OTAHKIANS MERIT OUR SUPPORT

The Southeast Missouri State University Otahkians of coach Ed Arnzen make us all proud. What a distinction it is for our community for the Otahkians to bring the nation's Final Four to the Show Me Center this weekend. The 4,000 who turned out for Saturday's game helped to make that possible. Here's hoping for all those and many more for Friday's and Saturday's games, as the girls drive for their first-ever national championship.

A fine showing this weekend, with good hospitality extended to NCAA officials and visiting teams, and who knows? Maybe they'll bring this headliner event back here in future years.

* * * * *

A beautifully decorated Arena Building will be the scene. The fifth annual Cape Girardeau Cancer Gala is just over two weeks away. Saturday evening, April 6 is the night for the annual evening of fun, dining and dancing to a live band to raise money for cancer research. Contact Chairmen David and Sonya McKinney, or the Cancer Society office (334-9197) for an invitation or more information.

Also, a 1991 Mercury Capri, which is on display at West Park Mall, will be raffled off at the Gala. The car is partially donated by Ford Groves; chances on it are $100; no more than 500 tickets (if that many) will be sold, enhancing your chances; and a ticket buyer need not be present to win. Call Bob Neff at 335-2600 for a chance on the car.

* * * * *

Throughout her long and illustrious career, Metropolitan Opera star Beverly Sills has thrilled countless audiences with her renditions of the world's great music. Like most artists she is a fierce defender of artistic freedom. Yet, the famous singer is deeply worried by what she sees and hears as a trend toward obscenity in the arts and its effects on the youth of our country.

In an address to the prestigious Alfred E. Smith annual dinner in New York recently, Miss Sills voice her concerns frankly and explicitly, citing shocking examples of current hard rock vulgarity. "We have laws today to tell us that we can't smoke in certain restaurants and on airplanes," she said. "But you can freely sing, if you'll pardon the expression, about the joys of violating a woman's body in monstrous inhuman detail on a commercial recording because it's a constitutional right."

"And who gave 12-year-olds the money to buy this garbage?" she demanded. "We do. We adults tell them that such pastimes are okay and that these recording `artists', and I use the phrase loosely, are good role models for them." Miss Sills continued, "I used to be a performing artist myself. But we're growing dangerously out of touch with our consciences and with our kids. We don't need more laws to be enacted. We need to be outraged and worried about our kids."

The Alfred E. Smith Dinner is usually attended by many leading liberals and is regarded as a rather staid affair. Beverly Sills was not finished speaking her mind. She added, "Our kids and we as well are relentlessly and systematically desensitized to almost every form of disgusting behavior. Youngsters think that freedom means doing your own thing, and because we have set no standards for them and give them no proper sense of values, the lowest common denominator of human behavior doesn't shock them. Their responsibilities and obligations to their fellow human beings simply are not being taught to them."

"... One of the great moral questions of our time is just when artistic freedom becomes a license to steal to steal the minds of our young and fill them with the filth that robs life itself of the beauty and inspiration of true artistic expression."

Having retired from her magnificent singing career, Beverly Sills has much inspiration yet to offer us.