Lackadaisical
Laziness plagues everyone, even a president
1 almost didn’t write this column.
You see, I have a 10 a.m. Monday
deadline, and that requires a little
thought and planning over the
weekend and hey, I had important
stuff to do.
Things like the National
Broomball Championships on ESPN
or attempting to knit a sweater out of
discarded lint wads from the dorm
dryers. My weekends are full of
essential things (like figuring out
exactly what those “Slushee” points
were redeemable for), and writing a
column just didn’t fit into my
schedule.
OK, so maybe I almost didn’t
write this column because I was
busy reorganizing my sock drawer
by cottons, polyesters and cotton/
polyester blends.
Maybe I almost didn’t do it
because I was lazy.
Yet I m not the only one. We re
living in a society of people who are
aimless, uncaring, shiftless and a
whole bunch of other “lazy”
adjectives I’m too lazy to type out.
Take for example a true-life
incident in Cadiz, Kentucky, in
which a robber made off with $170
from a grocery store — only to
discover that he had locked the keys
in the getaway car. This forced him
to kick in the back window and
inflict enough damage that $170
probably wouldn’t pay for it. He
managed to drive only 21 miles
before he was apprehended.
This is laziness to the utmost
degree. Here we have a guy who in
all likeliness carefully planned how
he was going to do the robbery and
paid attention to such things as the
proximity of the nearest highway
and whether the supermarket had
any surveillance cameras.
He probably made out a list of
things to bring for the robbery, you
know, gun, pantyhose (for his head
you sickos!!!), a road map and a
bogus driver ’s, license. I’m also sure
that “car keys” were somewhere on
this detailed list. He was probably
too lazy to pay any attention to the
list before getting out of the car.
Kasey Kerber
“We’re living in a
society of people that are
aimless, uncaring,
shiftless and a whole
hunch of other lazy’
adjectives I’m too lazy to
type out. ”
Or maybe he was too lazy to
make a list, and that bought him a
trip to Kentucky’s finest jailhouse.
Regardless, this is just one
example of how laziness can play a
part in small matters such as writing
a column or trying to get into your
car before Rosco P. Coltrane and the
entire police squad from the “Dukes
of Hazzard” come to get you.
Maybe you think that this
laziness thing only happens to white
trash robbers and weekendless
columnists. Well, it also happens to
cross-dressers disguised as leaders
of the FBI.
Yes, there is a vivid, true-life, but
little known incident of laziness that
dealt with Herbert Hoover.
One day Hoover looked over a
letter typed by his secretary and
noticed that she had typed fairly far
into the right-hand margin. He wrote
the words “watch the borders” on
JfegL,letter in red ink and told her
bluntly, the words: “Correct and
send.”
Hoover’s secretary thought he
had meant that the letter was
“correct” and went ahead and “sent”
it. Within two days, FBI agents were
heavily patrolling the Canadian and
Mexican “borders.”
Now in this instance, who’s to
say who was lazy. Maybe it was
Hoover for not being more descrip
tive in the way he told his secretary
that the letter needed to be cor
rected. Maybe it was the secretary
for wondering if that was a part of a
dress sticking out from the closet
door instead of paying attention to
what her boss was saying.
Or maybe the secretary was too
lazy to stay within the margins,
Hoover was too lazy to tell her how
to correct the letter and she was too
lazy to make the corrections anyway
The point is, we’re lazy too. This
might not seem as if it’s dll that bad,
but often, laziness can be our
downfall.
How? Well, let’s just look at the
examples mentioned earlier. What if
the cops had gotten to the robber
before he had a chance to break the
back window and take off? What if
there had been a shoot-out, and he
had been the guy shot? All because
he was lazy enough not to remember L
his keys...
Or, what if the FBI agents closely
roaming the borders had acciden
tally begun an international incident
(as I’m sure many of our “secret”
branches of service have almost
done) all because Hoover and his
secretary were too lazy to communi
cate.
Or closer to home — what if
you’re too lazy to study for your
exams, fail them, fail your courses
and end up robbing a grocery store
of $ 170, only to lock your keys in
the getaway car?
One can only wonder how I could
make such an intricate analysis of a
robbery-gone-wrong and link it to
our college lives. It certainly wasn’t
because I was inspired, determined
and tireless to be creative ...
After all — I’ve got the Miniature
Golf Championships to watch.
Kerber is a freshman news-editorial
major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist
Public ignorance
Voters confused about who’s who in politics
Almost 60 percent of Americans
believe that poverty is on the rise
among the elderly, and half of those
believe the federal government has
contributed to the problem. Fifty
eight percent think we spend more
on foreign aid than on Medicare,
and the same number said “no”
when asked whether the House of
Representatives had passed a plan to
balance the budget.
These are some of the findings of
a Washington Post, Harvard Univer
sity, Kaiser Family Foundation
survey of the American electorate.
In fact, poverty has been falling
among the elderly for many years, in
part a result of federal programs like
Medicare and Social Security. We
spend between 12 and 13 times as
much on Medicare as we do on
foreign aid — and the trajectory of
future spending for foreign aid is flat
whereas that for Medicare is so
steep that it threatens to bankrupt all
of us. As for the balanced budget —
after the government shutdown and
weeks and weeks of the standoff
with President Clinton.
But then, 40 percent do not even
know that Republicans now control
Congress, and fully half think the
Democrats are the more conserva
tive of the two parties or aren’t sure.
Only 24 percent could correctly
name both U.S. senators from their
states, and only a third could name
their member of Congress.
There is simply no way to put a
cheerful face on these results. For a
self-governing nation, this level of
ignorance and misinformation is .
chilling. Ignorant people are
vulnerable people — vulnerable to
manipulation and demagoguery. And
ignorant people are superstitious
people, easily persuaded to seek
scapegoats for their troubles.
Mona Charon
“Ignorant people are
vulnerable people —
vulnerable to
manipulation and
demagoguery. And
ignorant people are
superstitious people,
easily persuaded to seek
scapegoats for their
troubles. ”
Ignorance has led to a kind of
false sophistication among voters.
Misunderstanding the nature of
debates between Democrats and
Republicans, they dismiss genuine
policy differences as “just politics”
or as “childish bickering.” The
recently completed Oregon Senate
race pitted a strong conservative
against a true-blue liberal, yet a
voter interviewed by The Washing
ton Post dismissed the race as
“confusing nonsense, like two little
kids on a school yard.”
The survey found that Americans
are skeptical to the point of mistrust
about their government — but that
they expect great things of it at the
same time. In 1964,75 percent of
Americans trusted the government
to do the right thing all or most of
the time. Today, only 25 percent feel
that way. Eighty percent say the
government spends tax dollars on
the wrong things, and 55 percent
think taxes are too high. Yet a
majority also blames government for
failing to create more jobs and for
permitting jobs to be “exported”
overseas. The mixed message of
those data are: The government
can’t be trusted, but why doesn’t it
provide me with a job?
Republicans as well as Demo
crats are guilty of stimulating
unrealistic expectations about the
capacities of government. Demo
crats have consistently promised
generous programs paid for by the
“rich,” and Republicans have
sometimes taken too much credit for
economic growth that was merely
the result of getting government out
of the way.
But wnat lurks beneath the
statistics of mistrust goes far beyond
government. Americans don’t trust
one another anymore either. They
think people will cheat them or steal
from them if given an opportunity.
They are even afraid of their
neighbors. It is that fear, spurred by
the crime rate, that lies at the heart
of the discontent, the survey
discovered. Americans, after more
than 40 years of overpromising by
government, are practically pro
grammed to blame their discontent
on government. But what they are
really concerned about is the
breakdown of civil society — of
close-knit families, stable communi
ties and safe streets.
(C) 1996 Creator* Syndicate, lac.
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And even though we’re a high-tech company, we’re not just looking
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Tuesday, March 5th Setting the pece at a slightly different pace.
NebraskaUnion
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FAIR, MARCH 27th, 5-7:30 pm, NEBRASKA UNION,
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