Commentary . -::.cv.' : '
The Tar Heei
Jot Hiday, Editor
Joel Broadway. News Editor '
Joel Katzenstein, Arts 9 Features Editor
Low Thomas. Photography Editor
Gink Lynch. Associate Editor
Andy Hodges, Sports Editor
Staff: Margaret Bell, Scott Bower, Jeff Brody, Mary Clifford, Kate Cooper, Pete Felkner, Sue
FrankeiGwen Hailey, Les A. Hamashima, Marlynn Ruth Jones, Eileen McCann. Tom McNeill, Ben
Perkowski, Cassandra Poteat, Bill Rose, Bill Shaw, Lbbeth Levine, Bill Riedy, Susie Spear, Mike
Toole, DA. Trevor, Edith Wooten, Rebexah Wright, Advertising: Paula Brewer, manager, Mike
Tabor, coordinator, Terry Lee, representative. Business: Anne Sink, interim manager. SecretaryReception
ist: Kim Baker. Composition: UNC Printing and Duplicating Department. Printing: Hdxton Press,
Mkiane.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Haw River frolic
On a deadly rampage
The frightening news about AIDS is spreading throughout the United States, leav
ing in its wake confusion and almost irrational fear. The deadly disease, first
discovered two years ago, has already claimed the lives of 644 Americans. Because
many of the victims afflicted with the disease have been homosexuals, AIDS (Ac
quired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) has sparked much controversy over how the
disease is contracted and what can be done to prevent it.
The disease attacks victims by knocking out the immune system in a person's
body, thus leaving it defenseless against a host of available infections. Unfortu
nately, there is no cure yet for the mysterious disease. .
Most medical experts agree that AIDS can only be transmitted by intimate sexual
contact or blood transfusions. But exactly why the disease is most prevalent among
gays is not yet understood. Recently, despite the initial affiliation solely with
homosexuals, the disease has spread to other groups as well: Haitians, hemophiliacs,
and blood transfusion recipients. ;
One of the most disturbing factors about the AIDS crisis is that the public remains
shockingly misinformed about the disease. Health agencies have been besieged with
such questions as whether it is jeven safe to be in the presence Tf gays or to use the
same public facilities as gay people.
For some political and religious groups, the fervor has provided ample opportu
nity to intensify personal vendettas against the gay community and lifestyle. But on
the positive side, the media's interest in AIDS has won recognition of and new fund
ing for the fight against the epidemic.
What really counts is to provide as much accurate information as quickly as pos
sible to calm the growing national hysteria. Dr. Donald Armstrong, chief of infec
tious disease service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, insists that AIDS is
not exceptionally contagious. Let his word be heard.
To the editor:
The article "Challenging the Haw River"
JarHeeU June 23) by Les A. Harnashima did
an excellent job of describing both the attrac
tions and, the dangers of this exciting stretch of
Whitewater. He pointed out the need for check
ing the water level on the day of the trip.
Unfortunately, the guidelines he gave are
for the paddlers' gauge which can be found
painted on the southwest piling of the U.S. 64
bridge (the Pittsboro side). The telephone
numbers are for the federal gauge at Bynum.
This gauge measures feet of water above the
bedrock while the paddlers gauge has a 0 set
rather arbitrarily as the minimum water level
for a fun run.
To convert the federal numbers to the pad
dlers' gauge merely subtract 4.7. Thus, a read
ing of 6 feet on the federal gauge is 1.3 feet on
the paddlers' gauge; this is a fine level for the
upper section and too much for anyone but an
expert in an open boat on the lower.
The correct telephone number to obtain the
reading on the federal gauge is in Raleigh (860
1234). The reading is broadcast only between 9
and 11 a.m. The Durham number is presently
inoperative.
For a safe trip:
1. Check water level before putting in. A
heavy rain in Greensboro may cause high
water here the next day; 2. Always have at
. least two boats in the party; 3. Wear lifejack
ets. They are the best protection you have; 4.
Be prepared for cold water. Especially in the
spring and fall the water is often much colder
than the air; and hypothermia is the major
cause of fatality following a capsize.
The Haw River is a wonderful local re
source. Let's all enjoy it safely.
Elizabeth Fowler
Carolina Canoe Club
WXYC's 'anarchy'
To the editor: .
Re: WXYC's Ken Friedman. Get this guy
out of here! I mean who does he think he
is? Where does he get off on telling people
what's anarchistic and what's not? Who or
what is he Yassir Arafat? Che Guevara?
Fizz? The Anarchist- Cookbook?
The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language defines anarchy as "absence
of any cohering principle, as a common stan
dard or purpose."
"It's station policy that we shouldn't play
the same artist more than once in a givenset,"
Ken Friedman said. The fact that he follows
the rules implies that he conforms; that he
conforms means that he coheres to the stan
dard.' . . -:;
Therefore: non-anarchism; non-"rejection
of all forms of coercive control and authority"
(same page, same dictionary).
"Anarchy in the PM?" I dare say not. More
like "Harmonious Consignment."
Tori Clement
- Chapel Hill
Letters?
The Tar Heel welcomes letters to the
editor and contributions of columns for the
editorial page.
Such contributions should be typed, triple
spaced, on a 60-space line, and are subject
to editing. Contributions must be submitted
by noon each Monday.
Column writers should include their
majors and hometown; each letter should
include the writer's name, address and tele
phone number.
Sexual
evolution antics backfire
By MIKE LEONARD
According to popular myth, the sexual revolution started
sometime in the mid '60s with flower children, free-love and all
that rot, and has perpetuate'd itself through the '70s to the pres
ent. What has puzzled me4 all these years is the fact that I am
the product of a post-war baby boom a sexual era if ever
there was one while at the same time a partisan of the sexual
revolution.
If there was a revolution, it was obviously not in the" field of
sex. We are all hard-pressed to equal out parents' aptitude and
determination in that area. But rather, the revolution seems to
have been one involving our attitudes toward sex. We discov
ered (or at least thought we did) the hidden possibility that sex
could be fun, free, non-fertile, and best of all meaningless.
Hence the term, revolution. The old Bastille of sexualmatri
monial values was, in a manner of speaking, rammed.
Well, it was a popular revolution. Everybody got into it. A
lot of heads rolled. Much groundwork was laid, but unfortu
nately not much came from it. Nothing was born out of the
new attitudes and enticing ideas that spurt forth from those tu-.
multuous days of the '60s. The revolution reached its climax in
the '70s, a decade that will be remembered as the insidious and
mundane period of this century, and it left in its wake single
parents, palimony suits and genital herpesJ
We have been left with a legacy that most of us don't fully
appreciate the legacy of promiscuity. The greatest flaw in
the concept of sexual freedom that has ruled our society over
the past twenty years is that sexual freedom is needed. No one
in the '40s and '50s complained about excessive frustration, de
layed adolescence, prolonged adolescence, skipped puberty or
any other phenomenon that could possibly explain the advent
of sexual bverzealousness. Rather, the late '40s and '50s were
marked by the prosperity and increased opportunity which air
ways gets called progress. Americans started to get fat again.
Fat like Americans used to be in the '20s before the Depression
slimmed things down a bit. Yes, Americans are at their best
when there is a boom and there is plenty to be taken, had,
shared and wasted. The only thing that wasn't being passed
around like hot dogs and Cokes was sex. With the boom on
food, sex could not be far behind.
- But in the '60s there was suddenly this ideology, this religion,
that had as its basis the Vfreedom of love" which clouded the
simple truth that Americans were ready for some free sex. There
was this belief that love was a kind of universal braille, and all
that was needed was for everyone to touch one another. That
was so convenient because everyone was just aching to "read"
one another's bodies without the guilt their more pious parents
endured or the long binding ties of matrimony that were wel
comed because they could make good ole, get-down carnal fun
legal. -
Suddenly, fat Americans everywhere were filling their appe- '
tites gleefully while a war raged, a government grew more
threatening, and a world clamored not to blow itself up. There
was so much distraction and so much "live for today, for to
morrow we may be impotent", rhetoric" that at the time it all"
must have seemed OK. We were too busy gorging ourselves on
this new found freedom that we overlooked the fact that it
tended to strip the value and meaning from everything inti
mate. Blase and self-conscious, we Tetreatedto our bedrooms
and popped The Pill.
We are now entering into the era of the body. For ten years
we have been wallowing through the era of disco. The disco
and the singles bar, two of the most curious sexual devices
ever invented by a culture, have almost become obsolete. Their
great selling point was camouflage. Darkness punctuated by
strobing lights for the eyes. Flirtatious fashions for the body
and plenty of alcohol, cocaine, pot, amyl nitrate, gualudes,
etc., for the mind. We have been so filled with false percep-
tions from styrofoam breasts to chemical halucinations that
it's no wonder that we've started to look at our bodies and cry.
The problem is that while we strive to fix our ailing bodies
with whirlpools and nautilus machines, we leave our mental at-,
titudes back in a flabby, pre-1973 posture. The huge amount
of physical freedom allotted to the individual left him mentally
overloaded, too confused with all that rubbing and bumping '
to see if it was a thigh or a foot, or maybe a heart, that he was
touching. He has never gone back to find out. The legacy that
we have been passed is one of desensitivity. We have felt off so
much that we are no longer feeling. We have made the intimate
commonplace and promiscuity predictable. And that is not to
mention the genital diseases that we are just beginning to take
for granted.
I am afraid that the fitness phenomena is only one more epi
sode in the tale of the human peacock strutting its stuff now in
health spas nationwide. Every time I hear a talk show doctor
endorsing the health benefits of this new business, I can't help
seeing Victoria Principle bobbing in a whirlpool, looking as
sultry as possible while some drooling doctor monitors her vi
tal signs. She'll probably die of a stroke at fifty from all that
steaming. : v - -
We are basically a generation devoid of sexual spontaneity.
Everything we do with one another suffers from too much
scrutiny, too much attention to the nuances of sex appeal, too
much expectation and rigorously pre-conceived ideas. We are
not sexy or healthy or hot. We're self-conscious. We wear our
Calvin Klein's with the lines of apprehension gained from
years of passing mirrors. We have lost the kind of grace and
naturalness that is inherent in the human form. Of all of God's
animals, we are the only ones that actually worry about "get-,
ting lucky." ,
This is the summer beach season. You know, the time to shed
those extra pounds and get into that bathing suit that really
wows the boys or those trunks that make the women wish they
lived in the lining. Summer, beach music, boardwalks, skin
and sex. In my mind there's a couple of fourteen year olds ly
ing peacefully under the pier. Nice. Except he's flailing, plead
ing with his condom and she wishes she had a diaphragm.
. Mike Leonard is a senior Interdisciplinary Studies major
from Lexington.
14 The Tar Heel Thursday; July 7, 1983