The Billings Gazette from Billings, Montana • 4

Page Wayne Schile publisher Richard J. Wesnick editor Gary Svee opinion editor Sunday, October 6. 1991 GASEYTTE 6E1C3IC3 GOP chairman tilting windmill The Montana Republican party has climbed on its-trusty steed to rescue a damsel in distress Gov. Stan Stephens. The Stephens' administration has been besieged by the EEEEK! liberal press you see, and he needs to be delivered from their collective hairy hands.

GOP chairman Rick Hill has asked members to contribute at least $25 each to counter the EEEEK! liberal press' attacks on poor Stan. A biased press, Hill says, has cast an unsympathetic eye on the Stephens administration. Further, Hill said, "I think the media has been unfairly tough on the governor. I think the press tends to focus on the negative. I don't think there's an intentional bias of people in the news media; there's a personal bias." In general, Hill said, he thinks the media is EEEEK liberal.

One must presume that Stan is blushing in the presence of such tough talk, but we must remember that Hill isn't the first politician to attack the EEEEK! liberal press. The master of alliteration, former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, sent volley after volley of rhetoric at these spurious creatures. The press, Agnew said, puffing up his pectorals, are "nattering nabobs of negativism." Further, he opined, members of the press are "pusilanimous purveyors of perfidy." Take that EEEEK liberal press. Agnew maintained that position until his resignation Oct.

10, 1973, while under criminal investigation. Agnew later pleaded "nolo contendre" the judge declared the plea was "the full equivalent of a plea of guilty" to a charge that he had cheated on his income tax. Agnew was also under investigation on charges that he took bribes from contractors in return for helping them get state government work in Maryland. Obviously more work of the EEEEK! liberal press. When President Nixon resigned claiming "I'm no crook" it was the EEEEK! liberal press that uncovered Watergate.

Fascinating, isn't it. It is not the crime but the reporting of it that is criminal in these people's minds. A crook isn't really a crook until he's caught. Hill is tying together two buzzwords liberal and press to loosen his party members' purse strings. But they are just buzzwords with no real meaning.

Some newsmen are liberal and some are conservative and most are neither, just like truckers, and lawyers and politicians and everyone else. So why did the GOP chairman feel compelled to tilt this windmill? Stephens certainly doesn't need rescuing. He has proven himself more than capable of playing give and take with the press. The press has criticized and praised Stephens during his administration. That's the way the game is played.

That's the way it must be played if democracy is to work. The pusilanimous pap Hill is slinging hurts the governor more than it helps him. All this wild rhetoric makes one wonder who the nattering nabobs of negativism really are. oschert's column unfair to Stephens Guest columnist tJack Sands ocrats sought an incredible $300 million in new tak hikes during the 1991 legislative session. Only the governor's veto pen, supported by Republican legislators, stood in the way.

Rosemary's article next belittles the thousands of new jobs that have been created in Montana since Stephens took office. It expresses the elitist notion that certain jobs are not significant. "The "new jobs' boasted about by the governor," the editorial says, "are not the jobs necessary to support a statewide economy." Really? Engineering jobs, construction jobs, accounting, management, marketing and wholesaling have blossomed under Stephens tenure. And yes, low-paying jobs are more abundant, too. The present situation is certainly an improvement over the dismal picture of lost jobs and economic decline that was the story in Montana before Stephens took over just two and a half years ago.

In place of ideas and alternatives, Democrats have thrown mud and hidden from the record. The simple facts are that Stephens has protected taxpayers, trimmed government, and given modest increases to key state programs. Labor statistics show that more Montanans are working now than any time in our history. State government is becoming more efficient, and Montana is on the move. Public discussion and, yes, even partisan debate about that record is welcome.

But please, let's keep the facts straight and the nasty allegations down. Jack Sands is the Yellowstone County Republican chair and lives at 3115 Poly Drive in Billings. A guest column aimed at Gov. Stan Stephens by Yellowstone County Democrat chair Rosemary Boschert is off-the-mark, and at times unquestionably inaccurate. The article makes the serious charge that the governor "conducted a campaign tour, at taxpayer expense, on state owned planes." The statement is dead wrong.

And an apology should be made. A simple check would have revealed that private aircraft were contracted with private campaign funds for the governor's election announcement Public money was not used. Another issue raised in the Boschert editorial deals with the so-called "retirement tax." The author implies Democrats opposed it. Let's look at some facts. First, a bill was required because the U.S.

Supreme Court concluded that Montana's law exempting state employees' retirement from income tax while denying that exemption to others was unconstitutional Second, the governor responded with a bill which would exempt the first $10,000 in retirement income from everyone, but tax amounts above that. Third, the Democrats with their large legislative majorities amended the bill to lower the exempt amount to $3,600, raising mil- lions in more taxes from low- and moderate-income seniors. Guess what they did with the added millions? They added funding for general government and gave pension increases to state employees. Other seniors are now paying the bill with higher taxes compliments of Democrat legislators. One of the main thrusts of the Boschert column is that Stephens didn't raise enough taxes.

It points out that "Stephens consistently vetoed all other tax bills placed before him." If that is a charge, the governor should proudly plead guilty. He did roadblock tax increases. Thank God! Dem oys are instructe to be violen men Guest columnist CUrt tgj Kochner "Friday Night Lights" presents an exaggerated but true example of how a community through its unquestioning support of high school sports can unknowingly be encouraging and fostering the link between masculinity and violence. H.J. Bissinger spent a year in the life of the Permian High School football team of Odessa, Texas.

He illustrates how a community can totally commit itself to socializing generations of young men to see violence as the means to dreams. Odessa, community of 78,000 people that built a $5.6 million football stadium for high school football, and draw's 20,000 people to each game is sending a very important message to their young people. When a community commits these resources and this kind of energy to high school football, there is a very direct message that the team must win at any cost. The players learn very quickly that it is through pain and violence that one becomes a winner. When sports becomes the only means of building self-esteem, and winning at sports is the only means of communicating, and the only message to be communicated is "We're Number where is the skill training at conflict resolution? What happens when we don't make the team, we dont win, and we aren't No.

How will these messages be played out in the relationships these young men develop later in their lives? Both of these books seem to remind us that we are teaching men to achieve their personal goals through violence. Manhood is to be achieved through physical warriorhood. By default we are socializing our young men to be "conversational wimps." Due to this lack of an ability to resolve conflicts through "fierce debates and playful verbal combat," we are teaching them to get what they want through force. After all, we did get really excited about our "victory" in Desert Storm, didn't we? We ought not be surprised that 89 percent of violent crimes are committed by men, by the amount of child and spouse abuse, that one in four college women will be victims of acquaintance rape. But we should be outraged.

Curt Kochner is the director of Student Life and Housing at Eastern Montana College. tories. Violence sells, and we will protect the right to sell it the formation of a Children's Public Broadcasting System which would present programming that does not contain the violence of prime time but would support the development of conflict resolution through communication is a most viable possibility, but it will be a long time coming. Some of her less grandiose suggestions are creative and exciting and could be implemented at a grass roots level. For example, the teaching of classes on child care to boys in grade school has helped boys to see other people as precious human beings.

These classes are helping boys learn conflict resolution skills as an alternative to using violence. Although all trends are working against the goal of keeping families intact, Miedzian stresses that as children see mothers and fathers working together in coparenting, and working out conflicts through conversation, "the norm for male behavior will change. Empathy, emotional connectedness, concern for others, will come to be accepted as masculine qualities." My summer reading brought together some wonderful combinations of books, but none better than Myriam Miedzian's "Boys Will Be Boys Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence" and "Friday Night Lights" by H.J. Bissinger. In the past year, many books which addressed the topics of manhood and masculinity emerged, and it is evident that men are beginning to work on some very important personal and interpersonal issues.

Considering the destruction that men's violence has brought to women, families, children and our world, it is encouraging to see some dialogue on how we might begin to stop the trend rather than just complain about it. A call for a return to a war-riorhood of ideas rather than our current emphasis on warriorhood of winning through violence is a message evident in both of these new books. The concept of a "warriorhood of ideas" evolved as I was reading a paper by Bernard Franklin? a colleague from Kansas State University. In a presentation on "Men's Issues in Leadership," Franklin (drawing heavily from Robert Bly's "Iron contends that men may have lost their skills in "fierce debates and playful verbal combat," and in the absence of such skills may be "reduced to wrestling, football, the martial arts, guerrilla warfare, and blood-and-guts movies." Our current ideas of manhood generally do not include any emphasis on the warriorhood of ideas, but instead strongly support a warriorhood of physical violence. The lack of training and support for boys to resolve conflicts through conversation and dialogue is a major point in "Boys Will be Boys." Miedzian states that "it is precisely because many men have a strong potential for violence that we must do everything possible to discourage it and encourage the development of empathy and other qualities which are inversely related to violent behavior." "Boys" presents a thorough study of how entertainment, movies, television, music, musicvideos and sports all encourage violence as a means of conflict resolution.

Miedzian proposes many ways in which we might begin to downplay violence as the norm. Unfortunately, many of these suggestions involve an assault on First Amendment rights. Convincing andor forcing the entertainment industry to downplay violence in music, videos, Saturday morning cartoons, etc. will be a long and tiresome battle with slim prospects for even the smallest of vic- It is precisely because many men have a strong potential for violence that we must encourage the development of qualities which are inversely related to violent behavior. Myriam Miedzian OlWI INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT BY CARTOONtWS Y.C., USA 99 4.