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Friday, January 28, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
But I Thought . . .
The North Vietnamname, Nixon said Tuesday night, "induced many Americans in the press and the Congress into echoing their propaganda—Americans who could not know they were being falsely used by the enemy to stir up divisiveness in this country."
In other words, he says to me "If you were against the war you were being deluded by the Communists. But now that I have revealed my secrets, I will stay with you per cent and I'll forget all that trouble you've been causing me."
I'm sorry, Mr. President, but I still cannot support your position on it.
You see, I didn't oppose the war because you supported it. I didn't oppose the war because I thought what the Communists were doing in Southeast Asia was right. I didn't oppose the war because I didn't think you were working hard enough for peace.
I opposed the war because I thought what the United States, my country, was doing in Southeast Asia was wrong, terribly wrong.
So you see, my conviction cannot change with the recitation of a plan that has already been a part of several plans made several months and hundreds of lives ago by critics who were wrong to change because the Communists refuse to acknowledge your role as world peacemaker.
For as you talked Tuesday night, the bombs were still dropping. The money that is so desperately needed here at home was still being spent there. The lives that will be so tragic for these children were still being extinguished.
And what the United States, my country, was doing in Southeast Asia was still wrong, terribly wrong.
—Mike Moffet Associate Editor
Midnight Madness
The theoretical purpose of assessing parking tickets to violators of University parking regulations is to protect University zones for the faculty, staff and students designated to use them.
These regulations could do with some softening, for stickered zone occupants do not require 24-hour protection from invaders. And unfortunately, they are best protected after midnight.
Many parking violators now find that their citations have been made out at times when the average zone is home asleep. So who have they hurt?
Why not throw open at least some University zones after 10 p.m. ? It is absurd to suggest that many zones would be in real danger of overflowing at that hour. The ticketing that now is being performed far into
the night seems comically over-
consciously in light of the rampant
unpunished violations of the daytime
hours.
Rules are nice things, but not nice enough to justify their own existence. A student parked in a University zone at midnight has inconvenienced no one. He has afflicted nothing except the rule itself.
Rigidity without reason is difficult to accept. Students who are on campus late at night should be allowed to use University zones. Any decline in ticket funds from such a campus could lead to a by a crackdown on virus violations when it's really needed—during business hours.
—Chip Crews Editor
Two Columnists (Men) Take Aim on "Ms."
From the Left
The first issue of "Ms. The New Magazine for Women" has appeared—almost appeared. Is it to be found in the womb of the most recent New York magazine, neatly reversing the birth process, coming forth from a woman who is at risk of miscarriage; life begins next month. That is putting man in his place.
There are several oddities in the still-umbilical issue—including the fact that the best article it is written by a man. He writes about tough women, articles are often the best in whatever magazine he writes for—and he is describing a tough humane woman (his boss) to a girl who should be on the staff of Ms. , or of any other magazine that can snap her up.
The other animus is revealed in the ecstatic rating given N. Y. Rep. Shirley
Garry Wills
Another thing that puzzles, in this first issue, is the animus against marriage and religion. Can women only be liberated outside both institutions? When the issue ranks presidential candidates, women may McGovern in a tie for among male Democrats. One thing that counts in McCarthy's favor is the fact that he cooks his own bacon in the casserole dish instead of with the fact that he is divorced (a fact nowhere mentioned in the highly favorable description of him—did the editors ever consult their sister Abigail?) A happy marriage is used when Humphrey, but an unhappy one seems quickly to recommend McCarthy.
Chisholm. There is not much they can find to criticize in he—they should have consulted Jack Newfield, who tried unsuccessfully to get her support for his ghetto program against lead poisoning. When Mayor Carl Stokes and his team came in Chicago, Newfield soon had him on the defensive over this important issue.
But even Ms. is not totally happy over Mrs. Chisholm, She, too, is happily married—though the editors are willing to forgive her this, since her husband does not seem to have held her back in the past. But even Ms. has these matters—"her husband cooks."
But here comes that second anismus I spoke of—an animus against religion, which is described as “one vestige of belief in the status quo (which) seems insignificant.” They seem to hold against poor Mrs. Chuisholm the fact that she prays.
These are small things, but they indicate a major weakness in the women's movement. Move in on the term world all at once—including the entire institution of marriage and the whole entity called "motherhood."
But this goes beyond mere strategy, of course: There are many women in need of personal liberation who do not, in their own way, have their husbands or their God. One gets the impression that some feminist leaders think all American women are bright and mobile young writers around them. They want an equal crack at the editor's desk.
Thus, what they seem to resemble the sexual "double standard" is not that men are so unfaithful, but that women are not equally unfaithful. It is true that more women who do not want to be unfaithful, but who resent social complicity in male unfaithfulness as part of our system for rewarding aggressive acquaintive and competitive behaviors, that not only forgives but compares them to behavior as somehow "masculine." The women who oppose this deserve a voice, and I hope that—as the magazine grows—Ms. provides with it, and finds ways to make marriage and those allies in the struggle, not their enemies.
Copyright, 1971, Universal Press Syndicate
From the Right
Letters Policy
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should include the name of the person to whom the letter is addressed; according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Students must provide their name, year in school and home town; faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name.
WASHINGTON—The mail brings the first issue of Ms., the new magazine of the Women's Liberation Movement. I greet it with a sigh.
This is not the proper greeting, even person who writes for a living, at some time in his or her life, has been parent or midwife to a newborn publication. Such a bringing forth is a fragile enterprise, fraught with peril. Mortality rates are depressingly high. Once the craft craft is launched, the custom is to mark the occasion with cheeryries of borne pageage. Right on! You can read and write about the bone-tired nights of editing and proof reading, one willingly summons an exhortation for Gloria Steinem and her colleagues. Right on! Good luck!
Let there is something inexpressibly sad about this magazine. If this first issue is a fair a sample of what is meant by women's liberation, a great many readers who are neither involved nor indifferent will react not with love but only with cripple! And these are 'liberated women?'
A single tone vibrates through the whole of this first edition. It is C-sharp on an untouched piano. This is the note of palatine, of bitchiness, of nervous fingernails screeching across a blackboard. The feminists of this enterprise are not daughters of Antigone or Lysistrata. They evidence nothing of the sorrow that comes from the heart or the laughter that wells from the gut. They do not cry; they merely mute them. They include a fluent self-pity. They equate the meaning of high tragedy with the picking of a husband's soaks. Dear God, the agony of it all! Dishes! Ditty dishes!
Is this what women's liberation is all about? There must be more to it than this. To judge from the first issue of Ms., this whole "movement" is little more than a threnody of complaint. Women are "treated like servants and children." Wives are "dependent and dependent," liberation view the home as a prison. As a cage! And they want out. Out! Out! Out!
One article, by way of example, earnestly advocates the drafting of premarital "contracts," spelling out the commitments of husband and wife. It is suggested that initial contracts be for a relatively short period of time, subject to "renegotiation" thereafter. One such contract is printed verbatum and copyrighted, as a model for admiration. It provides, in part, that any children born of said marriage shall be love and tucked-in and read-to on Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights by the said mother of such infant child, and on
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights by the said father of such infant child, leaving one to suppose that if said child of such marriage awakes on a Tuesday night and cries for its mother, the child shall be informed that the contract prohibits the attention of such child. A union steward will be summoned. As for laundry, in Clause 11, "wife strips beds, husband remakes them."
This first issue of Ms. Breakes of a selfishness that begs description. It is like looking at the slides of carcinoma in a cancer magazine. One author wonders how to argue with husbands: "How do we argue with the constant
James J.
Kilpatrick
demands to bolster and boost egest grown fat and fragile, with the blocks and jealousies and petty meanness that drain off our energies?" What is the root of her own petty meanness? What should you feel that he should have done it instead.
These poor women! These poor, empty, pitiful women! They seem never to have understood that marriage can be, and often is, a beautiful and loving sharing by which man and woman combine their skills to produce a union that is more than the sum of its parts. It seems beyond their comprehension that a woman could preserve her integrity as a woman and still enjoy the role of wife, mother, and homemaker. What this sad magazine requires, at the outset, is a more descriptive name, closer to the nature of the movement it serves. Call it, perhaps, as one possibility, Barren.
Copyright 1971 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
A Letter On Buses
To the Editor:
I would agree with the UDK editorial of December 7, 1972 that "the Senate subsidy is only a measure, not an essential weak answer to continuing bus service . . ." I cannot see, however, the University of Kansas footing the burden of university students of Lawrence.
Of course I would also agree that not having bus service is a "vicious circle" for our poorer Lawrence citizens, but money to subsidize such transportation should come totally from the city
and not the University, Money is already tragically scarce so that it would be illogical for KU to start taking the city's services for funding public services such as buses, streets, sewers, etc.
The Student Senate should take a second, more positive step through their newly formed committee to assure continued bus service for students at KU; they should be the immediate concern.
It would be a new approach to an aging problem if the Student Senate would go ahead and allow the Lawrence Bus Company to go out of business (as they seem so determined to do) and formulate Transportation System Two or Transportation Law of the Lawrence Bus Co. buses could be purchased and a separate system could be established to serve only KU students who would finance these buses
through the activity fee. A two dollar raise in the activity fee per student would probably be more than enough to be self-sustaining. Spending $13,184 for temporary service until March seems a waste since one or two buses could have been purchased.
Admission to a bus would then be free upon presentation of a KU ID and students could take part in the course. Students system, anytime, and anywhere.
Student drivers could even be hired. The possibilities are limitless to avoid wasting money and the costs of hiring a driver literally cannot afford to be closed minded and bland enough to suggest flushing away the water. Let's get the bus controversies care of soon and for good.
Jim Smith
Overland Park freshman
Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff."
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