Thursday, October 3, 1996
Where
by Joneatra Henry
Collegian staff
Last week, the Multi-Cultural Council
held its tenth annual Harambee dinner. 1
ant proud to see that Bchrend has
celebrated diversity continuously
throughout my years here.
Each year, the crowd at Harambee has
become more diverse.
Harambee is an African tradition, but
the guests at the dinner were of different
ethnicities.
The center pieces on the table held
different flags, representing all
nationalities, stressing the "pulling
together" at Behrend. Students sat at
tables with community members as well
as faculty and staff.
I read a poem which I feel anyone
interested in achieving diversity should
read:
The White House response to
“Primary Colors,” in contrast to the
media uproar, was startlingly
relaxed. President Clinton himself
joked that the authorship was the first
secret that had been kept in
Washington. George
Stephanopolous and other aides
commented on the book’s “creepy”
and “eerie” accuracy.
What Dole left out
by Kevin Schoolcraft
Collegian staff
The Republican and Democratic
conventions have historically been a way
for the nominated candidates to present
what their party stands for in what is
called the party platform.
However, this year there was a little
twist in the Republican convention held in
San Diego, California. The Republican
candidate. Bob Dole, left out a very
important part of the convention, the
"party's platform."
This had loyal Republicans like myself
appalled and discouraged: How could Bob
Dole just abandon the party platform, the
most important issues that solidify
support from his own party?
I think John Rossomando (a Behrend
student who critically analyzed the
Republican convention from San Diego)
said it best even though his views were
narrow.
Rossomando wrote, "Everyone was
more interested in electing Bob Dole and
Jack Kemp than fighting over minor
issues like abortion" (Behrend Collegian,
Thurs., Sept 12, 1996, p. 7).
This statement said it all. There was
not a word spoken at the Republican
convention about "major" issues like
abortion, crime, or the economy. This
was an embarrassment to the entire
Republican party and should not go
the rainbow ends
Where the Rainbow Ends
by Richard Rive
Where the rainbow ends
There's going to be a place, brother,
Where the world can sing all sorts of
songs, together, brother.
You and I, though you're white and I'm
It's going to be a sad song, brother,
Because we don't know the tune,
And it's a difficult tune to learn.
But we can learn it, brother, you and I.
There's no such tune as a black tune.
There's no such tune as a white tune.
There’s only music, brother,
And it's music we're going to sing
Where the rainbow ends.
At the end of the rainbow, there is a
place where all races will live in harmony.
Although we are all different and speak
Yet the portrait of Clinton in the
book is scabrous. It depicts a
demagogue with gargantuan ap
petites for political power, food and
women who in fact tries to have
sex with just about anything that
moves. In politics he is crooked and
deceptive, cruel if need be.
The scabrous portrait of Clinton in
“Primary Colors” is consistent with
As far as Rossomondo declaring
abortion to be a minor issue in the United
States, this too should not go
unrecognized.
This view, although defended by his
own right to freedom of speech, cannot be
farther from the truth. We already know
that more abortion protesters have been
arrested than the entire civil rights
movement
This issue that has affected each and
everyone of our lives as Americans cannot
be even remotely considered as a minor
issue.
Bob Dole and Rossomondo may have
their own right to express their views.
However, if more and more Republicans
start to adopt these views, I may just find
myself employing another political party.
different languages, we will be able to
communicate with and understand each
other in this place.
It will not matter what race one is
because the song will not be difficult to
learn. No one race will have an advantage,
and we will all learn the verses along the
way.
Discrimination will blow away in the
wind, and racism will fade into the clouds.
Tolerance will storm down and spread
throughout each culture, and after the
storm, a beautiful rainbow will appear.
In this place, black will no longer be
negative, nor will white be positive; the
only colors are the colors of the rainbow
singing one harmonious tune where the
rainbow ends.
With celebrations such as Harambee,
Behrend has the opportunity to be a place
where the rainbow ends.
what emerges in the dozen or so al
legedly nonfiction books that have
appeared, as well as in the testimony
of the almost forgotten Arkansas
state troopers.
No such White House indifference
met Gary Aldrich’s “Unlimited Ac
cess,” which purports to be a first
hand account of disorderly White
House behavior during Aldrich’s
two-year stint as a security man.
The White House counterattack to
“Unlimited Access” was instant and
effective. The White House received
key help when it was revealed that
one claim in the book was hearsay
and gossip that Clinton sneaked
out of the White House for midnight
hotel trysts. But that is not the entire
book.
Clinton spokesman Mike McCurry
recently was obliged to apologize for
his offhand remark that he himself
had once used marijuana. The
remark was clearly inadequate to the
charge, by Aldrich and others, that
the White House staff is full of
former hard-core drug users.
How about the Christmas tree
episode? Aldrich claims that he was
obliged to help decorate a Christmas
tree in the White House with orna
ments some art students gave to the
Clintons.
“It was a mobile of 12 lords a-leap
ing," Aldrich writes. “They were
leaping all right ... each was naked
and had an erection.” It does not
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:?v -
The Behrend College Collegian - Page
Books
by Ralph Hollenbeck
SUSPECTS, by Thomas Berger
(Morrow: S23.OC' A meld of Sir
Walter Scott’s “Oh, what a tangled
web we weave” and Sir William
Gilbert’s “The policeman’s lot is not
a happy one" would provide an ideal
summation of Thomas Berger’s
latest novel. Berger, author of such
best-sellers as “Little Big Man” and
“Neighbors,” himself has one of his
characters describe the commitment
that uniforms and plainclothesmen
(and women) in law enforcement as
sume. “The job makes a lot of
demands on you, and usually comes
before your personal life," Nick
Moody, Detective First Grade,
states. “The public never sees the
worst of what you confront day after
day ... Sickening stuff you never
suspected was possible, at least not
in this country. You’re not only sup
posed to handle it but rise above it
and go on to something that’s worse,
and then rise above that and still be
human.” Ironically, Moody, diverted
from his planned suicide, offers that
advice to one Lloyd Howland, whose
sudden appreciation of Moody and
the Force is one of those O. Hen
ryesque twists in Berger’s narrative.
Lloyd, a drifter, had been one of the
suspects in the particularly gruesome
murder of his sister-in-law, Donna,
and his young niece. So was Lloyd’s
half-brother, Larry, the rising young
salesman whose supposed business
trip masked a tryst with his boss’
amoral wife. Even the police are not
as true blue as one could hope.
Berger’s burrowing beneath the
green sod of suburbia lays bare the
rather unpleasant reality of much
small-town life in a most engrossing
fiction.
is not an attractive vignette of the
Clintons.
The Aldrich book is full of such
material, yet it has been successfully
trashed because of the discredited
midnight-tryst allegation.
I suppose the White House could
take a casual attitude toward the
Klein novel because it is fiction. Yet
the point of the book is that it is not
really fiction, but essentially true.
And I suppose the White House felt
it had to nail the Aldrich book be
cause it came from a member of the
staff, a particularly dangerous source
of inside information.
Of course, the staff would not be a
dangerous source if life in the White
House could stand public scrutiny.
ge, but it
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