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Viewpoint I Wednesday, January 20, 1988 THE GAMECOCK 3 Opportunity State's universities have chance * to advance with research at SRP Du Pont's contract with the Savannah River Plant will expire Oct. 1, 1989, and the plant will become a free agent. The research opportunites the plant offers are too great for South Carolina's top research institutions to pass up. But in order to secure a chance to work at the Savannah River Laboratory, Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina and USC must pool their resources. They must also decide if they are going to work together or on separate projects. MUSC President James Edwards thinks such a large undertaking would require cooperation on everyone's part. "We're not that strong. That's a big operation that takes ^some real mature management to handle that, Edwards said. Many schools are competing for the right to operate the lab, and MUSC, Clemson and USC think they have as good a chance as anyone else by joining forces. Because of the classified nature of the research and the obvious dangers of working with radiation, many professors and^administrators disagree over whether the contract is worth it or not. On the one hand, SRP is one of the few plutonium-producing facilities in the world, and an association with it would bring instant recognition to universities. But others, such as James Kane of the University of California, think being linked with nuclear weapons is undesirable. "1 guess my general conclusion is a weapons laboratory isn't all that attractive to a university," Kane said. He went on to say the weanons controversv causes friction amone the universitv. faculty and students and is more disruptive than productive. The national recognition associated with the plant is a ^desirable thing for USC. It would add to a university that will soon boast of a megacomputer comparable to anything the North CarolinaResearchTriangle has to offer, and it may have an impact on recruiting in the future. But we must not let national prestige get in the way of the goals of safety and research conducted in the true spirit of science. If handled properly, the three universities can win greater fame by running a highly safe ;and efficient lab. But the dangers associated with nuclear plants and radioactivity must be heavily weighed before we embark on such an awesome undertaking. TYMPANY NATIVE AMERICAN HAS A CHANCE TO mom PRESIPEHT IF THE V0TEKS OF IOM q.. AMP NEW HAMPSHIRE APPROVE* Gff m ra Mi) wbc> t The Gamecock I ~~~ I Editor in Chief Photography Kditor JEFF SHREWSBURY BRIAN SAULS ! ! Managing Kditor Assistant Photography Kditor STEPHEN GUILFOYLE KEITH JONES ; Copy Desk Chief Senior Reporter ANDY BECHTEL MARY PEARSON Assistant Copy Desk Chief Datebook Kditor EILEEN ROSS JENNY SHARPE News Kditor Craohics Kditor Hi TODD MINES TROY TAGUE ^ Assistant News Editors Comics Editor TONY MORENO TRACY MIXSON TOROD NEPTUNE Adviser Viewpoint Editor BILL ROGERS BRAD FARRAR . Graduate Assistant Features Kditor KAREN ADDY PATRICK JEAN Acting Director of Student Assistant Features Editor Media/Advertising Manager I KELLY MARSHALL MARGARET MICHELS ; " - - n sporis r.anor nuuuuwii WAYNE WASHINGTON CHUCK NORRIS Assistant Sports Editor SON HA JIM STUCKEY Assistant Advertising Manager MEL ISSA HENDERSON > letter* Policy: Ttu Cmk?I ?HI Uf lo prim kttrr? r???l?td. I?ttrr> fthould b*. at mxlmuin, 150 (o WX> wordi lon| (.mm v>dltortiU thould not luiid 500 word*. Wi rrWMr th? right to edit ktlir (or it>W or poitlblt lltxl. I hi (immtttxk will not withhold man under ?> rtrnmilMn. 1970s Q? co . - * * Lists of classi< A few months ago Rolling Stone published the results of a critics' poll of the top 100 albums of all time. The list was somewhat predictable ? the Beatles sgt. reppers Lonely tiearts cluo nana was No. 1 ? but also contained many surprises ? Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols came in at No. 2. But it forgot many great albums of this decade. In response to the list in Rolling Stone, a little magazine called Rockbill published its list of 50 classic LPs that Rolling Stone forgot. Still, Rockbill ncglected a few of rock 'n' roll's finer efforts, especially of LPs released in the past eight years. So here, in no particular order, are the top eight LPs that both magazines forgot. As things go with these lists, some albums will get left off. So it goes. The Wall, Pink Floyd. Although Dark Side of the Moon receives all the praise, The Wail is Pink Floyd's definitive work. The album documents Roger Waters finding himself as a vocalist and a songwriter as well as exorcising his frustrations with an eloquence he has since lost in his solo efforts. Reckoning, R.E.M. Another overlooked LP, Reckoning is R.E.M. at its best. Drums snaD: guitars cut. "Camera" might be the band's finest moment, and "Little America" says more about Racism still e: Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder, longtime football commentator for CBS-TV, earned his firing Saturday. His racially tainted remarks on a television station Friday evening shocked and upset everyone who heard them. In an interview on a Washington, D.C., news show, Snyder commented on the significance of the national observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. He said most pro athletes are blacks because they had been bred "big" since they were Civil War-era slaves. He also said if blacks were hired for upper-level management positions on sports teams, there would be nothing left for whites. Snyder has profusely apologized and pledged to lobby sports teams to hire more blacks as ad . n..i u:. _i,? ? 11 in hum 1 diui 5 dui 1115 icinaiis.5 can iu uniiu a suuut problem that has been present for years, but has only recently received publicity: closet racism. American racism did not end when the Civil Rights Act was passed in the 1960s. It's not acted out so demonstratively anymore by people, but it exists right beneath the surface. Closet racism, a form of ignorance rather than a form of hatred, exists in the tightly closed minds of people whose twisted thought processes are suppressed instead of expressed. And they pass on their ideas to their impressionable children, creating a new generation of closet racists. ViAftiom filmi Vietnam. America's own guilt trip, our own scarlet letter, if you will. But thanks to the movies, America is coming to grips with that guilt. There have been movies about Vietnam for a very long time. The first was John Wayne's The Green Berets in the late '60s. Wayne was the rockribbed endorser of all America's wars. But like many World War II films, it had a very racist view of the enemy and a very patronizing view of the locals. You could compare The Flying Tigers to The Green Berets. "The Duke, playing a (pilot/Green Beret colonel) holds off hordes of pure slant-eyed yellow evil (Japanese/Vietnamese communists) in (China/Vietnam) to protect our helpless little allies, the (Chinese/Vietnamese). That sort of stuff worked back in the '40s and '50s. But in the '60s, America started growing up. Americans stopped looking through the red, white and blue fog ? America No. 1 ? and started see ing the world realistically. The movie was partisan. Everything the "enemy" did was evil and wrong. Everything the Green Berets did was good and just, including napalm strikes, impalement, kidnapping. The directors of the next batch of movies wanted to use Vietnam as a canvas to make "art" and sweeping statements about human nature, but said little. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now was apparently a treatise on horror. But the real horror was the movie, incomprehensible at best, thanks to cs neglect albu h the state of the nation than any Bruce Springsteen song. A must, as they say. Album,Public Image Ltd. Former Sex Pistols singer John Lydon doesn't get any angrier than on this brutal album, which surpasses even the Pistols' sineles in its intensity. Lydon sums un the LP well when he snarls, "People who need people are the .? stupidest of people." ; Little Creatures, Talking Heads. Perhaps the '80s equivalent of the Beatles' "White Album," i Little Creatures combines the best of all worlds 1 with its mix of funk and folk. Plus, the galloping I "Road To Nowhere" might be the finest 1 rists; just ehe< Hi / ?Wi The closet racist will almost never express his feelings. He'll act friendly toward the groups of people he thinks so little of. He expresses his bigotry in subtle ways, displaying certain favoritism and making certain statements professionally and socially. He'll only prove himself a racist if he, like Snyder, former ABC-TV sportscaster Howard Cosell or ex-Los Angeles Dodgers baseball executive Al Campanis, opens his mouth and inserts his foot. Closet racism is not limited to whites. Some minorities also treat whites with equal disdain, whether they deserve it or not. Growing up in the Southeast, I have seen both the giving and receivs dispelling Ai p Guilfoyle T . E [ mn anirMrnrioia ,i ' k i iih i nitiavm MOMiaanMMKnqmaM* j Coppola's source, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an especially morbid and vague work. Michael Cirnino wanted to talk about a man's mystical relationship with nature and impotency after a horrible experience when he made The Deer Hunter. JoAnn Rhetts, a movie reviewer for The Charlotte UDserver, uescrioeu tins wave 01 vieinam movies as "meaningful visions awash with towering, mythological symbols" that had as little to do with the war as the directors themselves, who spent the war in various colleges. And then came the return to rock-ribbed American invincibility with a ghastly series of movies that has yet to end ? Sylvester Stallone as the superhuman Green Beret Kambo. The first two films both ended with speeches screaming for the Vietnam veterans, from a man who, Rhetts said, r ^ 1960S I I * 1990 s~ I Hs&iWl'h/li 11' IW ^ ms of '80s appiness-in-the-facc-of-doom song ever. Hounds of Love, Kate Bush. If Little Creatures ; the "White Album," then Hounds of Love is the Ibbey Road of this decade. Mesmerizing in its ubtleties, the LP masterfully blends the hypnotic mn me Kinetic, i ne result is stunning. The Head on the Door, The Cure. From start to inish, this album features a little bit of everything - synth-pop, guitar blast and seductive axophones. Love Over Gold, Dire Straits. Although 3rothcrs In Arms sold more copies, it's nothing :ompared to Love Over Gold. Mark Knopfler is at lis best as a vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and prolucer with the majestic "Telegraph Road" and "It Mever Rains." Jonathan Sings!, Jonathan Richman and the Vlodern Lovers. Richman, one of the primary influences for alternative music, is at his most lumorous on this LP. But he also shows a sensitive >ide with sonns such as "That Summer Feelino" and "Somebody To Hold Me." Avalon, Roxy Music. Ironically, the band broke jp after this masterful LP, which shows Bryan Ferry and company at the peak of their powers. Rich layers of sound make A valon perhaps the best ow-key effort ever. :k in 'closet' ing ends of closet racism. All of it is wrong. This modern form of racism, albeit less violent or widespread than the bigotry of previous decades, must end. But racism will continue to exist: as lona as a person does a double take at an in terracial couple walking down the street; as long as parents tell their children they should only associate with people of their own race; as long as children are divided at the gradeschool level, consciously or unconsciously, into socio-economic groups of their own kind; as long as an innocent black man is chased to his death bv ancry whites in Howard Beach, N.Y as long as civil rights marches have to be held in Forsyth County, Ga., a place that has been militantly all-white for more than half a century; as long as Americans endorse President Reagan's distorted policies that make wealthy whites richer and disadvantaged minorities poorer; as long as South Carolina and three other states continue to fly the ultimate symbol of racism, the Confedrate flag, over their statehouses instead of placing it in a museum; as long as USC's faculty and administration contain very few minorities, and, most of all, as long as the aims of King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the nation's capital 25 years ago remain just that ? a dream. llCUtil ? gum spent the war as a gymnastics instructor. But now Vietnam is acceptable. Platoon showed what the war was like. It showed the compassion and the friendship, the hatred among members of even the same platoon, illegal killings. And the best of the current Vietnam movie crop, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, showed the full experience of U.S. Marines. It starts in Parris Island with training, and it is full of humor and interesting characters. Then it moves to Vietnam, but it is not about GIs "humping" in the "bush." It is the first movie * h i ^ ?Un C,^ IN til IJ IlILK IIUl MJl 111 UIC JUiiftit, lilt iii.m iv anuw the other side of the war ? the capture of a small town, warfare in the streets. And the latest movie shows the American cinema lias finally come to grips with Vietnam. Good Morning Vietnam, directed by Barry Levinson, stars Robin Williams as an insane disc jockey who "every morning. . . sent the troops off to fight the war ? laughing." The only way you can really accept a bad situation is to laugh about it. And Williams, through mis mix omcc MiiitMi, is mailing /miiciit? iiiiauy take a look at how funny, awful, different, foolish and sad the war was. People who lived through almost the entire war either in 'Nam or across America and people who remember body bag after body bag being taken off transport plane after transport plane have realized it's OK to laugh at Vietnam. And it's about time. America an't keep healing it's breast with guilt forever.