Show walOWWPlimm5wnsti The Salt Lake Tribune COMMENTARY All Saturday September 24 1994 N Sometimes Readers Don't Get the Joke r huWriting a mor column requires wit and a knack Attempting to poke fun or treat an issue frivolously can backfire Words meant to show the lighter side of an issue can be misinterpreted or taken too seriously and the author no matter how good his or her intentions ends up being called an insensitive clod And that is what a handful of readers said about columnist Bill Hall after The Salt Lake Tribune published a column in which Hall explored the assertion that God tongue-in-chee- k Mondays In developing his examination of the assertion that he said was made by "one of the local religious redhots" Hall theorized the more padding on the posterior the more likely the person wearing it was deserving of punishment So far so good But then he noted: "The women in our family and almost all other families are still well padded in that location This tells us that men are more moral than women" Taking on the notion that the padding might be for some other purpose than spanking Hall pondered: "Perhaps it is God's way of recognizing that women are lazier than men and more in need of something to sit on" - That was more than a number of female readers were willing to handle In phone conversations with me they said the column was "offensive" and they called Hall a "sexist" They interpreted his 71Ar r t-- --4 John Cummins Reader Advocate Nature of the calls to the Reader Advocate phone through Thursday: Hall column 6 Gun description 6 Overboard 15 Miscellaneous 22 padded our behinds to be spanked Hail is editorial-pag- e editor of the Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune a Salt Lake Tribune group newspaper His column appears in The Salt Lake Tribune Sundays and PI - column as stating women were inferior to men I relayed the readers' concerns to Hall and he replied: "They took that column seriously?" I said some of the callers sounded dead serious to me Hall responded: "I was attempting to poke fun at the woman who went to the extreme of suggesting that God meant children to be spanked because he put padding on their behinds I have a higher regard for God than that Anyone who thinks seriously that I feel women are inferior to men has too much padding between his or her ears" When I attempted to relay k Hall's intentions and to subsea writing style quent critic of his column the response was something like: "Harrumph I'm amazed you print such sexist garbage You ought to pull him out of the patongue-in-chee- per" Sorry Bill There are days when the best intentions go astray DOD 000 In this column last week I explained the cause of the temporary absence of the comic strip "Overboard" which returned to the comic pages Monday It was with shock and dismay that I discovered at least 13 readers did not read that column At least that was the number of readers who left phone mail messages over the weekend requesting the strip's 000 Finally I owe an apology to colleague John Keahey Last week I said he had served a year and a half as The Tribune's business editor before requesting a return to business reporting Actually he labored at the helm of the Business section for three years The Reader Advocate's phone Write to the Reader Advocate The Salt Lake Tribune PO Box 867 Salt Lake City Utah 84110 number is 237-201- 5 he pouted in silence CHICAGO — Rubbing my eyes didn't help The incredible image was still on the TV There outside the Pentagon were the secretary of defense the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of AmeriStaff and other can military people A band played rousing anthems and troops wore formal uniforms big-tim- salute away in a And what was the occasion for so dramatic a display? What great national event was taking place? It seems that this fellow Aristide said to be a slightly unhinged Marxist had consented to come to the Pentagon to make a speech about President Clinton's policy on Haiti Assuming of course that Aria-tid-e understood Clinton's muddled policy or that the policy hadn't been switched in the past few minutes Until recently most Americans n Jean-Bertran- didn't know Jean-Bertran- stifit e There were cannons blasting 21-gu- Rmoiykkeo d d Aris- tide from Joe Glotz He was and is a bit player on the world stage the exiled president of a poor and dinky nation of little or no importance to the United States But there we were fawning over him and treating his appearance at the Pentagon as if it was a major event in international diplomacy How did the United States the most powerful nation on Earth get into this goofy bind? Because Aristide was in a snit switcharoo that over the dipsy-dClinton had pulled on him Instead of our troops roaring ashore and kicking out the evil military bosses of Haiti — as Clinton had vowed we would do — we were now almost pals with the evil o military bosses And our soldiers had been ordered to just mind their own business when the Haitian troops crushed the skulls of Haitian citizens including kids and that simple coconut vendor who was whacked to death Well you can't blame Aristide for being a bit out of sorts After all he had been told we were going to seize Haiti in order to kick out the military thugs and restore him to the presidency It was never clear to most Americans why we would take on that chore since there are more Haitians than enough who could rise up against their oppressors if they wanted to They aren't so inclined But we said we would do it and a promise is a promise However in a twinkling Clinton decided that all the brutal killers rapists cutthroats and thieves in the military junta should be given amnesty for all of their crimes And they should be permitted to remain in Haiti and in fact continue running the country until some time next month If running the country included thugs beating up on ordinary citizens so be it Our thousands of soldiers could just put their hands over their eyes if the cruelty bothered them Aristide was not thrilled by So Clinton's bizarre double-cros- s able-bodie- d and that prompted the White House to say something like this: "We can't have Aristide saying y we are jerks even though we are So let's butter him up give him an oil rub Invite him to the Pentagon Put on a big show Full dress uniforms brass band and a salute And put Aristide on CNN making a speech about the glories of democracy Yeah if that doesn't confuse the hell out of the viewing public nothing ever will" This will surely be recorded as one of the wackiest moments in our history We started out with the goal of kicking out the bad guys and sent a substantial army to do the job Then we decided that the bad guys weren't so bad after all and we'd let them keep running things for a while So our soldiers had to stand around helplessly while the bad guys ran amok And we don't even know what atrocities they were committing in the countryside where there were no TV cameras When the thugs were shown on American TV some yuppie in the White House said: "Oops that doesn't look good Tell some general to do something quick before the next presidential approval poll is taken" So the Pentagon sent word that we should bring in a few hundred military police to keep an eye on the Haitian thugs and make sure they don't do anything that will result in more distasteful TV video clips And the crowd that created this situation is going to give us universal health care? I'd rather take my chances with a veterinarian wishy-wash- First Ladies Speak Up After All These Years or Marilyn Quayle for that matter — on the issue — By Katherine Lanpher NEWS SERVICE KNIGHT-RIDDE- - Here's a news flash: Two wo- men found who disagree with their husbands Maybe you missed it Both Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan this month broke their ' public reticence on the abortion issue to announce that — gasp — they take different stances than their husbands on the issue In her recent book A Memoir Barbara Bush states flatly that she is Although she : against abortion as a form of birth 'control she believes the decision to have one should be left up to the individual "That's right and that comes as no surprise to George Bush" she told TV interviewer Barbara Walters earlier this month Actually it's no surprise to any of us who watched the politicking around the last Republican National Convention With a platform plank on abortion that belied the "big tent" image the GOP twanted to convey party officials were careful to spotlight Barbara who subtly hinted that she was far more tolerant than her husband pro-choic- - e And Tuesday night seated on a stage as part of a George Washington University course on first ladies Nancy Reagan told students: "I don't believe in abortion On the other hand I believe in a woman's choice That puts me somewhere in the middle but I don't know what to call that" That's OK Nancy The rest of us know what to call that: political speak After all a mere decade ago Nancy was nowhere near the middle After a magazine report said she considered abortion an option for pregnant rape victims she denied she had ever said there were circumstances under which a woman could have an abortion What Barbara and Nancy have been saying lately has drawn predictable criticism from advocates on both sides of the abortion issue But such criticism misses the point: What Barbara and Nancy have to say about abortion tells about the wages of poyou litical kpousehood than it does anything else You're supposed to shut up me We like the wives of candidates to be quiet wear pearls and look adoringly at their husbands Anything else makes the American electorate nervous Just ask Hi AD FOR n MY NEXT M etle5T 11141°11171111111"r II 4 u t!! n sty' Katherine Lanpher is a tohlmnist for the St Paul Pioneer Press N14j mwmmEmOmiViMoMI 14 Oat - $11W- 19 161110 I thy' I r — adtf gk-L- w n Cleii1 Pteetel- - mu ewe A Picture Doesn't Always Tell the Story CHICAGO TRIBUNE SERVICE WASHINGTON — The beaten face of the coconut vendor haunts us still We saw him first on the Tuesday night TV news then again on the front page of the Wednesday paper refer to the Haitian lying on curb clubbed the to death by Gen Cedras' police as American troops stood by For many Americans the picture will be enough Like the young Viet Cong being summarily executed by pistol during the 1968 Tet offensive this scene from Haiti will forever constitute the icon of a policy gone wrong It will say all that needs saying about President Clinton's llthhour deal with Gen Cedras It will be proof enough that the US armada should have rejected parley smashed ashore at this Monday morning captured Cedilla: disarmed his forces and restored President Aristide to office But true as the picture was to the reality on the streets of Haiti last Monday the picture of that dead coconut vendor is also a lie It conceals as much as it reveals It argues by its starkness that a different US policy might have avoided violence altogether Had Clinton not sent President Carter Gen Powell and Sen Nunn to it screams had he not ratified their of Chris nfol Matthews Port-au-Prin- fer to Cedras the restoration of Haitian democracy would have come cleanly marked by military and moral precision I don't think so Had there been a night drop of US paratroopers a night takeoff of our helicopters from the carrier decks in Monday's early morning hours we could have expected casualties long before contact with the enemy Had US forces stormed the presidential palace chased down Cedras attacking his bodyguard and other armed loyalists how many other casualties might there have been by daybreak? No When I look at the picture of the coconut vendor lying dead I in Wednesday's newspaper can't help but imagine what those same newspaper editions could have contained otherwise: the entire top of the page stacked with the faces of young American boys killed in combat or friendly fire or when two helicopter blades happened to cross I can imagine an added horror: waking to the dread news that the Port-au-Prin- Port-au-Prin- face-savin- g US Army had gunned down proAristide rioters bent on looting and "necklacing" those who had backed the toppled Cedras Or how about this? A picture of the US Army standing by while this happened I am not ready to say therefore that a picture is worth a thousand words Sometimes a picture requires a thousand-worcaption to say what it fails to show Remember the bombings that accompanied South Africa's first-evdemocratic elections this April? d er Many of the TV producers thought the bombings not the election were the hot story of what was happening in South Africa They were obsessed with the pictures being broadcast back to America of the rubble and blown-apacars in downtown Johannesburg But the pictures were not the story The story was the transition of South Africa to democracy the tens of millions of people who were getting for the first time in their historya role in their government The bombings by the few white holdouts was the sidert bar The same was true in this week The picture of the dead coconut vendor should be viewed not in sorrowful solitude but as evidence of the far larger horror that was avoided Port-au-Princ- e PP2Tcl '111:÷116:::— ptrol— lim: ileall A Ar-- did:on - 12-Pa- ck I ---: I-4 l " - ' fi 1701)e7b vA IA V I -- ) d I IT - 11:ir:: — 1 ' 21 al 1 1 1 Ell Ls t - a variety of flavors - 'iost4:61110 10 it : AIL 16 Irlo ifi27 4 10 sy10040 sv to A $ 2 Sept 0 24th-30t- h ONLY 'CFI OF DIMES FIAUITTED MOUSE PR igi in z - lb4 ! ! - 12-o- I ly i 4 Products Pepsi cans TFIE ill I Reagan perfected the gaze so it's no surprise she held her tongue all these years And Barbara Bush kept her lip buttoned until it was politically expedient to let others know there was dissent in the Bush household on abortion If she's talking freely now don't forget she is pushing a new book I don't know but now that the two of them have waited so long to speak I find that for once in my life I agree with something Phyllis Schlafly said Trust me this is a new experience Schlafly the founder of the Republican National Coalition for Life was brief when reporters presented her with Barbara's and Nancy's newfound candor Said Sell !ally "I don't think anybody particularly cares what they stand-by-your-ma- 91 meNtlit1114(MK 1146 NETWORKS BEAT US 1461161 in- cluding reviews of some of the musical groups appearing in clubs Other entertainment-relate- d stories are also offered The section will also include random reviews of restaurants and other eating establishments a feature that often has been requested by readers In this case the reviewers are anonymous so restaurants will not know when they are being reviewed Readers pondering where to go what to eat and what to see should find the new section helpful as well as fun to read All This Over a Bit Player Like Aristide? CHICAGO TRIBUNE SERVICE - A new section "Night Out" made its debut in The Tribune Thursday The weekly section will feature trtab's growing night life industry and take a look at restau- rant bar and club activities 's 772:(1711pa""ms- Exclusive family pass available with proof of purchase of a and Doritos Pepsi 12-pa- ck 4 1 1 9 oz or larger PEPSI DoTtos ETiocoopE2cio The Store For You-r- m OFFER GOOD AT THESE LOCATIONS: g f 5959 S State 9000 S 1553 3500 S 4850 2100 S 1300 W W E 4 9400 S 2165 E 5800 S 500 W Redwoo$11d 1 0 |