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Viewpoint Wednesday, July 2, 1986 2 uunw?? n ii?the Reporter reveal Greensboro, N.C. ? I'm not much of a sports fan and I had never heard of Jimmy "Real Tall" Bagdasarian until I moved to North Carolina, but when he led the team at Tobermory Polytechnic to the basketball W finals five years in a row he became the biggest thing to hit this state since the sit-ins. But Real Tall wasn't hired by the pros, so after graduation, he went abroad teaching basketball to the Swiss ? never a powerhouse in international competition. Unfortunately for him, the first leg in his trip to Switzerland, from his Tobermory apartment to the Wilmington airport, was made in a cherry red 1987 Saab turbo with a sunroof. Neither the Saab uui me sunrooi oeiongeu 10 Keai 1 all; they belonged to the head coach at Tobermory Polytechnic. As a result, Real Tall was charged with grand theft auto while he was 0 somewhere over the Pyrenees and headed ' east. Now Real Tall loathed to return to the United States and danced to the prosecuter's music, so to interview him for the newspaper I had to rely on the transatlantic telephone. "Hello" I yelled. As everyone knows, yelling into the receiver gives the old electrons that extra oomph needed to reach the opposite shore of the Atlantic. "Hello, Real Tall?" "Yea?" I introduced myself and asked him to tell his side of the story. ^ "It's all a misunderstanding," he said. "1 " thought the car was mine. I got confused. It was dark, and 1 had the wrong car. My car was down the block a ways." "Well, Real Tall," I said, "Some people might take you up on that. Your '74 blue Chevy Nova doesn't look much like a red Cahh "Well, when the sun camc up I could see it wasn't my car," he said. "But by then, I was at the airport and my plane was fixing to leave. So I couldn't take it back right then." I cleared my throat. "According to the A police record, the car was found upside down on a grassy bank off an exit ramp about two blocks from the airport." / W QUICKLY, Be JlfisI THEY'RE NOT ALL \ IM HERE ^~ ' v i ' ^?x-i - -ry s player with 're i j |P|V ( c ?^y ''Mjy > JH i Andv Duncan : +0 ( I I "As I said," Real Tall said, "It was a com- t bination of factors that kept me from taking ^ the car back. If I had seen my error 1 sooner . . . well, hey, different story." 1 "Well surely the coach's wife should have 1 said something," 1 replied. "Witnesses said t she was sitting in th<* from m>:h when v<\n u oVM in. How is Mrs. Brown anyway? I hear she's taking up skiing since she got there." "Look man," Real Tall said. "The important thing is I haven't done anything wrong. You got me? They just got it in for me, you know? They just want to hurt my career, just when I'm really starting to make a difference. When I got here, Hans and Frit/ and Klaus and the others on the team, they were Swiss rhppco mat* ( VAI I I xl > * # l-i 1 V..VVOV, "mil, V VMllllll I .MIWVJI, IWtllUII I IJIOC'K, couldn't rebound?" I I tried to interrupt. "Real Tall?" "Just sitting around all day," he went on, i "eating chocolate and admiring each other's i fine watches, and telling me they weren't real good at putting the press on the other guys' i y&) Tfci ovitu mf\ jtf \ . J!! ^||5& O'^S?^ ;al tali' story :cntcr 'cause it violated their neutrality and :rap like that. But now they're getting better, Hid next week we can take Liechtenstein, we :an take them down, man, and now they try o pin this rap on me?" "Oh come on," I said. "Next thing you enow you'll be telling me there's some sort of .onspiracy going on back at Tobermory, that lie couch wains 10 get you out ot the way or something." There was a long pause. Then Real Tall ;aid, "Shoot that by me one more time." "Next thing you know, " I said, "You'll be Maiming the coach made all this up just to get /ou ? " "Hang oil, man." In the minute or two of ilence that ensued, 1 heard muffled voices of *eal Tall conferring with a female. Then he :amc back to the receiver. "l isten good," he said. "When I was at lobermory, 1 got whatever I wanted. You lear me? They gave me cars, booze, drugs, lough, parking spaces, block seating, rverything. And the coach had me and the est of the players selling season tickets for lund ? thousands, yeah, that's the ticket, housands of dollars! And when I wanted to jo home for a visit, they sent me home by imo-jet, yeah, that's it. By jet, all the way tome, and they must have done that doz ? uindreds, yeah, that's the ticket, hundreds of imes." So that's how I, of all the journalists in the lation, got my exclusive and broke the harowing story of currnption and decadence hat resulted in the suspension of all Tobernory athletic programs until the president personally could assure that all the athletes vould spend so much time studying that the cam wouldn't be any good, a measure that .incc has been adopted by every school in the :onference. Bov. I'm i?lad nolhini? like lh;?l rmiM rver lappen at I JSC. Andy Duncan is a former Gamecock columnist now writing in (ireensboro, North Carolina. Although surviving solely on various egg recipes, Andv was able to muster the energy for a long distance call-in column. j Priority? S.C. legist a for neglect Priorities. Tlicy are a necessary part of life ? listing things in order of importance. And just as individuals must have priorities to make decisions, so do corporations and governments. The South Carolina Legislature, for example, had to prioritize the issues most important to South Carolina when it wrote this year's state budget. Apparently, higher education is not very important. Thanks to the 1986-87 budget recently approved by the state house and signed by Gov. Dick Riley, USC will not receive full formula funding and must therefore call for a second tuition increase in two years. Formula funding provides the minimum amount of money needed for the university to function. Prior to the announcement of the budget, USC President James Holderman had already announced that without adequate funding from the state, tuition would have to be increased. The funding situation 1 ? uccame worse wnen Kilcy S.A. childre should not June 16, 1986 was the tenth anniversary of the now historic "children's rebellion" that occurred in the black township of Soweto in that tragic land known ac Qnnth A fri/'o It I Mvi uvum Minva. 11 naa 111v. uay the schoolchildren of Soweto decided they would protest the white government's new requirement ? that they be taught mainly in the language of Afrikaans ? a Dutch langueagc most of the black teachers did not know. u/u:?u ~ r ? Yvnitii ui touisc was prooaoiy the very reason the authorities insisted they do so. For these retrograde racists, an educated black is a dangerous black. As is well known, the South African police unleashed their volleys of tear gas ana bullets into the bodies of the marching students. By the end of this momentous event and the days of heated protest that followed, 600 blacks across the country were dead. The Soweto Rebellion was the first day of the end of white supremecy in South Afriea. No longer would a fistful of South African Clint Eastwoods, Ronald Reagans and Sylvester Stallones rule with impunity the black majority. Today South Africa is perched on the brink of hope and revolution ? and, let's say it ? genocide. The unfortunate truth is that, like the Polish Jews who courageously fought the invading Nazis ? unarmed ? in the famed Warsaw Ghetto uprising, oiacKS in south Africa have been herded into so-called townships for a very good reason. That reason is, of course, for maximum population control by the security forces of the South African government who so far have killed at least 2.000 unarm ed blacks. Between the technological superiority of the government's security forces, the lack of arms by the vanguard political organizations and the concentration of people in townships, all the makings of another Waisaw gnetto ? only A 1IV# Mil Kdilor in Chief Virwpn | Tracy Mtxson Jennif t'hotog I News Kditor Jennif Amy PclPo AdvUoi Spotlight Kditor Hill R( /'aula WethinRton The Gamecock reserves the ; editorials, both of which will Hditor, The Gamecock, Drawer 29208. tors earn V ing education vetoed parts of the budget that provided for money and certain employment posistions at use. Dror^lnnl i IV.^IUVIII I IWUIt'i llltlll WilN understandably perplexed by the provisions, or lack of them, for education in the state's budget. The ability for USC and other state supported universities in South Carolina to function as both educatinnal inctitlltir\nc onrl (..yyaiMl lia.UUUllWll3 UIIU I V.II facilities is obviously low on the state government's list of priorities. When the state puts education low on its priority list, it hurts only itself. The education of young people, secondary and primary education as wen as nigner education, is where the hope for South Carolina's future lies. With a poorly educated population, South Carolina can not expect to grow and prosper. At one time, Gov. Riley had his priorities straight ? he had been determined to improve state-funded education. But now, he seems to have changed his mind. And that's a shame. m's deaths be in vain I Inter ~~f campus on a more epic scale ? are there. Not to say of course that we have not been witnessing a Warsaw ghetto type all along ? only that it is sure to get worse as events in South Africa today well demonstrate. So weto: Keeping faith with the children is the title of a special issue of the fine and informative m Q (tO 71 no ^ ...U^ULIIIV, unu Crises. The magazine chronicles the relationship of Christians with liberation movements in the third world. Here is a brief example from editor Gail Hovey's article on the Soweto Rebellion: "A child lay dying in the street on June 16, 1976. Other children knelt and tried to stop the flow of blood. Children are still dying in oouin /\irica. uniy 11 tne zuth anniversary of Soweto is celebrated in a free South Africa will they not have died in vain. "This is not empty rhetoric. The people of South Africa and their friends around the world can prevail. The South Africans know what they have to do. For our part, we must fight for the strongest political and economic sanctions against the white minority government. Ten years from now let us not have the blood of South Africa's children on our hands." Hopefully, those who still oppose divestment will soon be prepared to wipe the blood of South Africa's children off their profit sheets and join the people of South Africa in their fight for a freedom too long denied. They have only their humanity to gain. Jack McCarthy Florida Flambeau Tallahassee, Fla. >in( Kdllor Director er Rust till! Clements raphy Kditor Producllon pr Steib Lewis Covington r Mark A rmstrong >gers AdvfrltsInK Manage ! Murgaret Michels right to edit letters and guest not be returned. Send letters to: A, Russell House, Columbia, S.C. I