Chew on this
Bus ride shows carnality of human condition
Today on the bus a woman was
eating a sandwich.
It was the kind of sloppy, beefy
affair, with a fragrant and almost
overpowering “zesty” secret sauce,
that large fast-food chains have led
us to believe we prefer.
And she set to it with such
obvious relish and gusto—and
such feline fastidiousness—that I
could hardly tear my eyes away.
The face she fed was framed by a
fur-lined cap and a woolen scarf,
which remained clean and appar
ently uncumbersome.
She ate methodically and very
quickly. She must’ve been hungry.
In the end she rolled the paper
wrapper into a tight little ball and
tucked it neatly away in her purse.
The whole operation had taken
almost less time than it took to write
this down and, when it was over, all
that remained was the sweet reek of
... of whatever they put on those
burgers that makes diem smell so.
“This I saw with horror.”
All the while I was watching her,
I knew I would write about the
woman and the sandwich. I was
writing, in my head, even as I
watched.
She represented something to me
— though I’m hard pressed to say
exactly what.
Missing everything that makes a
person interesting: wit, sex appeal,
style and grace — in short, entirely
innocent of charm, she nevertheless
remained recognizably human.
Her appetites gave her away.
Not to mention the care and
cleverness that kept her neat and
clean at such a messy job.
But it jarred me to recognize
myself in her, to feel compassion for
this lost woman, gulping greasy
meat on a bus. To think, “there go
I,” with no “grace of god” provisos
preserving my fragile self-image. To
recognize in her the “human
Mark Baldridge
“It jarred me to
recognize myself in her:
to feel compassion for
this lost woman, gulping
greasy meat on a bus. ”
condition” people used to talk about
—my own condition.
I shudder to think.
When I was still a young person,'
I was dragged through the local “old
folks’ homes” on a weekly basis,
bringing Communion and “Bible
fellowship” to the shut-in.
It was a hideous task, placing the
stale cracker between the toothless
gums of old women whose hands
were little better than swollen,
arthritic lumps. Greeting blind men
whose children all had died long ago
— of respectable old age. They
were all so happy to see us, come
Sunday. It turned my stomach.
The old people smelled rotten, of
urine and stale flesh—the smell of
bodies that have not been caressed
lovingly in decades.
I never forgave my older brother
for forcing me into those confronta
tions — and he soon gave up taking
me along.
But why do I think of it now?
The woman on the bus was not old,
not much older than me, probably.
She seemed in perfect health.
Still, the connection of feeling
remains.
And here’s another clue:
A few years ago, my best friend
died in an accident; a sleeping
motorist crushed him out on
Highway 6.
Kirk had been biking to Milford,
to his brand-new job as a counseling
psychologist. People told me he
never knew what hit him.
I was horrified.
And for weeks afterward I craved
meat. Red meat, every day. Meat
and plenty of it.
What was I feeling, what
nameless need?
Maybe it was just desperation —
an urge to cling to life, to the flesh
—to fill myself, gorge myself on
the fat of my own aliveness.
I know this is Friday, and no one
wants to think about this stuff today.
And isn’t winter hard enough
without this downer too?
But maybe that’s what winter is
for — a chance jtb think bad
thoughts. Just bear with me.
For a moment, on the bus, all of
this stuff came together for me in a
feeling—or a feeling rose in me that
I recognized from these other times.
It’s a feeling of the tragic limits
of biology — or maybe time. Time
as a function of biology.
It’s a feeling of superimposition
— in which I look at life and see
straight through it to the death that
clings to its insides, sucking away.
It’s not a good feeling.
It’s a feeling I’m glad I don’t
have every day.
But it hits me like a revelation.
That woman on the bus — she’s
made of meat.
Like me.
Baldridge is a senior English major
and a Daily Nebraskan oolnmnlst.
Bogus booze rules
Logic of UNL campus policy comes under fire
I joined a fraternity at UNL
almost four years ago, when the
greek system was fun.
Negative publicity lingers over
the greek system today. It seemed to
start in the Fall of 1993, when
Jeffrey Knoll, a Phi Gamma Delta
pledge accidentally fell from a third
story bathroom window.
It so happened that the window
was located in the fraternity’s house.
The accident was tragic, but what
many people failed to realize was
that it was not anyone’s fault (I do
believe that’s what an accident is;
correct me if I’m wrong.)
That single incident set off a
countless number of biased articles
from local newspapers, including
the Daily Nebraskan.
The snowball kept rolling and
rolling. Today’s greek system is
treated just as the Chicago Police
Department does Cabr ini-Green
Housing Projects (the high-crime
housing project in the city of
Chicago).
Let’s face it, the main issue is
drinking.
Drinking on campus property is
prohibited, in case you weren’t
aware of the fact. And to think, all
these years I have been drinking on
campus, and no one ever told me.
Get real, no one is going to stop
students from drinking. If they think
it’s possible, then they should move
to Utah and get a job at BYU.
Fraternities are definitely not the
only places that drinking occurs.
The dorms are full of freshmen
loaded up on the sauce.
If a person were to visit a college
or university on a Friday night in
California or let’s say London, they
would find the same thing that UNL
has. Students drinking and going to
parties.
Two years ago, UNL took it upon
itself to threaten the greek presi
dents’ council to vote for the
Bob Ray
“Fraternities are now
places where $4.25 an
hour rent-a-cops can
lash out their suppressed
insecurity problems and
write bogus tickets to
kids who are just having
fun and not harming a
soul. ”
wonderful and always cordial
community service officers.
Fraternities are now places where
$4.25 an hour rent-a-cops can lash
out their suppressed insecurity
problems and write bogus tickets to
kids who are just having fun and not
harming a soul.
The University calls these
individuals Community Service
Officers; I call them case studies for
Psych. 181 students.
No girls past 2 ajn.—who
thought of that one, could it be
Jayne Wade Anderson or Officer
Friendly?
I came to school four years ago to
get an education and claim my
independence, hoping that the rest of
the world would treat me like an adult.
The University rules made it
nearly impossible for me to live in
my fraternity any longer. Last year I
moved out.
I realize that there should be
rules and limitations for the UNL
greek system, but the presently
enforced laws are out of control.
(I’ve got one, how about no
urinating after 11 p.m.)
Underage students are driving to
off-campus parties in herds. They
are risking their lives and the lives
of fellow motorists.
We already know that it’s
impossible to stop student drinking
on this campus or any campus for
that matter.
So what is wrong with a frater
nity holding an organized party?
Everyone attending is walking to
and from the party. No one is
getting into a car and risking injury
or even death.
I had a very dear friend of mine
die in a drunken-driving accident
last April, and I don’t want to see
any of the students on this campus
die because of the ignorant rules that
now stand.
I think certain people in high
places at UNL are taking the buzz
word “politically correct” a bit too
seriously. Those individuals should
probably follow their own
generation’s words like “swell” or
“golly.”
PC is our word, so don’t act as if
you know what it is.
Give us a break, treat us like
students, not criminals.
Realize that you are making students
DRINK and DRIVE with these rules
on campus.
And if you think drinking and
driving is politically correct, you’ve
eaten too many fruitcakes in your
lifetime.
Ray is a senior broadcasting major and
a Dally Nebraskan columnist
Divided Republicans
wrecking game plan
WASHINGTON —The
Republican game plan for 1996
has gone off-track. There is
plenty of time to right it before
November’s voting, but it will
take more work—and smarter
strategy — than the Republicans
have shown the last few months.
Instead of celebrating the start
of their second year in control of
Congress, the new Republican
majorities elected in 1994 are
frustrated. President Clinton has
used his veto pen to scratch out
large parts of the Contract With
America and turned up the
megaphone of the presidency to
drown out Republican explana
tions of their policies and plans.
The original GOP theme for
1996 — “promises made,
promises kept”—has been
altered to read: We did our
damnedest, but it wasn’t enough.
Republicans conceded last week
that it will take another election
to gain a clear mandate for the
changes they want to make in
Medicare, Medicaid and welfare,
and to enact the balanced budget
and tax cuts they hoped to pass on
the basis of 1994 returns.
They can blame Clinton, but
the fact remains that they look
like another set of politicians who
did not deliver on their promises.
Another deviation from their
plan is that Republicans had
hoped for a short, sweet nomina
tion contest. What they are
getting is anything but sweet —
and it may turn out not to be
short.
In Iowa and New Hampshire,
you cannot turn on the TV or
radio without seeing or hearing
one Republican presidential
candidate carving into another
one. Steve Forbes comes close to
calling Bob Dole a liar and Dole
assails Forbes for “untested
leadership” and “risky ideas.”
Rank-and-file Republicans are
complaining about the meanness
with which their hopefuls are
treating each other. But Haley
Barbour, the Republican national
chairman, has not stirred himself
to request restraint.
When asked why, Barbour
says that he wants to preserve his
reputation for impartiality,
implying that any jawboning on
his part would be interpreted as
an effort to protect Dole’s early
lead in the polls.
Barbour has been brilliant in
his first three years on the job,
and his decision not to be a
whistle-blower may keep him
out of trouble. But Republicans
have*forgotten Ronald Reagan’s
11th Commandment—“Thou
shalt not speak ill of another
Republican” — so completely
that the nomination winner may
be badly scarred before he ever
has to step into the ring against
Clinton.
With Dole’s response to the
Clinton State of the Union
address drawing negative
reviews, doubts are growing
about his ability to wrap up the
nomination early.
Meantime, the Republicans’
David Broder
“The original GOP
theme for 1996—
promises made,
promises kept’— has
been altered to read: We
did our damnedest, but
it wasn’t enough. ”
pet issue of 1996 also is taking
it on the chin.
Barbour and other party
strategists have planned for
more than a year to make radical
simplification of the tax code
the main economic plank in
their platform and the founda
tion of their promise to improve
take-home pay for millions of
middle-class families.
But House Majority Leader
Dick Armey, R-Texas, the
leading congressional proponent
of the flat tax idea, told me last
week that he was worried that
the debate in the primaries was
tainting that plan.
I had hoped it wouldn t get
too much discussion until after
the primaries,” Armey said.
Instead, because of the
success of Forbes’ self-financed,
multimillion-dollar ad campaign
promoting the flat tax, Dole,
Alexander, Gramm and former
television commentator and *
columnist Patrick J. Buchanan all
have been slamming the Forbes
version of the flat tax.
Armey, who is supporting
fellow-Texan Gramm, said he
would have a hard time defending
the Forbes flat tax. “It sounds like
he took my 1994 proposal,”
Armey said. In 1995, after further
analysis, Armey revised his plan to
reduce revenue losses to the
government, and to make it less
likely that middle-class families
would lose money in the deal.
Every dollar that Dole, Gramm,
Buchanan and Alexander spend
trashing Forbes’ flat tax is a boon
to the Democrats. The flat tax may
have so many holes shot in it by
convention time that it won’t be
available as the unifying economic
message for the fall campaign.
Without that cover, Republicans
risk a renewed focus on a social
issue agenda that mobilizes the
conservative base but costs them
support among Perot backers and
other independents.
They need a new game plan.
© 1996, WashlHgton Post Writers
Group
\
Lets be honest,
natJSOWon
Dole isnUn attractive
candidate.. /
liElUtrt
triMi7ti«Tmim(ct
Alien
starry Phil Gramm
