Boosting the score
Like a teenage beauty who just watched the padding slip from her deceptive bra, U.S. military men flushed with embaassment last week when the world found out their true secret of success.
For years now, America and other civilized areas of the world have been amazed at the weekly boxscores coming from the continuing fight in Vietnam.
Those glorious bodycounts. Those were statistics of which every American could be proud. U.S. fighting men were killing off the enemy at a rate that had been unheard of since the last of the exciting Indian wars.
"U.S. forces lost 27 men last week while Viet Cong and NVA dead totaled 363."
Every week similar scores rolled in from over there, proving that one American is worth at least ten of those little yellow savages.
But now the real truth is out; the statistics have been misleading. It appears the good guys have been fattening their scores by shooting anything that moves.
Oh, it was a good trick while it lasted. After all, who could distinguish their farmers from their soldiers anyway. Everyone knows those Orientals all look alike. And the Viet Cong have never been known to carry communist identification cards. So who's to say a dead Gook isn't a commie?
Then the U.S. Military started pushing its luck. At a village called My Lai, the good guys went a little too far. They probably could have gotten away with shooting all the women of the village. Women, of course, make excellent guerrillas.
The problem at My Lai was the number of infants who got a taste of U.S. firepower along with their mothers. The military masterminds had finally bitten off more than they could chew. They could not think of a way to caste these young victims in the role of dangerous Viet Cong guerrillas.
Now the authenticity of every one of those once-convince bodycounts is being questioned. The U.S. may even be forced to forfeit some of its earlier victories. The whole image of American marksmanship is at stake.
Another repercussion may follow the disclosure of this illegal scorekeeping. U.S. service wives have been charging the communists with inhumane treatment of prisoners. Will the U.S. now be faced with similar charges from the wives of the men of My Lai?
Probably not. U.S. soldiers were diplomatic enough to eliminate whole families. Tastefully, they sought to avoid bitter scenes. Few Vietnamese women were left around to protest their husbands' treatment.
Joe Naas
The ultimate pageant
By MIKE SHEARER Arts & Reviews Editor
Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey was maneuvering across the stage with all of the agility of a derailed locomotive. In the foreground sat Roger Mudd, looking ceremoniously glum, glancing back over his right shoulder at the CBS camera.
Some tacky looking political celebrities and token college men pulled some drab blue capsules out of a big bin and handed them to a lady dressed for office work. The lady took the capsules with trembling hands and pulled out a slip of paper with a birthday on it and handed it to a drab man who tacked the birthday onto the big board—matching it with a number.
There were two interruptions. Once, the little Norelco Santa slid across the television screen on a triple-head electric razor. Then, American Motors used a snob advertising technique to try to sell its Ambassador tank.
A few blocks away, Morey, a federal PR man, was watching the show with a grave furrow in his brow.
As soon as the show was over, Morey was on the phone. "Hello, Frank, Morey. Yeah, I watched it, and I think we've got something here. I tell you, Frank, with a few adjustments, this will be an annual pageant to top them all. You know how Americans love contests.
"Right, and it isn't as if the winner is getting a cheap gold statuette or some crumby cown. The stakes in this game are much higher—life and death even. America will eat it up.
"Well, no, not just as it is. Hershey has got to go. I mean even Bert Parks would be an improvement over the old man. I'm thinking along the lines of a panel of hosts like they use for the New Year's Day parade pageants. Bess Myerson, Dirwood Kirby, Jack Lord. You know, people who don't annoy you and who
won't get in the way of the show's real drama— the drawing.
"Yeah, that shaky office lady will have to go too. I wonder if we couldn't get some of Jackie Gleason's broads in the little ruffly swim suits to do that part.
"Of course, it would be best if we could recruit David Merrick or Jule Styne to handle the whole thing, give it class. I tell you we could beat out all of the other annual pageants, every one of them, from The Oscar's to Miss America. I mean this thing has all of the appeal of a good game show like The Dating Game and yet it has all of the deep drama of the old Playhouse 90 show because it's dealing with life, you know. It simply fits America's taste."
"It'll be great, Frank. The Irish Sweepstakes will be a thing of the past. It's a renaissance, man. Yeah, well say hello to the wife and start thinking this thing over. Goodbye."
Morey's mind wasn't full of thoughts of young men confronting each other with, "I'm number 18, Sept.26," or with "138, Oct.13, as uncertain as ever." His mind wasn't full of worries about America having finally played one game too many. His mind wasn't full of American soldiers flooding all of the continents in an endless flow, determined to save the world at any cost.
His mind, his American mind, was swimming in drugged ectasy of thoughts of big plastic-breasted broads reaching into a huge, multicolored, rotating tub and pulling out rose-colored capsules.
His mind, his American mind, was swimming with dreams of Dirwood Kirby making puns between the tiny capsule explosions. new, improved Draft, with super-chlorines and hydra-florides and hexa-phosphates and all of the other additives.
To the editor:
In reading Mr. Findlay's blast at Al Wallace's greed and incompetence in your Nov. 17 issue, I was dismayed to think that intellectual activity at the level of Spiro Agnew goes on among assistant professors at the University of Kansas. I would like to comment on just a few of Mr. Findlay's inane impertinent remarks.
(1.) He favors a $200 increase in base salary for assistant instructors. How lovely! The present salary schedule runs from $2,400 to $2,800. He would increase salaries from $2,600 to $3,000. $200 in nine payments amounts to an increase of $22.22 per month, approximately $17.00 after taxes. This would buy three quarts of medium priced whiskey, pay a four-day grocery bill, or buy 1.5 textbooks. Thank you, Mr. Findlay. I would suggest for a curative that you try to maintain yourself in even the most genteel poverty at $225.00 take-home a month.
(2.) Mr. Finlay believes that "The very longest he (Wallace) should have been allowed to remain here as an Assistant Instructor is five years. . ." However shoddily things may be run in the Speech Department, the English Department demands 30 hours of coursework for an M.A. 18 more hours for a Ph.D. (though it recommends that graduate students have more), six to nine hours of non-credit foreign languages, plus a minimum of 18 hours of thesis credits.
Assistant Instructors teach six hours a semester (two-thirds the load of an assistant professor), and the English department recommends that they take from six to nine hours a semester in course work. At this rate it should take Mr. Wallace five years merely to complete his course work. Does Mr. Findlay recommend that he inhale books, digest air, blow out truth and otherwise refrain from eating or paying his rent while writing a dissertation?
(3.) Mr. Findlay implies that Wallace, by staying for six years deprives more "competent graduate students" from making it into the big money leagues. KU is not yet a heartless dissertation factory like Illinois or Wisconsin, and if Mr. Findley wishes to live in one, let him go there. Mr.Wallace and I will not miss him.
(4.) Mr. Findlay states that the University "subsidizes his (the graduate student's education by giving him an assistant instructorship." If teaching six hours a week, preparing seven or eight books for rigorous discussion, spending a day or two a week in student appointments, and grading 400-500 themes a semester for $225 a month is a subsidy, then Mr. Findlay and I have not been reading the same dictionary. Mr. Findlay goes on to say that the graduate student's commitment is not to his teaching—we don't expect it to be..." Again the Speech Department may be somewhat different; but the English Department expects that students in English 1, 2, and 3 classes not be bored to death, lied to, ignored, or otherwise taught by incompetent and ill-mannered louts. At least theoretically, a teacher's commitment ought always be to good teaching, the best that he can do, no matter what his salary or status. Students deserve no less, and despite the fact the University and the State of Kansas go on paying disgraceful slave labor wages to their graduate assistants, I would guess that some of the best teaching in Lawrence goes on in the classrooms of the much maligned assistant instructors.
In conclusion, it is reprehensible that a teacher of speech, under the guise of sweet reason, should cast ill-mannered inuendos on the competence of Mr. Wallace or on the "legitimacy" of the paltry salary that the assistant instructors receive. This reply to Mr. Findlay, on the contrary, has been a deliberate exercise in invective. He deserved it. I only wish that Swift or Rabelais had been alive to give him both barrels.
William Hoim,
Assistant Instructor in English
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GRIFF AND THE UNICORN
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