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Wednesday, July 18, 1973
University Daily Kansan
Watergate Provides Classic Rerun of Greek Drama
From Page One
ACTORS ARE SPELLOBUND by wat-
taching tyros convert their
powers of truth.
"MARTHA? SHE'S IN HEAVEN LIKE ALL ANGELS."
In the cast of characters parading before Watergate's cameras, one watches the facial expressions of the women centrates on a facial reaction and tries to find the line between the practiced and the real. Instinctively, one knows that, like many other women in the choices of how they wish to appear.
On this public performance of their privately reached conclusions depends the self-concept they wish to present. Like a therapist, practice in practicing before mirrors and intimates.
The hearings' essential concern, however, is to elicit the unhearsed reaction, the unguarded instant, the giveaway reflex. And such instants are professional actors' most cherished desideratum.
FURTHERING THIS DRAMA'S minute-to-minute sense of expectancy are the senators and their counsels. To the viewer, these men facing the witnesses represent us. We actively wish for them to ask the questions that occur to us.
As if by ESP, they are acting for us in the very variety of their attitudes, now calmly persistent, now tensely angered, now voicing for us that "why?" which grips us all, in the caucus room and beyond, so persistently.
This immediacy, in terms of the 60s, is a “happening” and beyond any devised by Andy Warhol or Clas Oldenburg. Their works are remarkably similar, such solidity of setting, the Senate Caucus Room of larger-than-life proportions, a Romanesque architectural form encrusted with sculpture.
But this "happening" adada timeless atmosphere of ritual in the measured form with which the senatorial committee phrases its questions. There is unichic, in the male, is rewarded with the leading role of those representing us in this confrontation.
THE SETTING SUGGESTS a sweeping span of dramatic history. At one moment we might be seated on the hillside of Epidura watching a conflict devised by Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, intent on sonorous probabilities.
But almost all of us watch through an electronic tube that replaces such characters as the gods messenger Mercury, with instantaneous communications.
Furthering the sense of Greek drama are the network commentators who remind, up un, upravel and warn—business-suited Cassandras—of eventualities to come. In the cast of characters these men would have been listed as Chorus.
After Chorus has introduced each scene comes the cast of characters, and what august titles they bear: "Assistant to the President," "Counsel to the President," "Special Consultant to the President," all "ex" to be sure.
IN LONG-TESTED TRADITION we first met the lesser fry, "servant to the Prince," "a sergent at arms," "Gentlemen entreat on the Duke." Only after they have
set the exposition are we to meet the major
trends in music and dance. The construction
is entirely classical.
Lessmanly a minor figure, the messenger of Greek drama was a device of some dignity, serving the playwright for elisions of action and portents to come. At first he had no active role, but in the development of drama he came to play a part in the action.
The more astute writers of courtroom
Phase 4: No Piece of Cake
From Page One
closed because of the freeze and 44 others have slowed down.
businesses and 23 were meat packers,
primarily processors of pork products.
Of those closed, about half were small
There have been controls on pork and beef prices since March 29.
Kalmbach Testifies
From Page One
Kalmbach said he thought the money was for humanitarian purposes. Dean earlier told the Times that he believed
Ulsenwich, a former New York policeman and White House investigator, is due to be arrested on charges of fraud.
passed on to Anthony Ulascev for
distribution to Watergate defendants and
guarders.
THE TAPE OF THE Kalmbach conversation with Ehrlichman came into the committee's possession when it subpoenaed Ehrlichman's relevant materials.
Kalmbach also told the committee he never told Nixon about his mounting suspicions of Watergate scandal because he thought it would be presumptuous to go to the President with what he termed rumor and sixth-sense suspicions of wrongdoing, which had nonetheless caused him to drop out of the fund-raising operation.
The committee also sought Tuesday to ask President Nixon for tape recordings of presidential conversations bearing on the Watergate affair.
AND BY UNAMOUS vote, the committee agreed to ask Nixon again for all
Judge Delays Parity Hearing With Vacation
A declaratory judgment on the referendum petition requesting a vote on parity pay for city firemen and policemen will be made next month.
On June 25, Lawrence City Attorney Milton Allen filed the request for a declaratory judgment in Division II of the Douglas County District Court. The request asks a court ruling on the legality of a referendum on equal pay for employees of two city departments. Pacific Beach will decide whether the county is an administrative or legislative one.
According to Alvin Samuels, president of the Fire Fighters Local Union 1596, District Court Judge James Paddock is on vacation and the date will be set until after he returns Aug. 1.
If Paddock rules it a legislative matter, then they be subject to a referendum vote.
John McArdle, secretary-treasurer of the Firefighters Union, filed an answer to the city's petition for a declaratory judgment that pay parity is a legislative matter.
Samuel's told Tuesday that his union did not plan any further action.
"It's strictly up to the courts now," Samuels said.
presidential papers that may shed light on its investigation.
"May we hear from you at your earliest convenience!" a letter to the President
Presidential Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler indicated earlier in the day that the President regarded the tapes in the same manner as the rest of his team, already bad refused to give the committee.
Nixon has invoked the doctrine of executive privilege to prevent release of presidential papers and it was announced Tuesday that he had invoked it again.
WHEN THE WATERGATE committee convened for its afternoon session, chairwoman Mary Farrand noted that President had forbidden Secret Service officials to testify "concerning matters observed or learned while performing patient or in duties at late White House.
Hidden devices that record presidential conversations in his offices and on his telephones were installed and are maintained by the Secret Service.
The counsel then read a letter, dated Monday, from the President to Treasury Secretary Shultz, directing Shultz to refuse to permit Secret Service personnel to testify in White House matters. The protective agency is part of the Treasury Department.
The committee service subpeneded Alfred Wong, the Secret Service official responsible for the taping. Wong appeared Tuesday for a hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Howard Baker Jr., R-Tenn., vice chairman.
HE WAS ACCOMPANIED by the general counsel for the Treasury Department who said the President had directed him to inculcate exclusive privilege to bar Wang's testimony.
The existence of the tape recordings was disclosed Monday by Alexander Butterfield, a former White House aide, who told the committee they had been installed to compile an historic record of the Nixon administration. He said other participants in conversations with the President were unaware they were being recorded.
On another front, it was learned Tuesday that special prosecutor Archibald Cox also plans to ask for the presidential brief. Separation of powers would not bar Cox from obtaining presidential files since the prosecutor is part of the executive branch.
The tapes presumably could prove or disprove allegations made before the committee by ousted White House counsel John Dean III. He testified the President knew of and participated in the attempted cover-up of the Watergate scandal.
ERVIN SAID THE committee decided to write to the President in the hope of settling a dispute.
IN MANHATTAN, KAN., the board of directors of the Kansas Farm Bureau asked President Nixon to exempt agriculture from price controls under Phase 4.
the bureau asked to new economic tools be temporary and contain visions allowing processors and users to pass along rising costs.
Dean 'based his allegations on his accounts of meetings he had with Nixon in his White House office. According to Butler, those meetings routinely would have been taped.
Acute Gas Shortage Over Says Auto Club Survey
WASHINGTON (AP) The most severe period of the gasoline shortage appears to be over, a government fuel expert and the American Automobile Association said
But a Treasury Department spokesman said the relaxing of the shortage would not affect government plans to impose fuel expectations, expected to be announced this week.
"For the next couple of years, we're going to be short of fuel," he said. "The daily fuel supply won't change decision on whether we do or don't have an allocation program."
An AAA weekly gasoline survey indicated that despite the generally adequate supply,
snortages may develop in individual areas. "We're optimizing the worst over is," said James West, a staff assistant to the sales department in the Department of the Interior. "We're at the highest peak of the gasoline demand, but the supplies are managing."
shortages may develop in individual area
The AAA's check of gasoline stations this week indicated a slight increase in the number of gasoline stations operating normally.
The national survey found that 47 per cent of the stations polled were operating normally, up from 46 per cent last week. The number of polling stations per cent, down from 10 per cent a week ago;
WASHINGTON (AP)—The Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday it is issuing a complaint against the nation's eight largest petroleum companies alleging they have participated in anti-competitive practices.
FTC Suspects Oil Monopolies
Among the allegations in the complaint were that the eight refused to sell gasoline and other refined petroleum products to independent marketers, which have been closing large numbers of gasoline stations in the current shortage.
The FTC complaint said the eight firms have monopolized refining and maintained a non-competitive market structure in their business activities, statistics and parts of the mid-continent area.
In this messenger role we watch John Dean III, portraying merely the messenger in this drama, one of the one of this drama's mysteries is the possibility that Dean's role is not merely that of a messenger but more pivotal, that he may be the object of interest we become aware, be acting a dual role.
The corporations named in the FTC complaint were Atlantic Richfield Co., Exxon Corp., Gulf Oil Corp., Mobil Oil Corp., the Standard Oil companies of California and Indiana, Shell Oil Corp., and Texaco.
drama (and this, in excluis, is courtroom drama). have used the messenger trickly.
stereo components
THE MESSENGER'S CONTEMPORANEITY was eloquently reflected when Dean spoke of putting a dictation machine to the receiving end of a phone to record a potentially revealing conversation. No need here for the eavesdropper, once hidden in shadows, who later will appear at just the opportune time.
Just as the stage phone long ago did away with a playwright's need for servants to set the exposition, the eavesdropper, too, is replaced electronically.
Another quality of "Watergate" as drama is its almost reckless use of a technique which has vanished from our dramas, the "sustained scene." One of the great tests of acting, sustained scenes have been victims of our age of interruptions.
FILM, THEN TV, raised that nagging topic, "attention span." How capable are people of concentrated attention, asked the MPA's Eric Johnson when he introduced the wiggle test." This device whereby a viewer turned a knob in one direction when it was being pressed or in either way when he bored was officially dropped but its influence has lingered.
Sansui
The general attention span has been scientifically deemed damally low, yet one of the fascinations of "Watergate" lies in its august contempt for limited attention
A few months ago Arthur Miller was remarking how severely playwrighting has been affected by the assumed brevity of the attention span. That TV, usually so suspect of anything over 90 seconds to a topic, should be spreading itself on "Watergate"; a sustained scene is one of the numberless provocative Capitol Hill sidelights.
THERE ARE MINOR but subtly engrossing thetheatrical details. Instead of the boyishy smiling, blondish Dean Dean III revealed in his formal photographs of only a few months ago, we are presented with a quite different, unsmilling face, professorial spectacles under dark hair which gives no gleams of gold.
an actor, long experienced to the lights of television, muttered "dyded." There is a dress designer in New York now meaning that he created Mrs. Dean's reversible neckline, which she wore in stock. "It will take weeks to get them out," he moaned to an inquiring client. Not at all incidentally, there is the role of so pertinent in today's con-
Except for an early scene's ideally efficient secretary played by Sally Harmony, (cast Joan Crawford or Rosalind Russell in blonde wigs), women have been visible but
SEATED IN A CHAIR, ceremonially positioned, they are staircase helpmates without lines and garbed as exhibits of the body. Their presence will look constantly alert and consumed with interest. Is this the first time they have been allowed in on the truth? Or have they helped create carefully rehearsed characterization guesses only from snippets of intention.
Still, as with all drama, the script itself is the major consideration. Although the August theme of power-in-high-places suggests the classic dramas, its presently unfamiliar stage could turn this into the only focused-innocence called melodrama.
This, before what amounts to Act II begins, is a conceivable eventuality for Capital Hill's unfinished production. A clue to how serious this falls is in its so-far-revealed characters. They lack that element called empathy. It is difficult to imagine ourselves in their places. The very purpose of viewing drama is to put our minds into the positions of protagonists. Yet who can long to be one of these spineless nobodies?
Yet, it is too soon to categorize. Does a blinded Oedipus symbolize the visible but shrouded central character? Perhaps we should not underestimate the presence of the tragic, unseeing Oedipus of Sophocles inescapably recurs during our absorption with Capitol Hill's "Watergate," a measurering mixture of ancient forms, bawdows and unchanging human nature.
THEIR GRUBBY power plays, their evasions and their bland dismissal of moral standards are the most depressing aspect of "Waterate" as drama.
There is an insensitivity that makes one shudder. They speak only because they have been trapped. They have no concern for their own safety or the saddened者 not but themselves. Higher thoughts are beyond their imaginations. That such mediocrities have had such responsibilities blows the mind. Through these experiences we be witnessing the shoddest melodia.
T
Local U.N. Chapter Looks for Recruits
The Douglas County Chapter of the United Nations Association is working with local residents to show that the United Nations is in charge of the president of the association, said Tuesday.
Stene said a booth would be opened Thursday morning at 8th and Mass., to distribute informative material on the United Nations: bulletins, fact sheets and membership blanks for those interested in the U.S. County Chapter of the U.N. Association.
Stone said the association would loan fittimets and slides to members on a monthly basis.
She said she was particularly interested in having foreign students from KU present at the booth on Thursday, if possible in their own language, they could be part of the day-long activities.
Those interested should call her at 843
1983 immediately, she said.