North Carolina Newspapers

12The Daily Tar Heel Thursday, October 22, 1987 latin Star ilteel ; : 95fi jir o editorial freedom When the safety , A woman walks alone at night, her hands clenched in her pockets. The board opinion street is dark. Every man she encounters is a poten tial rapist. She moves quickly toward her apartment, relieved when she sees her neighbor, also on his way home. : .Yet statistics show that the home is not a haven from violent crime, and ;that acquaintance does not guarantee safety. : For 1983 and 1984, more of the reported rapes in North Carolina locCurred in the victim's home than any other location. For the same period, :the.victim knew her assailant in almost 57. percent of the cases. Last week, two UNC students were charged with raping another student in: their Cameron Avenue fraternity ;house this summer. : "Although it is too early to presume iguilt on the part of the 20-year-old arrestees, the incident forces the "community to face an extremely unpleasant reality. It is shocking that Strike in gulf is : It is unfair to liken the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Gene Upshaw in any way, yet the parallel of ignor ance looms strongly. Upshaw, the executive director of the National Football League Players Union, was an impressive football player intense, perceptive, hard-hitting. Off the field, he has led the strike that shattered whatever strength his union once had. : Upshaw is a dedicated leader, and the- issues he is fighting for are worthwhile. But he simply did not foresee the awesome power that the owners and their money could wield against him. And he was ambushed by power threats that he could not back up. But worst of all, he failed in persuading the American people. These were fatal mistakes. J homeini is a more sinister char acter. He has been at the heart of many ojf America's foreign policy ills for the piast decade. From embassy hostages t6 Persian Gulf mines, he has tor rnfifrted American leaders. ! With the U.S. strike Monday on three Iranian off-shore oil platforms, the. stakes are up. And Khomeini should take a good look at Upshaw's ujnion to see what may be Iran's fate, j Iran has been trying to present the image that America's presence in the gulf has been escalating. It is playing oCn fears that America is slipping into another Vietnam War. But war with the United States is the last thing that Iran wants. non sequitur Carried along by a y You're not the kind of writer who likes to be writing about redheads. No, no, no. jfoor beginning. Start over. You're not the kind of guy who feels Jomfortable in large crowds. They strangle . rjou, they depersonalize you. Make you feel hunted down, like a fox being chased by 4he hounds, breathing hard, searching for freedom. Interesting image. Pare the language, though. It's too vivid, not sterile enough. SCs better than the first paragraph, but .minimalism is what's now. So leave things .more open. State, but don't explain. The JSreader will think you're deep instead of just I You're not the kind of guy who feels "Comfortable in large crowds. Good. That's all you need. No description, no self : examination. Just the facts, ma'am. Not . ".even an iceberg lurking beneath the surface. 'f ust the surface. j You're not the kind of guy who likes rwriting about emotional ciphers or about 'riding in convertibles along the Los Angeles '-highway. You're not the kind of guy who sees drug abuse and meaningless sex as 4 anything more than mere pastimes. You don't find them interesting novelistic ingredients, but you use them anyway, because you want money. Too honest. Narrators should be aware of themselves, but not aware of their own pettiness. At least not if they live in Los Jill Gerber, Eior DEIRDRE FALLON, Managing Editor SALLY PEARSALL, Editor JEAN LUTES, University Editor DONNA LEINWAND, State and National Editor JEANNIE FARIS, City Editor JAMES SUROWIECKI, Sports Editor FEUSA NEUR1NGER, Business Editor JULIE BRASWELL, Features Editor Elizabeth Ellen, Am Editor Charlotte Cannon, Photography Editor CATHY McHUGH, Omnibus Editor of home erodes the student eating popcorn in the Pit today could be the perpetrator of the most detestable of violent crimes tonight. But the idea is not farfetched. Of the rapes in North Carolina for 1983 84, more offenders were between the ages of 16 to 20 and 21 to 25 than any other two age groups combined. Nationwide, 45 percent of those arrested for rape in 1986 were under age 25. Forcible rape happens more often in the South than any other region, and occurs most frequently in August and on Saturday. The UNC fraternity incident reportedly took place on Saturday, Aug. 20. It will be months before a verdict is handed down on the case. Even if the students eventually are found innocent, the arrests should remind every woman on campus that this crime is a very real possibility. If the statistics tell the truth, a picturesque college town such as Chapel Hill is no more immune to rape than Chicago or Detroit. no game It does not have the military power to stand against the United States. Nor does it even have the might to resist less than a war. America has the ultimate power of closing the gulf to Iranian exports, a move that would cripple the oil-producing nation. Iran is correct that the U.S. presence is escalating in the gulf. Yet Monday's bombing is an example of America coherently assessing what its role should be. The Reagan administration carefully chose a target that sends a simple message: The United States has restrained itself this time, but next time, retaliation will be harsh. As a superpower, the United States cannot stand by as its merchant ships become victims of Iranian Silkworm missiles especially when these ships are struck in such geo-politically vital waters. On Tuesday, the Senate recognized this responsibility and voted 92-1 in favor of the retaliatory strike. General polls are already showing the public's support. America does not want war. Iran does not want war. But when one side acts out of ignorance about what the other might do, when one side under estimates the resolve of power to maintain power, when one side, in the end, does not have the strength to resist: Beware, what nobody wants may come. Both sides lose. But one loses worse. Ask Gene Upshaw. Jon Rust stream of thought Angeles, and only at the end of the book if they live in New York. You're the kind of guy who indulges himself on the page, who likes the chance to write about whatever he feels like writing about. You're the kind of guy who reads Salinger and then puts his stories on a pedestal, who likes the way he weaves the Glass family through all his work. You believe your book to be your generation's "Catcher in the Rye." Identity confusion in this last paragraph. Who are you? Are you the narrator of this piece, or are you the author? Separate the two, because fiction depends on them being different. You're the kind of guy who wants to get out right now, wants to find someplace to hide and read and write, without things pressing upon you. You're the kind of guy who carries around a dream of home, knowing it's an illusion but still believing in it. You're not the kind of guy who reads newspapers. This is getting tired. Go someplace with it. Give it some direction. You're the kind of guy who has a picture of a girl who looks like Jessica Lange in your mind, and you think someday youH meet her. You're a writer, or at least that's what you call yourself, and your life has become one long story from which you take pieces to put on the page. Better. So where do you go from here? The stocks TTt was late Saturday night on one of those pretty Rosemary Street porches. 11 The air was brisk but bearable, thanks to an invigorating Spanish wine. The company was varied: Canadian, German, Norwegian. Even an American. And the mood was very good. But then the talk turned to the economy. Friday's teaser of a crash was on everyone's mind, and the concern was soon apparent, especially that of our eldest friend, who, only two generations ago, grew up during Ger many's depression. Everyone had an idea of how to prevent another Great Depression. But although none of us doubted that a depression or something like it was on its way, none of us (or even Milton Friedman, had he been there) would have thought that a single day 500 point-plus plunge of the Dow Jones average was credible, let alone imminent. Now it has happened, and much worse things are to come, sending a few people flying out of Wall Street windows and cutting losses with razors, literally. Yet only last week Washington's Republican prop agandists were beaming with news of the nation completing its 59th straight month of economic growth, the lowest unemploy ment rate in almost a decade, a steady inflation rate, a more stable dollar and even a budget deficit finally under control. What went wrong? Answers will be upon us soon enough. Oct. 19, 1987, is to many a Ph.D seeker the equivalent of a gold mine. But I have the suspicion that a Bedouin or an Eskimo who has never watched Dan Rather or read The Wall Street Journal would, given a few numbers regarding to this country's financial state and economic performance of the past eight years, look you straight in the face and say, "What did you expect, wise guy, the moon, the stars and eternal Morality is necessary evil To the editor. Pierre Tristam ("The cruel battleground of abortion," Oct. 15) does not seem to know just how he feels about abortion. Indeed, abortion is not some thing anyone wants to whole heartedly support it is much more pluralistic to say simply that, although abortion is the taking of a life, no one has the right to moralize about such an action. So instead, Tristam suggests that what is needed to stop the tragedy of abortion is not morality, but education! Ah, yes, education the humanist's answer for all of society's ills. Don't misunder stand. I am all for sex educa tion; I'm just not so sure that the kind of sex education children would receive in school would really help the problem. More likely, it would only serve to make the problem of teen pregnancy and abortion more complex. In public schools these days, students are learning to clarify their values. These schools, which do not allow for group prayer or any other public acknowledgments of God, are left with the arduous task of trying to teach children mor ality. But since we live in such a tolerant society, schools are forced to teach a kind of morality which basically says that nothing is right or wrong; one only needs to clarify one's values to discover what is moral in different situations. Since there are no wrong values or beliefs (except for believing in Checks and I harbor no illusions in continuing my quest for the Supreme Court nomi nation," Judge Robert Bork said last week. His 53 opponents in the Senate (a clear majority) may find this a bit uncanny. After more than three weeks of unprece dented judicial committee scrutiny involv ing 100 testimonies from both sides of the fence, Bork's fate has clouded. As Repub licans and Democrats fall in line to unofficially oppose Bork's nomination, President Reagen pounds his fists, deter mined to push his Supreme Court nominee through the Senate. Bork and Reagan want to go down fighting an honorable notion and it appears that Bork will go down, but as he descends a reaffirmation of an American political tenet comes to light. Checks and balances is not dead! Granted, our legislative branch often has the upper hand on the executive (post cloture filibustering and treaty radifica tion), but in the case of Bork, it is an upper hand that need not offer any apologies. Bork has been accused of being a bigot, a chauvinist and a strict adherent to the original intent of the Constitution's drafters an intent neither he nor anyone can ever hope to understand fully. But a man cannot be judged by his enemies alone. Supporters like Sen. Robert Dole and columnist George Will proffer Bork as a judicial intellect. Indeed he, to the surprise of the Reagan administration, shrewdly answered every question asked of him. It was a far cry from his prede- Readers' Foirumm came tmmbliiis down Pierre Tristram Post Impressions bliss?" He would also suggest this country's economic planners learn a little arithmetic. " He would probably not be sorry for us, or the difficult years we are about to live through, either. The economic downfall we have brought upon ourselves and, however the desperate optimism of major market losers see it, payments are due before recovery returns is somehow well-deserved, like the punishment for a mistake that with comparatively little sacrifice could have been avoided. And the current downfall could have been avoided. Exactly four years ago, writing on the heel of the recession of the early 'SOs, economist Robert Heilbroner in The New Yorker cautioned, "There is a suspicion that the (economic) climate is changing as it has not changed since the traumatic period of the Great Depression a half century ago. As the stock climbs and the economy slowly regains lost ground, economists, like everyone else, tend to put everything behind them. But the larger problems are there and will not go away, even in months of sunshine. In the long run, our economic prospects depend very considerably on how we take the measure of the heating up, or cooling down, of the economic planet, and what we determine that we can do about it." There were 59 months of sunshine, we now know, and 59 months of doing nothing about a changing economic climate where the calm, like the eye of the storm, proved to be a pretty illusion. "This is, quite simply, the dirty little secret of Reaganomics," writes economist Peter Peterson in this month's Atlantic. "In every previous decade we consumed iftjM DIFFERENT. ittJQJSL iye been ngirtr i losing . ;C4gSj 4 7 ' LOYAL AND HEARTY is right or wrong and to give them some direction in their lives. But our public school system is spineless. It won't give them the direction they need. What about parents? Do they not have the ultimate right to decide what their own child ren are going to be taught? The humanists of today say no. They believe, in all of their open-mindedness, that parents will try to force some oppres sive religious belief on their children. The humanists' mes sage is that morality makes you miserable, while they blindly close their eyes to the fact that it is immorality, which brings with it teen pregnancies, abor tion and the like, that makes people miserable and many times ends in tragedy, like that of the young woman Tristam an absolute standard of right and wrong for all people), anything goes! It was that kind of mentality that created the problem of one million teen pregnancies a year to begin with. The issues of sex and mor ality cannot be separated. Your idea of morality will determine your sexual conduct. If you believe that there is no standard of right and wrong, your sexual conduct will be a reflection of that belief. Simply educating children and teens about con traception will not halt the skyrocketing teen pregnancy rate. Most girls already know what the pill is before entering junior high. Kids are not look ing for a way to avoid preg nancy, per se. They are looking for someone to tell them what balances stop Dan Morrison Guest Writer cessors, who felt no obligation to state where they stood on major issues during confirmation hearings. By fully responding to the judicial committee, Bork set a precedent for future Supreme Court nominees. No longer will an "I don't wish to answer that question, sir" suffice. But Bork is too conservative for his own good. He is the Jesse Helms of the judiciary, alienating would-be supporters by his vacillating rhetoric and by his threat to the freedom of speech and judicial restraint. Hence, potential supporters such as Republican Sen. Arlen Specter are forced to shrug and ask, "Where will Bork come down on a major vote?" People change as they mature; it's human, and Bork is no exception. So why not give him the benefit of the doubt? One might argue Supreme Court justices are expected to be of a higher order than the rest of us. They are to be the epitome of impartiality, influenced by past precedent rather than personal prerogatives. They often fall short of these high expectations, but the expectations are there, nonetheless. What scares people about Bork are his eccentric stances on freedom of speech and the rights of women and minorities. If approved, he would ideally preside until slightly less than 90 percent of our increase in production; since the beginning of the 1980s we have consumed 325 percent of it, the extra 235 percent being reflected in an unprecedented increase in per-worker debt abroad and a decline in per-worker investment at home. This is how we have managed to create a make-believe 1960s, adecade of 'feeling good' and 'having it all,' without the bother of producing a real one. We are about to wake up from that proverbial American Dream which for the last few years had indeed relinquished reality at the hands of a president approp riately famous for his sleeping habits. "There is nothing wrong with this econ omy," he could even say with a broad smile within hours of Monday's crash. It was eerily reminiscent of President Herbert Hoover attending a World Series game in Philadelphia days after the crash of 1929 "to make an example of his own serenity." Monday's crash does not necessarily mean depression. Since 1929, the economy has developed a multiplicity of safeguards rendering such an economic debacle almost impossible. But whatever the cost of the last production-less years may be, the paybacks are bound to be heavy, and in a country unused to periods of such austerity, the experience we are about to face is more likely to be painful than not. The crash is a strident warning sign. Let us only hope, as The Wall Street Journal put it in its sobering editorial Tuesday, that "the future is not in the hands of markets, but in our own," and that ours will be hands at least temporarily wearied of the greed that once made this country great, but may doom its future. Pierre Tristam is a graduate in history from Carrboro. mentioned who died from a self-imposed abortion. KELLEY HUGHES Junior Philosophy Letters policy B When submitting letters or columns, students should include the following: name, year in school, major, phone number and the date submitted. Other members of the University community should give similar information. b All letters must be typed, double-spaced on a 60-space line, for ease of editing. A maximum of 250 words is optimal. Bork's bid his death, plaguing the court with far right beliefs like, "there is no constitutional right to privacy" and "the First Amendment protects mainstream political speech, but does not extend to subversive or obscene protests." Better watch what you say about the United States! However, being in the hotseat, Bork looked eood compared to the blemished political facades of Sens. Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden. Kennedy lost his credibility years ago and Biden's character has only recently been shredded, but the Jack of integrity of these two men was disconso lately brought to the judiciary committee, rendering its decisions trivial. j The decision stands, though: 9-5 against Bork as he confronts an unhospitable Senate this week. It's a shame a gentleman of Bork's caliber was forced to bow before ignobles like Kennedy and Biden, and' it's a shame that Bork must be used as a political pigeon by the Democrats to strike at the Republicans. But it's also a shame that he cannot formulate his beliefs into a more moderate and less threatening stance. What is not shameful, however, is that as the founding fathers intended, checks and balances does work. Dan Morrison is a junior American Studies major from Clemmons.