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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 23, 1999)
Declaration of war With outside aid, the university will be under strict scrutiny The sense of security you’re look ing for will hit you like a ton of bricks one day. Of course, you’ll be hurtling toward the ground in a plummeting fireball folks once called an airplane, but what the hell, at least you will have obtained that singular moment of clarity. Hope you enjoy it. Everything that people tell you about this place is a false truth. You’re thinking to yourself, “Dear God, I hope I don’t bum out like this freak,” but you will; dropped in the drink, there’s only two options: sink or swim. The perspective from the bottom of the river is so much more interesting, I assure you. “As your roommate,” Topher tells me, “I advise you to give these unclued halfwits an inkling as to where this rambling is going.” Was it really spiraling out of control that fast? Had it really been so long since I had come to this backwater town from the desert oasis of Katmandu? Before I could toss loose the shack les of education, I would have to finish this, my fifth year here, under the microscope. They don’t tell you that four years is no longer the average time it takes you to dig your way out through the walls. Some days, it can be hard to shake that nauseating feeling that we’re never getting out of here. Of course, that’s a he: Mathematicians and astrologers are predicting that I, like Harry Houdini, will soon do a vanishing trick. Nostradamus himself wrote: “A founder of sects, much trouble for the accuser: Beast in the theatre prepares the scene and plot. The author ennobled by acts of older times; the world is conjiised by schismatic sects.” If that don’t foretell a May coop flight, I’ll have to go dig up that rat bas tard’s corpse and desecrate it like some Doors groupie gone feral in a Paris graveyard. Sure, the door’ll open at 4, but the mind will still be closed. The answers won’t be there, and you’ll have learned less here than you did in high school. (And if you learned something in high school, you weren’t paying attention.) Lessons are best learned by doing. Don’t dip a finger into the goo of life - sink your hands right down there and squeeze. Around my neck dangles a token of Death, a card, actually, engraved into pewter. Tarot says this is a new begin ning. That was die card I drew for this column. How true. “As your other roommate,” Joe tells me, “I advise you to clarify, extrapolate and rectify the questions these good folks have.” “Lay it out for ’em,” Topher adds. Well, I’ve now got less than nothing to lose. welcome to me worm oi guerrilla journalism, o my droogies. This world is right horror show, and you’re in the thick of it. No rule books, no signposts up ahead; just a lingering sense of deja vu and a thumbs up for justice. I ’ve been aiming the brain V gun at a target so big the bullets didn’t even scratch the surface. So I’m scaling down and gritting up. I intend to investigate what’s wrong with this university, this city and per haps even this state. I’ll root out the evil, the filth and the bureaucracy. I’ll talk to the people who no one can ever get hold of and ask them the questions no one else will dare. I’m going to go to the wall for you. What I need of you is for you to finger The Man - point out who’s got your back against the wall and the knife point ready to draw a smile on your neck in crimson. Think the university is screwing you or someone else over? Drop me a line; give me the 411. I’ll take it from there. I’m going to be the investigative columnist this university has been yearning for, and I’m going to stick up for the little guy. Think a teacher’s no good? A department repressing people? A program mired in corruption and bathing in blood money? Whatever it takes, I’m going to go toe to toe for you folks. This is for your own good. E-mail me what’s wrong at joumal isticwarfare@hotmail.com or drop a letter to the DN offices. And, on those weeks when the war machine’s running behind, I’ll try and give you a laugh. What the hell, you aren’t paying me. CLIFF HICKS is a senior news-editorial and English major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. She’s all that Thanks to marketing, women s athletics still haunted by spectre of sexism i I’ve got to admit it: I love a cer tain female tennis player. And not for the skills. For the looks. She’s young, too young for me, and she’s graced the cover of many a magazine. There’s Web sites devoted to her. She’s one fine lookin ’puppy. And she’s not Anna Koumikova. For me it’s Martina Hingis, all the ^ way. What. A. Babe. Especially when she dons that headband. Of course, Koumikova gets my “Fine Puppy” rankin’, too, I just got a thing for brunettes, I think. Goes w back to Audrey Hepburn (different column, different time). But with my Martina, it’s more than that. What style! What grace! What sexy legs! Don’t you think that Swiss Sweetie knows it, too. Ah, Martina flaunts. She flirts. She puffs out that pouty upper lip. Not as much as Anna, mind you, who has sex with the camera every other day. Just the right amount. A tease. Oh yeah, I like the tease. Right now, around the world, men like me are standing up and begging for buttermilk over these two women, and many others. Because this whole “I’m hotter than everybody else out here” is exactly what the big boys, with the big money, want to do with their marketing dollars. Like the pom watcher in the La Z-Boy is going to stop them. And the women’s organizations that have the power to do it, instead trade in respect for exposure. More naked women means ... more money. Capitalism is skintastic. By the way, a full congrats is in order for the National Organization of Women and Title IX. They asked us to hear them roar. Well, somebody’s roaring. But it isn’t the She-Ra the feminists wanted. More like Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, eh? Somebody, by God, should have seen this coming. How do you get men, the gender that watches sports, to watch women play sports on TV? Pitch the sex angle; it always works. And it’s working again. Hell, in women’s sports, beauty has always been the lowest common denomina tor. Figure skaters and gymnasts never forget to put that makeup on. The U.S. Women’s World Cup team calls themselves “Booters with Hooters.” One of them posed nude in a soccer magazine. What do we remember from that last game vs. China? The sports bra, baby. A new stunning revelation arrived in the June 10,1999 issue of Rolling Stone; we see a sports Hall of Fame for the year. Included is Amy Acuff, a former UCLA high jumper who has organized a nude calendar of herself and other female track athletes for the year 2000. Her reasoning? “I really didn’t mind baring all in order to break down some stereo types about women athletes. I wanted to show that a woman athlete can be extremely competitive and driven and successful and still retain feminine qualities,” Acuff said in the maga zine. And, apparently, that means going nude. Collectively, men across America breathe out slowly and exclaim, “Oh yeah.” I can see it now: The new Lawless Lady Lawyer Calendar, where the month of May features Marcia Clark in her legal briefs... and nothing else. Not that I should be surprised by athletes showing some skin. I work in the Daily Nebraskan sports depart ment, where we see a good number of women’s media guides from around the Big 12. Very few fail to have that “dressy” team picture where all the girls dud up and look pretty. I wonder why women, or whoever creates such media guides, finds this necessary in order to promote a woman’s sport. Apparently, the sport itself is not promotion enough. Apparently, men need to know these girls can still step out on the town when they’re not on the field. Oh yeah. This sex campaign reaches far and wide, spanning continents and delving into the lives of those not old enough for a sleepover. Mi favorito: Tara Lipinski, that struttin’, smooth sailin’ figure skater who was made up to look oh so fine in that ESPN Magazine commercial about a year back. Humbert Humbert and Co. would be very proud of our young fine women these days. These women, do they know they’re doing it? They must. Kournikova has to know when she brags about boyfriends in their 20s and 30s. Or when she wears those sooooo tight, sooooo black warm-up shorts that bring a thousand fans out to watch. That audacity makes her even sexier. Soon, every man will know of these wonderful developments. It’s good to know that in a world that’s supposed to be turning the tide for the women, karmic forces are still will ing to throw a bone man’s way. Such celebration deserves a liter ary moment. As Ernest Hemingway once said, “What’s a man supposed to do when a beautiful woman comes in and he’s lying there with a big stiff? What would you do?” So you’re a guy. You’re in front of the television watching a beautiful woman athlete, in tight clothes, stretch her body to her absolute phys ical limits, and you ’re starting to get a big stiff. What would I do? Hell, what would you do? You know, I’ll bet the boys in marketing are thinking the same thing. r SAMUEL McKE WON is a senior news-editorial and political science major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist