University Daily Kansan Monday, March 3, 1952
Editorials
Now See Here, Gloria, Your Attitude Hurts Us
Miss Gloria Swanson, one of the grand old ladies of the stage and screen, is now a writer. A recent Sunday supplement carried one of Miss Swanson's literary efforts which took some fairly nasty digs at men's clothes.
Now, we have no wish to bandy style notes with such an august personality as Miss Swanson, but we think it's our duty to take issue on behalf of our faithful readers.
Miss Swanson has put the blast on fabrics, ties, socks, shirts, jackets, suspenderless pants, and hair.
According to Miss Swanson, men's wear today offers "such a wide range of quiet-toned fabrics that every man should have at least one suit which gives him the air of a chairman of the board or a corporation vice-president."
Ties, says Miss Swanson, should blend not only with the suit, "but with the man's complexion." Something, maybe, like a nice, hairy brushed wool to go with that five o'clock shadow, and a solid-color rayon with matching razor cuts for evening wear?
The "half-mast socks" was another target for the Swanson scorn. She did reel a bit, however, and admit that "garterless socks are fine for sports." Hmph. Some of the sports we know don't wear even socks, much less garters.
Miss Swanson is a stickler on shirt cuffs—particularly French cuffs. In her book, any cuffs worth their pate fois gras should show beneath the sleeves of a man's jacket. Says she: "The jacket sleeve which hangs to the knuckles, obscuring any sign of cuff, creates a forlorn, it-really-isn't-mine air:" That's reasonable. Any suit that gives us the air of a corporation vice-president will have to belong to someone else.
Most tailors, Miss Swanson says, insists that trousers hang better with suspenders. Miss Swanson insists right along with the tailors. No argument there. Suspendons certainly are snappy.
Grandmother Swanson even has definite ideas about the way men should wear their hair. She says "neatly trimmed hair, neither closely-cropped nor overlang, is no disgrace." From now on all musicians and bald-headed men may consider themselves disgraced,
Well, that's it. We have been sartorially dissected and found sadly lacking. We don't know about you, gentle male reader, but right now we feel a strange kinship with Pete the Tramp.
—J.W.Z.
short ones
There are some women who from time to time bob up to reaffirm our confidence in the judgment of the weaker sex. Take for example Annette Kellerman, pioneer of the one-piece bathing suit, who said:
"Women will never appear nude on the beaches; only one woman in 100,000 has the right kind of physique to do that."
It must have been terribly distressing for Willie (the actor) Sutton to have been picked up by the police for tampering with his own automobile. His being picked up resulted in his being put back in jail after a five year vacation he took. The irony of how he was captured reminds us of when a Kansan reporter wrote a news story, misspelled her own name, and was rewarded with an "F" for the week.
A Lawrence traffic violator must have wondered Monday if he could ever get ahead in the game. While waiting decision on a speeding charge in police court he remembered his car had been parked in a one hour zone for at least an hour and a half. Undoubtedly it would $ \mathbf{b}_{e} $ graced with another notice to visit the court.
The other day in one of the classes an instructor was talking about Gilbert Highet, guest lecturer in the Humanities series. One co-ed who had come to class late mis-understood her teacher to say "Hi ya" when she walked into the room. The girl returned a cheery "Hi ya."
Letters:
This Reader Says He Is 'Subjective'
To comment on the language controversy:
Dear Editor:
First, we should realize that this controversy will always remain debatable because the only reasons possible to present from either side are "arbitrary" reasons, subject only to the judgment of the individual who presents them. But a mistake in the arguments from both sides is that both sides attempt to make their reasons practical, objective and specific. May we present, herewith, a perhaps more subjective discussion.
Now, as a nation, we are, we hope, a democracy. And a democracy makes of every individual, in reality, a king, not only granting to him enormous privileges but also laying on him grave responsibilities. Thus, in such a society, the individual continually must make intuitive decisions outside of and beyond his own field of endeavor. To train this individual, then, only in the neutral gray spheres of knowledge, the "reading and 'riting and 'rithmetic" which are and must be the backbone of the curriculum from the first grade through the graduate school, falls utterly short of the absolutely essential aim of education in a democracy: the creation of an individual able to think—intelligently.
For, for an individual to be able really to think intelligently, he not only must have a strong neutral background of the fundamental learnings but he also must have come into contact with what might be termed the unadulterated hues of the diverse branches of knowledge: the pure science, the pure mathematics, even the fine arts, and language in its purest form, a tongue not one's own.
And so, for reasons, purely arbitrary, purely intuitive, and because intuition may be the most highly integrated form of thought, intelligent and right, the medical doctor who knows nothing of the fine arts, the lawyer who cannot solve a rudimentary algebra problem, the journalist who has only learned journalistic English and who has always substituted more and more of the same in place of impractical language requirements—the individuals (in an oversimplified stress to be sure but the point is well taken) are more fit to be the cogs in a totalitarian machine than the members of a democracy who are actually kings because they have within themselves the "divine right" of mental self-sufficiency.
Ralph Cecil Flowers Graduate student.
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Interpretive Articles
The South Remains 'Solid' Despite Intra-Party Disputes
The "Solid South" is really solid. For a good many decades it has been dominated by the Democratic party. It appears that it will remain so for many years to come.
Many points must be dealt with when considering the politics of the southern states. First, it must be remembered that for the most part, the politics of the South is a one-party affair. Second, it must be remembered that while there are many political fights in the South, they usually are fights between factions of the Democratic party. Any Republican who has hopes of becoming governor or senator of a southern state usually is having a pipe dream.
Actually, the race problem plays only a minor part in southern politics. Some of the hottest races staged in the South have been carried out without raising the race question. At the present time the majority of the Negro population votes a Republican ticket. Negroes are able to elect a few minor city officials with their votes. Getting the Negro to vote Republican is exactly what the southern politician desires. With the Negro vote out of the way, it is possible for the politicians to control the primaries. By controlling the primaries, it is a simple matter to exclude the major Republican element from the South.
Pogo and His Friends
At present some southern states, namely Florida, Arkansas and Texas, are becoming more two-party in nature. It is possible that in the next few years the increased industrialization of the South will play an important part in strengthening the two-party system.
While the South is solid on the state level, it is an entirely different story on the national level. A majority of southerners are not happy with the Truman administration. President Truman has stirred considerable hatred in the South because of his civil rights program. So deep is the dislike for him that southerners probably would be easily persuaded to go along with a middle-of-the-road Republican such as Eisenhower.
In the past, strong southern coalitions have played important roles in national politics. The Hoovercrats joined forces with the Republican party in 1928 to defeat Harding. In 1948 the Dixiecrats were almost successful in upsetting the Truman apple cart. Such a coalition this year under the able leadership of a man such as Richard B. Russell of Georgia could go a long way toward shifting the southern vote from Mr. Truman to a man such as General Eisenhower.
Should the President decide not to run, the South would have two men it would like to see in the White House. One of these men is Richard Russell, the other is Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Both have expressed their willingness to run. Should Truman decide to run, the South may well be the determining factor in the outcome of the election.
But, for the major part, the South is still a strong fortress of the Democratic party. —Maurice Prather.