most inconsequential things.
The fact that we were bom three
years apart didn’t help things. After
I was done with adolescence and
was ready for a mature relationship
with him, he was going through
puberty. And when both of us were
mature enough to treat each other
with respect, I had to leave for
college.
So we really have not conveyed
our true feelings and love to each
other. This last year I have thought
of him often but never told him so
because I didn’t want to be a
sentimental older sister. I thought
his birthday would give me a
perfect excuse to tell him all the
nice things — straight from my
heart.
But since I am the woman with
no voice, at the very least tempo
rarily, I was hopeless on a phone.
My words were a gust of wind and
a frantic movement of lips: no
sound!
Too often we take things for
granted and refrain from speaking
out. Too often when we have the
capability to speak up, the chance
to speak out, we remain dumb and
tongue-tied. Too often when there
is an atrocity taking place right in
front of our eyes, we remain silent
spectators.
So speak up and speak out —
while you still can.
Ramallngam Is a graduate student in
computer science and a Dally Nebraskan
columnist
Jockeys not just about briefs
There’s nothing like a stem
letter from a lawyer to get the old
juices flowing. And maybe a few
facial muscles twitching.
Even if the letter isn’t the
lawyer’s scariest effort — the kind
that vows to take away your home
and car, and leave your family cold
and hungry — it’s always enough
to make me sit up straight.
So I was all eyes when a
registered letter arrived from
Charlotte Shapiro, the corporate
counsel and a vice president of
Jockey International.
Shapiro was upset because I
appeared to have misused the
trademark name of the company’s
product.
As she wrote:
“We feel it necessary to bring to
your attention the improper use of
our JOCKEY trademark in the
attached article ‘Ties, briefs —
who knows what’s next.’
(She was referring to a recent
column I wrote about all the nic^
widow ladies who have been
sending me garments belonging to
their late husbands.)
“Jockey International Inc. is the
owner of the JOCKEY trademark
that is widely known and associ
ated with JOCKEY brand wearing
apparel and serves to distinguish
our product from products manu
factured and sold by others.
“The JOCKEY trademark refers
to our famous brand. It is correct to
refer to Jockey briefs; therefore, the
mark should be capitalized com
pletely or used with the initial
capital and italicized ‘Jockey.’
“It is important that our mark be
used properly. Misuse of our
trademark as in your text can have
serious legal consequence.”
The last thing I want or need is a
serious legal consequence. Like
any non-lawyer, the mere thought
of serious legal consequence is all
it takes to give me stomach cramps.
Mike Royko
It doesn’t even have to be serious.
Even a giggly legal consequence
can bring on cold sweats.
So my instinctive reaction was
to fling myself to the floor, grab
Shapiro’s hem and grovel and weep
and promise that I would never
again improperly use the Jockey
trademark, cross my heart, hope to
die.
However, it appears that there
might be what a lawyer would call
“mitigating circumstances.” (And a
lawyer probably would bill me
$500 just for spelling it correctly.)
Consider the way the J-word
was allegedly misused. I quoted
from a letter I received from a
widow in Ohio, who wrote:
“My husband died last October
and left me well-situated finan
cially. He was frugal but not stingy.
“Among his personal effects are
about 50 jockey briefs, of which 20
are still in original plastic pack
ages. My husband never passed up
a jockey briefs sale.
“I should tell you that the waist
elastic in some of the used ones has
stretched. But you can gather the
waist in with a safety pin like he
did. They are size 38.”
As you can plainly see, it was
the widow lady who used a small
“j” instead of a big “J". I merely
quoted her letter as she wrote it. To
have done otherwise would have
been discourteous, even insensitive,
since feeling could have been
wounded if I appeared to question
her language skills.
However, it’s still possible that I
bear the ultimate responsibility for
the small “j.” And the underwear
lawyer would probably say that I
should have known better, even if
the nice Ohio widow didn’t.
Maybe. But there is more
mitigation — a strange fact that I
did not want to reveal out of
respect for the lady’s desire for
privacy.
But now I will, in hopes that the
underwear lawyer will recognize
that this was nothing but an
innocent misunderstanding.
As we all know, the word
“jockey” doesn’t solely mean
underwear.
It is also the word used to
describe those small but highly
skilled athletes who ride racehorses
for a living.
And that is what this lady’s
husband used to do. He was a
professional horse jockey.
So in describing the underwear
with a small “j,” she was saying
that they had belonged to a jockey.
Of course, some skeptics might
wonder why he would have had
size 38 briefs, since most jockeys
are slender and wiry little fellows.
I can explain that. Yes, most
jockeys are slender and wiry. But
this lady’s husband was the
exception. He was that rarity — a
short and round jockey. He stood
less than 3 feet tall and was about 3
feet around at the waist.
You guessed it — the legendary
Shorty (Bowling Bail) McSquatt,
who thrilled racing fans by fre
quently falling off the saddle and
bouncing right back up.
That should settle this matter to
everyone’s satisfaction.
I should have gone to law
school. I’d probably be on the
dream team.
© 1995 Trlbaae Media Services, lac.
Sex, consequences
need sold to teens
When Kathleen Sylvester
began researching welfare
reform for the Progressive Policy
Institute, she asked a Baltimore
school principal the one thing
she’d do to reduce the number of
teen-age pregnancies.
The principal had an immedi
ate two-word answer for her:
“Shoot Madonna.”
This was not a serious attempt
on this educator’s part to cure
sex with violence. The principal
was not a character assassin.
She was probably thinking of
the Madonna of the 1980s, the
one who wrote the classic paean
to teen-age motherhood: “Papa
Don’t Preach.” The Madonna of
the ’90s has a line in “Bedtime
Stories” that sounds more like
paean to Joycelyn Elders:
“Happiness lies in your own
hand.”
But the principal was speak
ing in a familiar vocabulary. It’s
a language shared by parents,
teachers, policymakers, the
whole range of frustrated adults
whose voices of reason are
drowned out by a culture that
sells kids sex as successfully as
it sells them sneakers. Just Do It.
These messages that kids
actually listen to ought to be
piped into the hearing rooms
where Congress is busy concoct
ing a new welfare policy. The
plan the House Ways and Means
Committee is contemplating for
teen-age mothers is called
euphemistically tough love.
But our culture offers something
else. Sex without consequences.
“How many times do kids see
sex on TV,” says Sylvester, “in
which no one gets pregnant, no
one gets AIDS and no one has to
get up in the middle of the night
to feed a baby?”
In the face of the onslaught,
the true counterculture in
America is not the “McGovemik
elite” or, for heaven’s sake, PBS.
It’s parents and reasonable adults
who are left literally counter the
culture, to do combat with the
incessant messages of main
stream films, music, television
— the conglomerate known as
Hollywood — as best we can.
Hollywood may not cause
teen pregnancy. But Sylvester
and others are convinced that
any national campaign that goes
to the heart and hard-core of the
problem is going to have to
engage these cultural message
makers.
We’re going to have to do
more than label them as villains.
We need them as allies.
It will take all their creativity
to make a successful pitch
against irresponsible sex and
teen pregnancy. “Just say no”
won’t do it. Teen-agers are the
most risk-taking part of the
population. They’re still being
Ellen Goodman
seduced by cigarette ads.
It will be harder to fashion a
stand against sex than against
smoking. After all, smoking is
always bad for you; sex isn’t.
And hormones are even more
powerful than nicotine addiction.
It will also be harder to
campaign against unwed parent
hood than against drunken
driving. The campaign against
drunken driving was successful
in curbing dangerous behavior
by creating a new social role: the
designated driver. But a baby is
a different sort of accident than a
head-on collision.
If we can’t preach, however
much papa (and mama) may
want to, we can say unequivo
cally in rhythm, rap or reel what
Sylvester says in plain words:
“It’s wrong to bring a child into ,
the world that you can’t take
care of.” It’s not cool, it’s not
manly, it’s not womanly. It’s
wrong.
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Madonna for target practice. It
even goes beyond lowering the
sexual thermostat of the culture.
Entertainment executives like
to say, on the one hand, that they
are just reflecting reality and, on
the other hand, that they’re in the
business of fantasy. With both
hands, they wave furious charges
of censorship at any critic.
But how about more reality.
In an ad campaign, in soap
operas, movies, music.
Not long ago, an outraged
producer complained to Jay
Winston, the public-health guru
who created the designated
driver campaign: “Can you
imagine that people are lobbying
to have Tom Cruise use a
condom? Tom Cruise?” Why is
that so hard to imagine?
At Harvard’s Kennedy School
of Government, a nervous Barbra
Streisand recently offered a
spirited defense of the artist as
citizen. But the problem isn’t
that this “cultural elite” is too
political, it’s that it isn’t political
enough. As Winston says, “They
ought to be powerful players in
this process. They need to come
to the table.”
Let’s begin with some sexual
truth-in-advertising: one part
passion to two parts diapers. Sex
and consequence. Try humming
a few bars.
€>1995 The Boston Globe Newspaper
Company
Mike Luckovich
