We want you
Ultimate Frisbee team provides dose of good, clean fun
UUB
Br
Dump your boyfriend, quit your
job, quit your sorority or your broth
el and quit picking your nose - it’s
time to play ultimate.
Ultimate Frisbee, if you will.
Much like Snapple is made from
the best stuff on earth, so is our team,
but we need more able-bodied vixens
to play with.
Our numbers on the line are get
ting low, and you, young ladies, you
provide the fuel.
I’m writing these memoirs to you
on the back of a disc. A not-yet-used,
not-yet-abused flying wonder.
This disc was a gift to our team
From the tournament that we just
won.
To all of you able-bodied girls
out there who don’t play, you missed
one heck of a swell time.
As far as I know, the Nebraska
Women’s Ultimate Team has never
won a tournament, and this is a great
way to start out our semester.
I took it as a sign from Beelzebub
that we won an ultimate tournament
the same day that the Huskers won
another silly little game.
As I was watching the Husker
game in an oversized sports restau
rant that reminded me of a 14th cen
tury castle where barbarians go to
drink and talk shop about killing yet
another peasant, I was sickened by
the adoration the Huskers were
receiving.
I barfed in my Coke and kept
thinking of how hard our ultimate
team worked that day.
The more Cokes I consumed, the
better I felt about the Huskers getting
all our attention because I know that
they are not as strong as we ultimate
ladies.
They may be physically stronger,
but our endurance and stamina pre
vails over theirs like a 14-year-old
girl prevails over their senses.
To let you know how strong our
team is, three girls came from distant
cities to play at the tournament.
One of our girls flew in from
Arizona to be there.
I sort of forced her to come to
Lawrence, Kan., since I told her I
would pick her up from the Omaha
airport and take her back to Lincoln.
I just failed to tell her that we
wouldn’t be in Lincoln for two days
and that she had no choice but to
play on our team.
If she had declined to play with
us, she would have never made it
back home alive. We don’t like to
hear the word “no.”
Another girl came from
Colorado, complete with hot pink
hair.
That’s a requirement to play, as
well. Your hair color must be unnat
ural, and you must have a minimum
of 15 body piercings (ears don’t
count).
Yet another girl, avoiding the
prospect of fierce beatings, came
over from St. Louis, Mo.
Scraping together these girls, we
still had the smallest number of subs
of all the teams, and believe me, subs
help immensely when your dogs are
barkin’.
Note: When your “dogs are
barkin’,” it simply means that your
feet hurt. Thank you, John
Steinbeck.
The night before we played we
had to deal with the “Hotel Nazi”
who made half the girls sleep outside
on the hoods of their cars, and we
were glad to get the four hours of
sleep so important to crazy college
kids.
I think I can speak for the team
when I say that Ultimate is a chal
lenge mentally, physically and, most
importantly, emotionally.
It takes determination and drive
and the will to sleep with anybody to
get to the top.
Not really. There’s no top to get
to.
The only glory in the sport is
knowing you did your best and the
hope that you can portray this on the
playing field.
There are no coaches, no refer
ees, only the spirit of the game and
your faith in it.
It sounds like a religion, and in a
way I suppose it is, but it’s a sweaty
religion, and there are no bibles.
There is a rule book that acts in
part as our bible, but it uses the word
Jesus Christ in it only once as a slan
der when you miss the disc in the
end zone.
After all of our hard work, we
earned a token of respect from an
anonymous male team member - we
received tournament beads for all to
see.
They looked exactly like Mardi
Gras beads, but we refused to flash
our bare breasts, much to his cha
grin.
I assumed the beads were given
to us out of respect and hard work,
but my teammates seem to think we
received them because we had the
sexiest legs.
I had to explain to them for hours
that it was because “we played well”
and not because “we’re fly honeys.”
We were dedicated the beads, but
I dedicate the tournament to Jamie,
Leah and Heather, who couldn’t be
there. Out of utter sorrow we sum
moned their spirits to join us.
1 here was a
time when I
actually felt
Heather run
ning alongside
me, telling me
that I was going the
wrong way.
Spirits aside, we sim
ply used good ol’ blood,
sweat and tears to pre
vail over the
other teams.
It is our
strong bond of friend- I
ship, not only the love
of the game,
that kept us a tight
unit that day.
We don’t ever fight
on the field, and we
never bicker about
someone else’s faults.
We only help each other
improve.
So, if
you’re a female,
or an extremely
feminine male, come
play with us some- /
time. f
You will be very \
welcome and wanted
no matter what your
skills are. Remember that
we all started out know
ing zip.
We will teach you the
skills, and then we
will give you a huge
wedgie and make
you run down the field blindfolded.
Don’t tell me this doesn’t sound
like fun.
'I Ml1
Megan Cody/DN
Karen Brown is a junior English and film studies major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.
h rom communist to conservative
Ex-radical's change of heart is lesson in free market democracy
. ...
He wasn’t your run-of-the-mill
1960s radical. He didn’t participate
in the sit-ins and demonstrations for
the free pot and free love. He wasn’t
turning on, tuning in and dropping
out because it was the trendy thing to
do.
He was a true believer in the
cause.
David Horowitz was a commu
nist. He worked for the Black
Panther Party. He was a leader of the
“New Left.”
He was buddies with guys like
Huey Newton, Tom Hayden and
Abbie Hoffman.
Since his youthful days as a revo
lutionary activist, Horowitz has had
second thoughts.
He’s had to re-evaluate the things
he believed in so fervently for so
long. He’s had to rethink his youthful
infatuation with Marxism.
You know what he thinks now?
He knows he had it all wrong.
It’s not an easy thing to radically
alter your world view. But Horowitz
has done it. And he wants to tell the
world his story.
He’s still an activist, but now he’s
playing for a different team. As a
conservative author and lecturer, he
now crusades and rails against the
same Marxist and Communist ideals -
he once so devotedly espoused.
The man has traversed a truly
incredible intellectual and political
journey.
Horowitz was bom a “red diaper
baby” in 1939 in New York. His
grandparents had come to the United
States years before to escape reli
gious persecution in czarist Russia.
Horowitz adopted the political
views of his parents. Both were card
carrying members of the American
Communist Party, and both were
involved in covert activities in con
spiring toward a revolution - a revo
lution that would take place world
wide to fulfill the master plan of
Karl Marx.
The young Horowitz embraced
his parents’ hopes for a revolution
and dedicated his early life to the
spread of Marxism in this country.
A brilliant student, he breezed
through elementary and high school
on his way to attending Columbia
University. He earned his bachelor’s
degree in English there in 1959.
He then moved west to attend the
University of California at Berkeley.
A bastion and safe haven of far
left politics, Berkeley was the perfect
fit for Horowitz. He was among his
own: bright, young radicals with
misplaced faith in a revolution.
At Berkeley, Horowitz began to
make his mark as a major player in
the workings of the New Left. In the
late ’60s, Horowitz took on the job
of editor at Ramparts magazine, the
largest and most influential leftist
publication at the time.
He also became involved in the
Black Panther Party. He developed a
friendship with Huey Newton, the
group’s minister of defense and top
leader.
It was his dealings with the
Panthers, Horowitz now says, that
began his questioning of the radical
policies he’d been fighting for.
In “Radical Son,” the autobiogra
phy chronicling his political journey
and transformation, Horowitz tells
the story of a friend and co-worker at
the Panther Party who he believes
was murdered by Black Panther
higher-ups suspecting she knew too
much about their crooked dealings.
This was just one incident in a long
line of suspicious murders and over
all corruption involving the Black
Panthers.
Instead of being the “vanguard of
the revolution” the Left had hoped
for, Horowitz came to the realization
that the Black Panthers were nothing
but an organized band of street
thugs.
What got to Horowitz perhaps as
much as the Panthers’ reckless vio
lence was the Left’s tolerance of it.
He recounts his feelings then in
“Radical Son”: “Although the
Panther vanguard was isolated and
small, its leaders were able to rob
and kill without incurring the penal
ty of law.”
“They were able to do so,
because the Left made the Panthers a
law unto themselves. The same way
they had made Stalin a law unto him
self. The same way the Left makes
Fidel Castro and the Sandinista
comandantes laws unto themselves.”
Indeed, the New Left’s failure to
take notice of the Panthers’ thuggery
was very similar to the Old Left’s
failure to condemn or even acknowl
edge the outrageous violence and
destruction brought about in the
Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
The Left’s mantra seemed to be:
“As long as it’s being done for the
66
Any individual in a truly democratic market
society, no matter where or to whom he or
she is born, has under the law the full
opportunity to succeed or to fail - to fulfill
his or her own destiny.
cause, it is permissible. Those hurt in
the process aren’t important.”
This disregard for any kind of
law or order inherent in the move
ments spurred by Marxism was not
the only reason Horowitz turned his
back on the Left.
In a short essay he wrote last year
in commemoration of the 150th
anniversary of Marx’s “Communist
Manifesto,” Horowitz brings forth a
number of reasons why he now
despises the dogma he once clung to.
For one, he points out that Marx’s
assumption that all non-socialist soci
eties are divided into classes that are
“oppressed” and those who oppress
them is faulty.
Horowitz writes, “In democratic
market societies, where social mobili
ty is fluid, the people are sovereign
and the rule of law prevails, social
classes (and races and genders) do not
“oppress” one another.”
This is an important point to
remember. Any individual in a truly
democratic market society, no matter
where or to whom he or she is bom,
has under the law the full opportunity
to succeed or to fail - to fulfill his or
her own destiny.
Another reason: The “Communist
Manifesto,” ultimately, is a call to
arms, not an effective guide to gov
erning.
Horowitz expands on this, provid
ing his interpretation of the
Manifesto. Horowitz writes: “Marx
proposes that civil war is the answer
to humanity’s problems... The solu
tion to all fundamental social prob
lems - to war, to poverty, to economic
inequality - lies in a conflict that will
rip society apart and create a new rev
olutionary world from its ruins.”
From this, Horowitz concludes,
“is the enduring, poisonous message
of the Manifesto, the reason why its
believers have left such a trail of
human slaughter behind them on their
way to the progressive future.”
So what can we learn from
Horowitz and his political transfor
mation?
I think the most fitting way to
answer the question might be
summed up in what Horowitz calls
one of the most valuable lessons he’s
learned from his journey:
“The best intentions can lead to
the worst ends. I had believed in the
Left because of the good it had
promised; I had learned to judge it by
the evil it had done.”
Josh Moenning is an advertising major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.
