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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, January 12, 1968
Sen. McCarthy's motives
A few weeks ago Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., announced he would be a candidate for President of the United States on a platform of opposition to the administration's war policy in Vietnam.
With the administration's Vietnam policy still unchanged today, McCarthy is still campaigning and apparently intends to remain in the race for the 1968 Democratic Presidential nomination.
McCarthy's decision to challenge Johnson in the 1968 election has created some chaos in the Democratic Party. This chaos, in turn, has led to a question that has been asked repeatedly in the last few weeks. This question is: Why is McCarthy opposing Johnson?
The question has been answered repeatedly with the explanation that McCarthy's opposition to the war in Vietnam brought him into the race, but it has also been answered with the explanation that McCarthy entered the race only because of personal resentment over incidents in the 1964 Democratic convention when it appeared that President Johnson might offer McCarthy the vice-presidential nomination.
The former explanation seems to have more credence than the latter.
It seems inconceivable that a man of McCarthy's stature, 10 years in the House and a
member of the U.S. Senate since 1958, would let a personal grudge or personal differences between President Johnson and himself influence his action or behavior in an issue of such magnitude.
On the other hand, McCarthy's opposition to the war in Vietnam seems a plausible reason to oppose Johnson in the forthcoming election. McCarthy's opponents say he has given no concrete and definite answers to questions about Vietnam; for example, how McCarthy would end the war. Indeed, opponents say McCarthy's alternate solutions are ambiguous, vague, and contradictory.
At any rate, McCarthy's announced candidacy for President seems to result from his concern over our involvement in Vietnam and not because of personal differences with Johnson. McCarthy's opponents are attacking him as a man and his relationship with Johnson and not his announced platform, as should be the case in politics. Perhaps McCarthy has more potential power and sense in his arguments, and presents a larger challenge to Johnson than his opponents would care to admit.
A solution to Vietnam has to be found. Perhaps McCarthy is the man to find it. His opponents should at least listen to what he has to say.
— Sam Neff
Letter to the Editor
Reader criticizes editorial
To the Editor:
I must say that thanks to Miss DeBonis' "What Whites Did to Negroes," I have really been awakened. If it hadn't been have been for her wonderful moral lesson I would have gone on, who knows, for years without realizing how I've sinned against the American Negro. I'm sure Miss DeBonis must feel that her responsibilty to the students of KU to show us The Light and to make us realize what we free Americans really are has been fulfilled.
She really made a lot of sense when she used words like "democracy," "equal," and "dignity" and turned around and said that "Negroes must be given more than the legal rights. . . ." Maybe, if her statement is correct, it pays to be an American Negro. And when she said that "whatever is vile and despicable" (assuming there is something) "in the Negro is the product of a history that
began with vile and dispicable whites capturing and selling black men as slaves," it made me want to cut my wrists, because how could I keep on living, knowing that my ancestors must have passed on those vile and dispicable traits to me and made我 responsible for Detroit and Newark. How can I live with myself knowing that those ancestors' blood flows in my veins?
But what struck home most of all was when she told us that we shouldn't judge men as men—black or white—but simply realize that "whatever the Negro is today is the responsibility of the white man." And she added that "The American Negro is his creature," meaning mine. No one is my creature, and if I were Negro, I would certainly take offense to her lifting all Negrees together as creatures and telling me someone else is responsible for me. She seems to forget that an American
I SAY HE WAS A PANG POOR ENGLISH INSTRUCTOR—IT'S OBVIOUS HE WASN'T ABLE TO LEARN ME NUTRITION."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Tom Blair
Topeka junior
Negro is a person, to be dealt with and judged like any other person, respected for his own merits, not those of anyone else's—be it his own race or not. To say that he is the white man's creature and that all whites are born with a moral obligation to take care of them is to be completely absurd and ridiculous. I'm sorry, but I can't quite feel that I'm the one to blame for Detroit and Newark.
"Quiet! How Can Hanoi Hear With Your Damn Cooing?"
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Kansan movie review
'I, a Woman': Are you serious?
By Scott Nunley
Mac Ahlberg's "I, a Woman" is a funny film. From beginning to end, its perfect parody of the serious Swedish movie is without lapse.
Director Ahlberg, unhappily, seems to have been under the impression that he was producing a serious Swedish movie. Clearly his monumental failure was divinely inspired, for what other agency could have created such a camp bit of the year?
Of course, some time could be spent tracing Ahlberg's sources. A paperback primer to Freud must have been distributed to the scriptwriters with directions to skim a few chapters. The camera crews must have been forced to watch "Dear John" run backwards and through smoked glass. Or perhaps someone's mother was frightened by an Ibsen play.
That still leaves raves to the casting department. Miss Essy Persson certainly earns the uprearious laughs she gets. But the man who thought of a brunette Swede to symbolize the "dark" side of female nature—there is a true camp genius.
Booking "I, a Woman" would be perfect preparation for Bergman's new "Persona." In this distortion, the true intentions of the Swedish cinema can be painlessly absorbed and ridiculed simultaneously. Thus enlightened and purged, a Midwestern audience might even sit spell-struck through "Wild Strawberries." Pressing booking engagements do not, of course, permit such a scheme. But the KU Film Society could keep it in mind for a Swedish festival, or apply the same principle before showing other serious films, such as Saturday night's Antonioni ("Eclipse," 7:30, 303 Bailev).
There is the slim possibility that a few moviegoers might still have mistaken "I. a
Woman" for a sober attempt. The thoughtfully extruded seduction of the young nurse might almost have been mistaken for a purposeful study of female sexuality. But once the "wages of sin is whoredom" morality begins to beat heavily through the last half of the film, the parody becomes obvious. Bathetic is an interesting term for the pseudo-Christian guilt which Essy Persson so brilliantly spoofs. The hilarious contrast with the earlier moment of seriousness provides just the refreshing cleansing necessary for the viewer before returning him to movies like "Winter Light."
It would be possible to praise this wonderful parody at great length. Nearly every gloomy scene, every tricky camera shot, every agonized face is a gem of inept filmmaking. The script is hideous beyond all bounds of admiration: the most incongruous, the most deflating lines have been inserted at the precise moments of greatest expectations. The horrible sound track grinds on in imitation of those violin pieces that will be at once familiar to the viewer of so many Swedish films, while with libertine economy the violin itself becomes a symbol of incestual rousings!
Only a courageous man would tackle the film's spoof of symbolism in its entirety, but it seems safe enough to judge that the whole motion picture was conceived of as an adolescent daydream occurring within the mind of a sleeping 14-year-old girl who was never shown on camera. The seduction by a father-figure, the romances with sailors and doctors, the final rape—but this is taking it all seriously.
On the way from the theatre, a young man observed to his date that although "I, a Woman" was a great comedy, it was perhaps a bit too early for the skin flicks to start. Maybe he was right.