KANSAN Comment Who were the freaks? By MIKE SHEARER Kansan Arts and Reviews Editor Who were the freaks? If the closing decade belongs entirely to men like John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., then just how do we explain Molotov cocktails crashing through store windows, how do we explain breasts bloated with silicone and seen through see-through blouses, how do we explain Lester Maddox's ax handle, how do we explain the hard-sought ecstasy of drugs and its sometime agonizing effects and how do we explain the success of "The Flying Nun" type of television? Who were the freaks? Maybe only one part of the decade was started by Kennedy's beeeping that we ask what we could do for our country. Maybe only one part of the decade was defined when King told us he had a dream. Maybe Kennedy and King were the freaks. Maybe he real sense of the decade began when Hugh Hefner left his wife in 1959 and began the new decade in his new isolated madhouse with the circular, rotating bed. Maybe the decade was really defined when Phyllis Diller said she accomplished her hairdo (she calls it a hair-don't) by combing the bleached mess with an electric toothbrush. Maybe Hefner and Miss Diller weren't really freaks. Maybe they help understand the neuroses and the dirt under our national fingernails better than our unrepresentative heroes. Maybe we'd better remember the minor characters in the great off-Broadway show of the 1960's, because all too soon they will have slipped from thought and been passed by scribbling historians. Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was Tiny Tim, forever blowing kisses and explaining himself by saying, "I make the best of the way I am." And so was Mme. Ngo Dinh Hu, the Dragon Lady, who held a mass for her deceased daughter and served her 30 invited mourners gin fizzes, Italian wine and roast lamb. Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's But so was Eartha Kitt, who disrupted a supercilious White House luncheon for 50 society women to discuss "What Citizens Can Do to Insure Safe Streets." "There's a war going on and Americans don't know why," the saucy singer told Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson in a voice symbolically filled with vehemence. "Boys I know across the nation feel it doesn't pay to be a good guy when a record can keep you out." Later, she said, "It was like eating cake and drinking tea, the nice little ladies with their nice little ideas for nice little things to come about for a nice little world, filled with nice little flowers and nice little trees." And so was draft dodger David Harris, husband of peace crusading Joan Baez, who said, "I find it quite honorable to be a criminal at this point in history. It means more to me than all my Boy Scout merit badges." Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was presidential candidate Dick Gregory, who charged America's government with crimes of war and racism and pooh-poohed talk about curbing crime by saying, "When the criminal speaks of how he is going to solve crime, this nation is in deep trouble." And so was George Wallace, the darling of Southern reactionaries, who said, "When I see the Confederate flag flying in the breeze, I get a lump in my throat." Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was George Harrison of the Beatles, who visited San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury and grinned at newsmen from behind heart-shaped colored glasses and said, "If it's all like this, it's too much." And so was Pat Boone, who threw off his Mr. Clean reputation from the 1950's to be seduced by a bareback rider in a cheap circus movie and helped lead the way to freer sexual expression in the arts. Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was Andy Warhol, whose Campbell soup cans simply seemed more appropriate to the decade than Michelangelo's Pieta or da Vinci's Mona Lisa—both of which visited America in the decade. And so was David Merrick, who produced the longest-run musical—"Hello, Dolly"—and set off a dispute in 1964 over whether the song from the play would be converted into "Hello, Barry" or "Hello, Lyndon." Lyndon won the song and a hello from the voters; Barry won a good-bye. Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was crusty old Harry Truman, who had a wonderful quote for every occasion. Of Eisenhower, Truman said, "The only trouble with him was he had a lot of damn fool Republicans around." (The chief "damn fool Republican" was later to become president.) Of Lyndon Johnson's presidency, he said, "The regular Democrats will go right down the line to re-elect the President—unless some damn fool splits them." (The chief "damn fool" who did split them was Eugene McCarthy, who turned out to be a fascinating loser in 1968.) And so was Teddy Kennedy, who found a $3 parking ticket on the window of his ill-parked Imperial in 1964 and later found himself embroiled in another controversy when, in 1969, his car carried a young woman to her death. Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so were the millions of drug users, who tripped across the nation with a variety of thrillers, from pot to LSD. But youth weren't the only ones who turned on; Cary Grant's wife divorced him because he used LSD regularly, she said. Henry and Clare Booth Luce admitted using a small amount of LSD, and tone-deaf Luce said he had not only heard "marvelous music" with the drug but he also "conducted an imaginary orchestra" in his cactus garden. And so was Madalyn Murray, who succeeded in having prayers removed from public schools and escorted herself through crowds of angry Christians who didn't like her atheism, and she once heard a Christian woman shriek, "God will get you, you bitch!" Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was Rector Cotesworth Pinkney Lewis, who delivered an anti-war sermon and shook his finger at his guest that Sunday, Lyndon Johnson. On the way out of the church, Mrs. Johnson whispered, "Wonderful choir" to Lewis. And so was the symbolically supersonic marriage of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine, whose marriage seemed to fit in the decade of Jim Ryun even better than did the other big weddings (Liz and Dick, Nelson and Happy, the Johnson girls and Misters Nugent and Robb respectively, Jackie and Aristotle). Ethel and Ernie got engaged one month after meeting and got divorced one month after marrying. Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was Billy Graham, orthodox evangelist, who said in 1964, "For me to enter politics, the Lord would have to tell me to as clearly as he did Moses with the burning bush . . . I have no intention of entering politics or giving even the slightest encouragement to my friends who want me to." Neither the Lord nor the political parties took the hint, so Billy didn't get into politics. And so was David Eisenhower, the GeeWhiz kid who married into the Nixon family and said of President Nixon: "He's really superhuman!" Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. But so was Jewish Barbra Streisand, who played opposite Arab Omar Sharif in "Funny Girl" while Arabs and Jews were fighting in the Mideast. The Arab newspapers condemned Sharif for playing love scenes with a Jew, but Miss Streisand quipped, "You think Cairo is upset? You should see the letter I got from my Aunt Rose." And so was Mia Farrow, who, like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys and Shirley MacLaine, went to India to visit Guru Maharish Mahesh Yogi for "higher spiritual experience" and came back swearing at newsmen and photographers more in the manner of a New Woman (Myra Breckinridge vintage) than a renewed woman. Yes, Kennedy and King were a part of the 1960's. Who were the freaks? Who didn't fit in an era which could crowd napalm and Beagles' ears into the same news columns? Who didn't fit in an era which threw together Dr. Benjamin Spock and Norman Vincent Peale, Disneyland visits and Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wayne and Arlo Guthrie and Metrecal and pop-top cans? Who didn't fit in an era which threw together John Glenn and Bette Davis, the gaudy funeral of Judy Garland and the nightly Johnny Carson shows, Norman Mailer and Ayn Rand and Gore Vidal and William S. Buckley, Jr.? Who didn't fit in an era which threw together Robert Frost and Harold Robbins, Janis Joplin and Cardinal Francis Spellman, Edward Albee and The Twist and Jerry Rubin and the C.I.A.? But if we had to pick just one someone, a representative someone, to give the decade to, to whom would it go? There is really only one logical candidate—Carol Doda, a topless dancer in San Francisco, who increased her bust size from a 35 inches to a 44 inches by silicone injections. Writer Tom Wolfe quotes Miss Doda on the drawbacks: "They weigh a lot more, a couple pounds. I have to wear a special heavy brassiere. I have to wear it to bed at night, and I can't sleep on my stomach, it's too uncomfortable. In fact, I can't sleep on my side, either, that's kind of uncomfortable, too. I have to sleep on my back." If the 1970's show America any compassion at all, maybe Carol Doda will be allowed to deflate. And roll over. Maybe we'll all be allowed to deflate, find our natural proportions and see what we can do to make the next decade as meaningful as this one was colorful. THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN An All-American college newspaper Kansan Telephone Numbers Newsroom—UN 4-3646 Business Office—UN 4-4358 Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Accepted for publication only by registered class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 68044. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised offered to students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Offer valid to all registered students of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents. BUSINESS STAFF BUSINESS STATE Business Advisor Mel Adams Business Manager Business Advisor . . . 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