The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, July 02, 1986, Page 3, Image 3
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."
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"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