RUST COMMENTARY: SEMO MEN'S BASKETBALL TIES FOR FIRST IN CONFERENCE

Southeast Missouri State University Coach RON SHUMATE won his 300th college career coaching victory Saturday with a 2-point victory over Eastern Kentucky State. And with his 301st victory Monday, SEMO finds itself tied for FIRST PLACE in the Ohio Valley Conference.

Shumate is now 301-162 in his 16th season at Southeast and is 440-223 in his 23rd year as a collegiate head coach. Shumate entered the season ranked 26th nationally in Division I for victories with 433. He is 37th nationally in winning percentage at .669.

As I wrote at the start of the season, this year's team has some excellent talent and when they got to know each other's playing style and Shumate's system they'd be an excellent team.

Shumate saw it from the beginning and called it earlier than the team performed for him in their opening games. Early fan disappointment is changing to appreciation for the excellent DIVISION I basketball we are getting to witness.

With only one senior on the squad ... the coming games should reward the fans ... and the coaching staff ... for the years in the wilderness spent waiting for NCAA DIVISION I tournament eligibility and the assistance to future recruiting.

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Congratulations to Gov. Mel Carnahan, Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson, Attorney General Jay Nixon, Secretary of State Bekki Cook and Treasurer Bob Holden on being sworn in to run their state offices for the next four years.

Though I expect some or all might be campaigning for other offices in the future, they have the rare privilege and opportunity to perform well in their present offices for the citizens of Missouri -- offices in which they all have previous experience.

Missouri is one of only six states that the Senate and House and the majority of all of the statewide offices are controlled by one party (the Democratic Party). Nationwide the Democrats hold control of 20 legislatures, the Republican party 18, 11 are split and Nebraska is non-partisan.

Thirty-two of the nation's governors are Republican.

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The VISIONAIRE single-engine business jet performed its first test flight Nov. 16 ... and has completed at least four more to date of the 40 planned test flights.

This is the company that had narrowed its plant site selection to Cape Girardeau and Ames, Iowa. It selected Ames when that community came up with more money.

Although it's got a way to go for certification and production, Visionaire's 10-year-old dream is moving positively towards fulfillment.

With 280 investors and 52-plus orders booked for $80 million premised upon achieving their goals and production dates, my hat's off to all involved. I hope they make it.

This is what risk and capitalism and America is all about. Let's not tax their spirit out of existence.

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"If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." -- Benjamin Franklin.

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It's been reported that the Cape WAL-MART has a dedicated associate originally from the Bahamas ... who now lives in Cairo, Ill., ... When his car wouldn't start recently, he walked and jogged to work doing the 35-mile trip in about seven hours (3 a.m. to 10 a.m.).

Incidentally, SHOPLIFTING is costing retailers $10 billion a year, and the cost is rising 5 percent a year. Report shoplifters ... They increase the price of goods for those who pay.

The average theft was $57, while the most common goods recovered in arrests were cigarettes, athletic shoes, licensed and brand-name apparel, designer jeans and underwear.

According to DISCOUNT STORE NEWS, 1997 marks the 35th anniversary of the discount store industry. It was 1962 when the big three discounters all opened their first stores ... and all three have locations in Cape along with some later startups. Nationally, K-MART opened its first store March 1, 1962, TARGET May 1 and WAL-MART July 2 of the same year.

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In the second and third quarters of last year, consumer installment debt rose to 11.2 percent of personal income, a level not seen since the third quarter of 1974. One outcome: Nearly 300,000 personal bankruptcy filings were recorded in the third quarter of 1996, a 31 percent increase over the third quarter of 1995.

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I rarely agree with GLORIA STEINEM, but the following are some excerpts from a New York Times column in which she puts down LARRY FLYNT, HUSTLER magazine and the overtouted movie as a "hustle":

Larry Flynt the Movie is even more cynical than Larry Flynt the Man. "The People vs. Larry Flynt" claims that the creator of Hustler magazine is a champion of the First Amendment, deserving our respect.

That isn't true. (Nor are many things portrayed in the movie.)

A pornographer is not a hero, no more than a publisher of Ku Klux Klan books or a Nazi on the Internet, no matter what constitutional protection they secure. And Flynt didn't secure much.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell sued him over a Hustler parody that depicted Falwell in a drunken, incestuous encounter with his mother. Flynt's victory only confirmed the right to parody public figures and prevented plaintiffs from doing an end run around the First Amendment by claiming they suffered "emotional distress."

The Nazis who marched in Skokie, Ill., and the Klansman who advocated violence in Ohio achieved more substantive First Amendment victories than did Flynt. Yet no Hollywood movie would glamorize a Klansman or a Nazi as a champion of free speech, much less describe him in studio press releases as "the eras's last crusader," which is how Columbia Pictures describes Flynt.

In this film, produced by Oliver Stone and directed by Milos Forman, Hustler is depicted as tacky at worst, and maybe even honest for showing full nudity. What's left out are the magazine's images of women being beaten, tortured and raped, women subject to degradations from bestiality to sexual slavery.

So, no, I am not grateful to Flynt for protecting my freedom, as the film and its enthusiasts suggest I should be. No more than I would be to a racist of fascist publisher whose speech is protected by the Constitution.

Suppose Flynt specialized in such images as a young African-American man trussed up like a deer and tied to the luggage rack of a white hunter's car. Or a nude white man being fed into a meat grinder. (Those are some of the milder ways in which Hustler portrays women.)

Would Stone bowdlerize and flatter that kind of a man too? Would Harrelson, who supports animal rights and protests the cutting of trees, pose happily next to that Larry Flynt? Would Forman defend that film by citing his memories of censorship under the Nazis?

What if the film praised an anti-Semitic publisher? Would it be nominated for five Golden Globe awards? Would there be cameos by Donna Hanover Giuliani, the wife of New York City's mayor; Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor; Judge D'Army Bailey of the Memphis Circuit Court; or James Carville, President Bill Clinton's former political consultant? I don't think so.

The truth is, if Flynt had published the same cruel images even of animals, this movie would never have been.

Fortunately, each of us has the First Amendment right to protest". -- Gloria Steinhem.

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White House Sees Plot

A fascinating document has leaked out of the White House. It is a 331-page report put together by the White House counsel's office, in conjunction with the Democratic National Committee, alleging that a conspiracy exists among right-wing groups to manipulate the news against Bill and Hillary Clinton. The document claims that a few conservative foundations pour money into publications like the American Spectator which then put it on the Internet where it is picked up by British tabloids. Then three newspapers -- the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times and the New York Post report on the stories, congressional committees hold hearings and finally this "conspiracy" forces the liberal Washington Post and New York Times to repeat the anti-Clinton publicity.

Forgive me, but apparently someone at the White House has started inhaling! You would have to go back to Richard Nixon to find this kind of paranoia. Repeated independent studies have demonstrated consistent liberal bias in the media coverage. In fact, even today the White House conspiracy report was ignored in The Washington Post and the New York Times. A report like this leaking out of a conservative White House would have been on the front page of every paper in the country along with charges that the First Amendment's freedom of the press was under attack! -- Washington Update.

~Gary Rust is the president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspaper.