The Blue Banner
February 23, 1995
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The Blue
Banner
The student newspaper of the
University of North Carolina
at Asheville
Editorial Board
Lizzy Pressley
Teri Smith
Kristi Hamby
Erin Kelly
Lat Ray
Kim Sluder
Editor-in-Chief
News Editor
Features Editor
Sports Editor
Photo Editor
Copy Editor
Staff
Kelly Cole, Greg Deal, Emily Guidry, Todd Hagans, Christin
Hall, Christy King, Andrea Lawson, Jeremy Letterman, Tanya
Melton, Kara Merz, Jack Newton, William Rothschild, Chris
Small, Chris Smith, Brandon Treadway, Wendi Wolfe
Holly Beveridge
Alice Hui
Loren Stewart
Advertising
Business Manager
Circulation
Mark West, faculty advisor
Weather report provided by UNCA Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Editorial
The Children Must Be Protected
t
Trends have been a part of American society for centuries. Today,
we find a new trend that is quite different from that of bell-bottomed
jeans or nose rings. The latest trend is killing one's own children for
the sake of convenience, and it is sweeping through this country. It
must be stopped.
Most people would agree that killing one's children is the most vile
form of human action that could be imagined. There are people who
plea insanity or believe that an abusive past excuses a horrible crime
such as killing one's own child. This may be true, but, on the other
hand, how much is our society to blame?
Susan Smith is considered by many to be the most recent person
to bring this issue to the national forefront. Since her arrest, and
especially in the last week, several other cases of parents killing their
children have taken place that go beyond the darkest thoughts of
most Americans.
Take, for instance, the case of the woman who tossed her two
children from a bridge. Or, how about the man wrho shot and
burned his children in eastern North Carolina?
Our children are the most innocent, precious resources we have in
this world today. Protection of these resources is essential if we are
to continue living and growing in this world.
The Blue Banner is the student newspaper of the University
of North Carolina at Asheville.
We publish each Thursday except during summer sessions,
final exam weeks and holiday breaks. Our offices are
located in Carmichael Hall, room 208-A.
Our telephone numbers are (704) 251 -6586 and 251 -
6591. Our campus e-mail address is UNCAVX::BANNER.
Nothing in our editorial or opinions sections necessarily
reflects the opinion of the entire Blue Banner editorial
board, the faculty advisor, or the university faculty, adminis
tration or staff.
Unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of a majority of the
Blue Banner editorial board.
Letters, columns, cartoons and reviews represent only the
opinions of their respective authors.
The Blue Banner welcomes submissions of letters and
articles for publication.
All submissions are subject to editing and are considered
on the basis of interest, space, taste and timeliness.
Letters must be typed, double spaced, and must not exceed
300 words. Letters for publication must also contain tfie
author's signature, classification, major or other relationship
with UNCA.
THE PHILISTINE CONNECTION
David D. Marshall
Columnist
Republicans wish you to be
lieve their push to destroy the
National Endowments for the
Arts and Humanities and the
Corporation for Public Broad
casting is about slimming down
government, about cutting costs
and saving money. Don’t be
lieve it for a second. As Michael
Isikoff points out in a recent
Newsweek article, “Nobody pre
tends [to believe] that eliminat
ing the NEA, NEH, and CPB
will save much money; together
they are costing $630 million
this year, barely a blip in a $1.5
trillion budget.”
This political crusade against
the arts and the humanities and
against public television and ra
dio marks yet another battle in
the culture wars being waged in
America today. And, as in all
wars, the innocent fall victims to
the slaughter.
Led by Newt Gingrich, the new
Republican Congress will at
tempt to terminate the country’s
last symbols of our intellectual
and artistic spirit. By success
fully eliminating these three agen
cies, Congress will perpetuate the
growing belief among Americans
that the arts constitute an unnec
essary or dispensable part of our
lives. Such is the power of the
legislature to determine our cul
tural identity. Sadly, our philis
tine representatives in Congress
possess no concept of what that
kind of message can do to the
morale, not to mention the heart
and soul, of a nation.
In their haste to shut down the
“blasphemous and obscene
voices” exhaustively represented
by Robert Mapplethorpe’s ad
mittedly distasteful photographs
and, more recently, the perfor
mance art of Ron Athey, detrac
tors of the NEA are violating the
spirit of an open and free society.
Some years ago, a Supreme
Court justice elegantly opined
that the First Amendment par
ticularly protects offensive
speech, because there exists no
need to protect the other kind.
Gingrich argues that although
freedom of speech is reserved for
individuals, there exists no need
for art that offends to be subsi
dized by taxpayers’money. Some
advocates of the arts would con
tend, however, that if freedom of
speech is a good enough virtue
unsubsidized, then it takes on a
more credible existence as a na
tional belief in its subsidized
form. A subsidy has a legitimiz
ing effect; by subsidizing art as a
model for freedom of speech, we
recognize the national values in
herent in the Bill of Rights. To
uphold those rights in a gesture
of subsidy says much more about
this country’s idealogical strength
than any rhetoric or symbol ever
could.
A single B-1 bomber costs more
than the total budget of these
three agencies. Money for 10
more B-1 bombers has been re
cently earmarked by Congress.
What does this say about our
national priorities?
The critics of federal funding
for the arts and humanities miss
the point on some key issues. As
Ms. Alexander, chairwoman of
the NEA, stated in an interview,
“The Federal role is small but
very vital. We are a stimulus for
leveraging state, local and pri
vate money. We are a linchpin
for the puzzle of arts funding, a
remarkably efficient way of
stimulating private money.” Ms.
Alexander was intimating a pro
cess whereby a partnership is
formed between the public and
private sector. For every dollar
spent by the NEA an additional
$ 11 is generated for the arts from
other sources. The arts-sponsor-
ing infrastructure relies on NEA
fiinds for this public-private part
nership to occur. Although de-
fiinding the NEA would result
in a taxpayer “savings” of $ 167.4
million dollars a year, the end
result is an actual loss of over
$L5 billion for the arts. Similar
fimding structures exist in the
NEH and CPB.
I am angry for having fallen for
the “Contract with America”
rhetoric. I seeth at the preten
tious “common man” persona
Newt Gingrich and his co-con
spirators affect in order to garner
class resentment when they de
scribe PBS as a “sandbox for
elites,” a plaything for “rich, up
per-class people” who produce
“biased television.” If “Arts &
Entertainment is not up here
lobbying” for government hand
outs, Gingrich complains, why
should PBS? Robert Wright
points out in The New Republic
that on a given day the schedule
for A&E included “Columbo,”
“Rockford Files,” “Lou Grant,”
and “Law and Order.” In a
moment of what can only be
characterized as impressive jour
nalistic restraint Wright fails to
mention those ubiquitous, mind-
eroding commercials so much
an imprimatur of private televi
sion.
Newt Gingrich and company
would like us to buy in to the lie
that the arts and humanities will
flourish in the hands of the pri
vate sector-^that what’s good for
a Chrysler advertisement on
“privatized” public television is
good for America; that a dose of
good old American philistinism
will cure our national fiscal woes;
and that they, and only they,
have the power and the enlight
enment to unilaterally determine
our national cultural identity.
You have to admire their consis
tency, though. No matter what
the subject, it’s always politics as
usual for these bold visionaries.
"The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing
opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things
that other people think about us."
Quentin Crisp
The Ultimate Burble
Erin Ryan
Columnist
ESSAYQUESTION: Discourse
freely upon the topic of pencil
lead.
(tick tick tick)
(sweat sweat)
“You will have 40 minutes to
complete this essay. Begin.”
(Oh, my God! PENCIL LEAD!?
That’s theonlyonel didn’tstudy
for!)
(scribble scribble tick tick
scribble)
(What are they writing? If only I
could see ... oh, come on. Think
now)
Pencil lead has, across the centu
ries, been one of the most impor
tant
(important... imf>ortant.... im
portant what?)
resources
(tick tick tick)
in our history.
( augh! No it hasn’t!)
(Shuffle shuffle cough squeak)
(Er ... OK, I’ve got it now.)
Throughout the 19th century
and the centuries beyond
(oh, wait)
The 19th and 20th
(no no no)
The past 200 years have been a
period of
(oh, I don’t know. Forget it.)
(tick tick)
(Well... it says discourse freely. I
wonder how freely. Freely.
Maybe I could do free-verse.)
Pencil lead, o pencil lead
Thy sharpened tip
Is black as
(Black as what that rhymes with
lead. Black Black Black)
lead.
(No!!! That doesn’t rhyme. I al
ready said lead. Besides, then it
wouldn’t be free-verse. Hey -
said ... lead ... hm. I may have
something)
“Hello, my dear,” I said.
“Today you look like lead.
“You should have stayed in bed
“For now you shall be
(sweat sweat I’m
hyperventilating)
dead.”
(Oh, this is so stupid. Oh, God,
I’m running out of time. Okay.
Okay. Calm down. I’ll make an
outline, that’s what I’ll do.)
Pencil Lead
I. Origin of Pencils
A. Lead sources
B. Erasers
1. rubber plants
2. elasticity
II. Uses of Lead
A. artists
III.-
(-Oh wait, you can’t have an A
without a B. Oh what am I going
to do? There’s only 15 more min
utes ...)
(Light Bulb)
(Hey! Yeah!)
Pencil lead has played an im
portant part in U.S. history,
though its role is often pushed to
the sidelines of our history books.
(I am just on a roll)
Pencils have been an invaluable
asset to the authors of important
documents; for example, what
would Thomas Jefferson have
done if he had gone to write the
Declaration of Independence...
and not been able to find his
trusty pencil?
(Actually that doesn’t sound
right. What about the quill as-:
pect? Oh, who cares.)
So, we could, in fact, say that
pencils were directly responsible:
for the formation of the United;
States of America!
(I am so brilliant. I stun myself
sometimes.)