2000 Jan 20 - Titusville Herald - Titusville Pa Time Capsuled

PAGE 4- THE TITUSVILLE HERALD, Titusville, Pa., Thursday, January 20, 2000

Opinion/Commentary Throwing Out the First Amendment

Thoughts on The Missing Time Capsule by Jon Sherman If any reason were needed, and I can't think of a single occasion, how much can change over 40 years, just consider the matter of Drake Well's lost time capsule. Gov. Davey Lawrence sealed the thing in front of Dave Garroway, God and everyone on the Today!" show, and then the thing was buried for future generations to dig up. This story is yet another proof of the journalism rule that advises against assuming anything. We just assumed the capsule was buried. Why? because Important People told us it was. To further build on our gullibility, a plaque indicating the time capsule was there and also when it would be disinterred was placed at Drake Well Park. With this tangible "proof in place, all of us went about our daily round of life, work and death, sustained by the sure and certain knowledge that there was a time capsule buried beneath the DAR memorial. Thus it was that the highest level possible of adult cynicism was reached last week when the news broke that there was no time capsule buried at Drake Well and never had been. Informal polls taken that day showed that belief in the Easter Bunny and the political viability of Sen, John McCain simultaneously evaporated in a majority of citizens of adult age - at least those living in the Oil Creek Valley region of northwestern Pennsylvania. The time capsule was scheduled to have been opened on Aug. 27, 2000, the 141st anniversary of Drake Well's coming in. The park's staff, however, cheated a little and wanted to dig up the capsule ahead of time to make sure there was more than a soupy mess there. The only thing they turned up was a box of rocks. So much for the infallibility of Davey Lawrence and Dave Garroway... The capsule is not a little thing. It was about the size of an average office wastebasket. it had a variety of items placed in it. all having to do with aspects of the oil industry. The most irreplaceable items were a letter from President Dwight D. Eisenhower and a tape recording made by two of Edwin L. Drake's granddaughters. I started out this piece by noting the significance of 40 years' worth of time passing. It's well nigh useless to try to round up Drake's granddaughters or Ike Eisenhower to re-do their efforts, and it's almost as futile to try and find anyone who can connect the dots in the line that stretched from the "Today" show to the capsule's ultimate fate. No one needs to be reminded what a large chunk out of a lifetime 40 years can be. In addition, keep in mind that most of the individuals who were involved in this caper were, no doubt, securely into middle age in 1959. Actual witnesses, or even those who were associates of witnesses are, to use the lament of a woman in her 80s talking about her friends, "either dead or in Florida." From conversations I've had over the past week, it seems highly unlikely that the capsule will ever be seen again. Too much time has passed, too many have died and too many changes have occurred at the place where the capsule was last seen. The celebration that was planned for the capsule opening will go on despite this discouraging wrinkle. "We should honor the intent" of those who buried the time capsule, said Barbara Zolli, Drake Well site administrator, at a meeting last week. Well chosen words - under the circumstances.

by Walt Brasch John Rocker has opinions. The 25-year-old 6-foot-4, 225 pound Atlanta Braves pitcher says he doesn't like foreigners, minorities, gays, and just about anyone who doesn't look, act, or think like he does. He called a Black teammate a "fat monkey," and said that Asian women are bad drivers. He says hell quit baseball before ever being traded to a New York team because he doesn't want to take the subway to work, "looking like you're [riding through] Beiruit next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids." His views, brewed in a cauldron of ignorance and stupidity, aren't any di f fe r e n t from many Americans— probably millions of Americans. He's said them before, to friends, fans, teammates and, maybe, even a few sports writers. Unfortunately, this time John Rocker said them to a reporter for Sports Illustrated who included it in a four-page spread at the back of the 3.2 million-circulation magazine. "I'm not a racist or prejudiced person," Rocker claimed, "but certain people bother me." One of . those people is likely to be baseball commissioner Bud Selig. Mr. Rocker's recent remarks

[are] reprehensible and completely inexcusable," said Selig who ordered Rocker to undergo psychological tests. Punishment for Rocker's opinions are warranted, chimed in Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten. The Players Association, with one-fifth of its members foreign-born and about 40 percent Black or Hispanic, isn't objecting. Under pressure from Management, Rocker apologized. But, Major League Baseball will probably discipline him for having views it doesn't consider to be acceptable—at least in public. This, of course, is the same sport that banned Blacks and Hispanics from its fields for more than a half-century, which didn't allow a Black to be a manager for another three decades, which still bans women, and for which the owners were at least half the reason why there was a strike in 1994. But, baseball officials think they, like private enterprise, can dictate what their employees think and say. The American revolution was built upon a libertarian foundation that all views, even ones that may be blatantly stupid or racist, must be heard. In "The Areopagitica" (1644), which Thomas Jefferson freely quoted from, John Milton had written that truth and falsehood must be allowed to compete in a free and open encounter, and that truth will eventually be known. Two' centuries later, John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859) reaffirmed the libertarian philosophy when he pointed out, "We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." A few

years after that, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes told us that democracy is best served in a "marketplace of ideas." On the morning of June 12, 1996, a three-judge federal panel in Philadelphia issued a 175-page decision that declared the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional. The strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects," wrote Judge Stephen Dalzell. That afternoon, the owners of Major League Baseball, apparently having not read the First Amendment, declared the opinions of Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott to be an embarrassment, and ordered her suspended from day-to-day operations for two and one-half yeai s. The sanction came three years after they had fined her $25,000 and banned her for a year following remarks that most people would label as anti-Semitic and racist. Schott's latest suspension, Bud Selig told the media, was the "result of a succession of events," including her tight-fisted financial control and her nauseous beliefs that "quite frankly were not in anyone's best interest." In 1927, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, in Whitney v. California (1927), wrote that "the remedy to be applied [to evil and falsehood] is more [free] speech, not enforced silence." Perhaps Rocker and Schott, as well as those justifiably outraged by their opinions, will one day sit down to listen to each other, and realize that education not gags should be the solution for ignorance. Major League Baseball once

The Best and The Wittiest

Ray Szalewicz pointed out to me today an article in the current volume of "The Old Farmer's Almanac" about time capsules. In a piece titled, "So You Want To Make a Time Capsule," there is to be found these words of encouragement: "More than 80 percent (of time capsules) will be lost. Buried and never to be found. There also is a list of nine famous time capsules (no Drake Well's is not among them) that were lost. One example is the Bicentennial Wagon Train Time Capsule, which contained the signatures of 22,000,000 Americans. When President Gerald R. Ford arrived at Valley Forge on July 4, 1976, it was discovered that someone had stolen the time capsule. I certainly hope that those folks around these parts who were bitching and moaning last week that we weren't having any winter weather are now as happy as pigs in slop.

Letters Welcomed . ' The' Titusyiile '.Herald welcomes letlera :from-,its '.readers. -Letters' may be..'. mailed, faxed (827-2512). or. -e-mailed to herald.coml ..." •• ?••;.:•'...-! '•':• '. Letters should be of general lpcai.;;inierest,and ;not. exceed 300 '•; words. They must bear the writer's :name,:;ad^S8.'and: signature, -as/ well as a telephone number where ffie writer can beTeached; All letters are subject to editing. : ' • ;' '•-•-•......; • ' • • • ' • " ; / : . : . ' ' "Address letters to;. " • .'.••. ••. • " ' • ' : • . . ' .•"••'•••"•:•:.:•:.•.• • Letters to the:: Editor - . ' ; • . . • . • . • . . •'.•'• . ;: "The Titusville ;Herald :.-.' .' '.'" :^ .-. : .- •. •:/ :'..-'. ' '• • • p.6. /Box 328"; ;' •'-,:• • -'•'•"';.;^'- ;.;•';:.;.. '..... ' : ' Titusville, P ' ' Thank you letters are paid advertisements. •'•. -"Xv .'. Please contact the advertising department for prices (827 -3634).

The Titusville Herald P.O. Box 328, 209 W. Spring St. Titusville, Pennsylvania 16354 e-mail: [email protected] Phone 1-814-827-3634 • Fax 1-814-827-2512 Western Pennsylvania's Oldest Daily Newspaper

Publisher: Michael D. Sample Circulation Manager: Karol Carlin Community Editor: Holly Matthews Production Manager: John Toriski THE TITUSVILLE HERALD, INC. (631-760) is published daily except Sundays, New Year's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th., Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas for $126.88 for 52 weeks in town, $135.00 for 52 weeks in motor area, $144.00 by mail in state, $149.00 for 52 weeks for all other states by Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., 3800 Colonnade Parkway, Birmingham, AL. 35243. Periodical postage paid at Titusville, PA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Titusville Herald, Inc. , P.O. Box 328, Titusville, PA 16354

Vol. 135, No. 185

It's Time To Cure HMOS by Jacquelyn Mitchard If I had to find a new doctor, I'd make sure it was a doctor who'd lie. I'd make sure it was a doctor who would not only agree to lie on behalf of my health and my family's, but who'd offer to. A survey of doctors reported in a recent issue of the AMA's Archives of Internal Medicine found that a slender majority (58 percent) would consider it ethical to deceive an insurance company to get a patient heart bypass surgery or to get a cancer sufferer pain medication - even if those patients' insurance would not ordinarily pay. A smaller but still significant number (35 percent) also said they would make up a fictional lump so that a middle-aged woman whose sister died from breast cancer could get a mammogram covered by a healthmaintenance organization or insurance provider who wouldn't pay without more serious symptoms. The first response is to think of those physicians as heroes, whose duty to patients means more than a given job. The second response is to reckon that it's probably pretty easy to be a hero if you're going to get paid either way. The third response is cynical. It's to think of doctors, and everyone knows of one, who bill patients up front and then file for insurance reimbursement"- at the highest allowable rate. For every one of those, we also know a doctor who, unable to justify therapy by hard-and-fast guidelines, gently wonders whether a patient "forgot" certain symptoms that would help the patient qualify for treatment. Both those situations constitute fraud, but one can be forgiven, by the code .of common human responsibility, that supersedes law. It's easy to wish that insurance companies would he more like those "good" dishonest doctors, and overlook a truly necessary fib. But if they simply closed their eyes and paid up for every doctor who lied for good reasons and every doctor who lied for lousy selfish reasons, the insurance companies would soon go under. The first response is, works for me. Those companies get fat on misery anyhow. But it's too easy to demonize insurance companies.

,v

It's too easy to see them as tight-fisted entities, willing to make people wait until they're too sick to save rather than pay the heavier toll of true prevention. But insurance companies, whether private or nonprofit or government-sponsored, are only pools of money put there by people who made that money working. Insuirance, is, after all, only a consensual form of gambling. We have paid more than our family spends on medical expenses this year, hedging our bets on the possibility that even though we're healthy now, we're going to get ill sometime and have to grin-fly reap it all back. The insurer gambles that we'll survive without serious health problems and keep paying for a long time, and thus insure the company's survival. Back in the early 1980s, health-maintenance organizations were sold to doctors, employers and employees as truly that, systems of health-care delivery that would focus on prevention. That benefit was touted as the tradeoff for convincing doctors to give up their independence and convincing patients to give up longterm relationships with their doctors to switch to physicians in the group designated by their insurer. Things haven't really turned out the way anyone hoped. HMOs have folded faster than savings-and-loans. The goal first envisioned, of readily available screenings for mature women and scores of well-baby checkups to catch budding problems, has eroded under economic pressure. Insurance feels like usury. HMOs can feel like prisons. An estimated 44 million low-income working families have no insurance at all. They probably could, but as anyone who has ever filled out an immunization form or a loan application knows, a system can be as impenetrable as quantum physics. The people who need help most often are the people least able to negotiate the system that provides it. But the system - like the insurance companies, the doctors who lie, the HMOs that don't maintain health, and the .government - is only made up of people. People in the richest country in the world not listening very well. Not very well, for a very long time, which is a. sin greater than any lie. Political elections are about candidates listening to voters. And in the election ahead, it may be time to talk about common human responsibility for health care - about why honest people lie and dishonest people get away with it. Jacquelyn Mitchard is a nationally published columnist for Tribune Media Services Inc.

silenced those who tried to speak out for integration. It was wrong V then. It is wrong now. J Walt Brasch, a national awardwinning journalist, is professor of mass communications at Bloomsburg University.

Hatred \ Of Castro Warps America by Carl T. Rowan WASHINGTON - Philosophers of every stripe and time have said hatred is a corrosive force that often destroys the hater. The truth of this is manifest in what is happening to this country in the bizarre fight over the future of Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy who was rescued from the seas off Florida on Thanksgiving Day. Cuban exiles in Florida and self-styled communist-fighters in Congress and U.S. presidential politics have seized upon Elian as a pawn through which they can show their hatred for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. As a result, the judicial system in Florida is being1 demeaned as some exiles try to make the boy a hostage in a courtsanctioned kidnapping. Republican candidates for presi-. dent have abandoned their pretenses of support for "family values" as they back extra-legal! efforts to prevent Elian from being returned to his father in Cuba.' Democrat AT Gore hascaved in out: of fear of los-| ing Florida's1 electoral' votes if hebecomes the' Democratic! nominee. All; these politi-; cians are'. making the; weird argument, not that the boy's father is an unfit parent, but that'. Cuba is an unfit country. ; If that latter argument werei applied with any consistency, ] Congress would pass a law allow-' ing the unfettered entrance to the '• United States of at least 2 billion; people. In 1997, Congress passed a law \ making the U.S. attorney general ] the ultimate authority in custody < disputes involving migrant chil-'. dren who are not accompanied by • an adult. Elian is unaccompanied ! because his mother stole~him away [ from his chief-caretaker father and ' tried to sneak him into the United i States, only to have the boat she ' and 12 other Cuban migrants were ' on capsize. Elian survived. ] Despite the clear authority of' Attorney General Janet Reno to decide what happens to the boy, a ; Florida judge has arrogated unto ' herself the gall to order that Elian ! must not be sent back to his father : until after March 6 at least, and to ; order that the father come to the ' United States to argue his right to ' his son or risk losing custody to ' Florida relatives. ,' Reno is right in saying that the ; judge, Rosa Rodriguez, has no' authority in this international dispute, and that anyone who wants ~ to challenge the Immigration and j Naturalization Service's decision < to return Elian must do so in fed- : eral court. ; Rodriguez's arrogance is • matched only by her lack of ethics '. in this case. Armando Gutierrez r the spokesman for the relatives'" who seek to keep Elian in Florida and Gutierrez's wife were paid $63,000 by Rodriguez for helpingher to win her judgeship. Anyone unable to see that she has a conflict of interest and should have recused herself from this case is too dumb to be a judge. Rodriguez's ethical lapse is wor- • risome, but not as dismaying as the willingness of our presidential candidates to put winning Florida above U.S. family rights and inter- ; national law. This ugly business of snatching children and smuggling ; them across national borders got ; so bad that the United Nations • adopted a Convention on the j Rights of the Child. The United States ratified it. But now some • U.S. politicians want Congress to | overlook the kidnapping of Elian > and pass a special law to "legalize" | the snatching and make him a ' U.S. citizen. I It is truly disturbing that ! parental rights and the Cuban ; boy's well-being are being swept ! aside in what .clearly are political i joustings and judicial manipula- i tions. Everything about American i justice is being warped in an anti- | Castro frenzy that is so mindless it > makes it very difficult for us to | argue that "the American way" is | superior to Cuba's. ! Carl T, Rowan is a nationally ! published columnist for North ] America Syndicate Inc.