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Thursday, September 28, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Commercial Revolt
In the view of advertising people, judging from their commercials, the average man must suffer from the most severe case of paranoia ever imagined, let alone recorded. Mr. Average Guy, as we see him on the tube, is afraid that his breath smells, that his armpits reek, that his feet stink or that he needs a PDS. He's afraid kitchen germs and dog germs and kitchen germs and waste-ean germs. This poor schmuck lives in a perpetual state of terror, least his house burn or his valuables (his razor and his watch) be stolen.
He trembles at the thought of going downtown, for once there, he might be seen by some friend who would find his car too old or not sexually enough or not stylish enough or not staid or too complicated or not sufficiently luxurious. If not that, then someone would surely notice that his clothes didn't match or matched too well, that they were too long or too short or finished with the wrong lapels or bedecked with too large buttons or too formal or too casual or not distinctive enough or altogether too conventional.
And once in town, he could hardly work up the courage to carry out such a simple transaction as buying a magazine, for fear that someone would take notice of his choice and think him either an intellectual snob or a boorish ignorant person. He filmed a bigoted conservative. He does not even enter a grocery store for fear that Durwood Kirby will pop out from behind a counter and expose him as an
ignorant shopper—either that or call embarrassing attention to his shirt's faded colors, dull finish and multitudinous wrinkles.
He fears going downtown, but he fears going home even more. What if his kid's grades are too low? What if the neighbors drop in while the old china is on the table? What if everyone else on the block has a new doghouse? What if his wife does not find him sexy with her? What if his kids come on too strong? What if his kid has been picked up for smoking dope and he's the last to know?
These are the fears that dominate man's consciousness, or so one would conclude if his only source of information was the television. For many people—young, impressionable, pre-school people—television is the major source of information about the world. For the children growing up in our society we will spend hours in front of the set, this is the man should be, and, as far as they can tell, this is the way they will and should grow up to be.
1, for one, don't want my children to grow up with such fears or to grow up in a world dominated by such paranoia. This medium is far too powerful and too dangerous to be left in the money-motivated hands of the advertising industry—or for that matter, in the glory-seeking paws of politicians. The cost of redeeming the public sanity may be high—it may be subscriber funded television, or no television—but at any cost, it's a bargain.
—Robert Ward
Guest Editorial
Corporate Farms
The announcement made last week that the Soviet Union was negotiating the purchase of wheat from certain large corporations in the United States reminded me of a Darwinian variation of basketball that we used to play in my old neighborhood. The game was played against the side of a building. Since we had no hoop, I imagined a big play where each player agreed that the ball had fallen within the arbitrary boundaries on the side of the building. Needless to say, the biggest team always won, not because of their athletic prowess as much as their consistency at calling the shots as they wanted to see them.
I am beginning to wonder if the small Kansas farmer doesn't feel somewhat like the little guy in those neighborhood basketball games. He is often forced to play a game with his crops, the rules being dictated by the big corporate food interests. The game seems even more difficult when it appears that the referees are pulling for the big guys, as in the case of the Agriculture official who joined a large corporation the day after quitting the USDA's negotiating team in charge of the Soviet wheat deal.
By MARK BEDNER
Even Kansas, long the bastion of the small family farm, is threatened by the possibility of a corporate take over. Farms that once passed from Grandfather to Father to Son are now passing to U.S. Steel, Tenneco, and Safeway. Towns like Americus, Neosho Rapids and Pretty Prairie sit idle as their populations decrease in the scramble to find jobs in Emporia slaughtering houses and Topeka rubber factories. A little melodramatic? Not at all. Consider the headline in the August issue of a prominent farm publication.
"Battleground Shifts To Kansas In Fight On Corporation Farms."
The story in the newspaper reported that an interim committee of the Kansas Legislature was studying the reasons for present resentations against corporate business in Kansas. The chairman of the committee is John Vogel, Lawrence representative and owner of a large farm near here.
Vogel's committee was told by a representative of the small farmers that the large corporations have a special interest in Kansas. According to the farmer, the battle between the corporations and the independent farmer in Kansas "is crucial because the state's dominance in wheat and cattle production is an effective block to large companies trying to get control of agriculture in the Plains states."提及的 presentations on corporation farming would be an open invitation to large holding companies to "move in" and buy out the independent farmer, thus forcing others to sell or be caught in price competition with the corporations, the spokesman said.
The small farmer is not the only one affected by the move towards corporate farming. The consumer may be faced with even higher food costs if the large corporations are allowed to construct their own markets and control them with a few 'Super supermarket' companies, or vegetable markets are virtually controlled by the corporations. Yet the prices continue to rise in spite of the corporate boast that they can provide lower costs to the consumer.
The wheat farmer, on the other hand, may only receive 3.4 cents out of the 24.2 cents the consumer pays for a loaf of bread. The rest goes to the corporate employer, and the middle ground between farmer and retailer, in the name of "efficiency."
The Kansas farmer might do well to even up the odds a bit, as we learned to do in those neighborhood basketball games. We stopped playing against the side of a building and found an authentic hoop, complete with its own net, that leads to a nearby tree. From then on a goal was a goal. The big guys couldn't argue.
A strong and definitive anticorporate farming bill might be just the goal the Kansas farmer needs to shoot for. In the name of Doc Naismith, Phog Allen and good old American fair play let's hope he scores.
McGovern—Voice Against Folly
George McGovern found his voice again last week in Philadelphia. Admittedly he was speaking on his issue, and to his people—a group of peacenik Quaker types at a fund-raising dinner. But it is his issue, just as he did with the 1960s, to him do it as his own man, and down to defeat with the dignity of moral protest he behead with.
The war remains an issue because it is a national shame to be expurgated. Most people do not want to recognize this fact, but Mr. Obama could move fast between now and November. Long odds, but all other odds are longer. McGovney has nothing to offer but his early courage on this point; it would be clear he him blunt that protest now.
withdrawal a  surrender.
MG Mcmaison snapped that it was inconsistent to praise Nixon for withdrawing troops yet attack his
Earlier on the day he gave his speech in Philadelphia, McGovern argued with factory workers, who called his plan for a
bombing missions feed the prison camps, instead of emptying them. Even the President says he cannot win a military victory, yet.
Garry Wills
own design to do the same. What the workers were praising in Nixon was just 'a slow surrender' of a lot of ideas, and that on the POWS? Nixon's
thinks vindictive bombing will soften the adversary's attitude on prisoners. It is liker far than it would change for revenge. Folly for folly.
McGovenn's is a voice against this folly, or it is nothing; and calling it folly is not radical. Just sensible. The proof is to be found on the sensible Right. If you want to know whether the war is lost—lost at the root, as an anti-Communist effort, a hard bit of ideological warfare—don't ask McGovenn. He is intelligent hawks. James Burmann "of National Review" keeps telling the unpatible truth.
Vietnamization meant two things, says Burham—withdrawing our troops, yet sustaining the South's troops. But blocking, "advising"—not just supplying, we barely sustain them. True, Russia and China supply the North. But they have never had to fight for them, nor advise them. "advise" them. The North "has done its own fighting," and will keep doing it, even with all the
help we can supply. "Why should an undefeated enemy give up his way" — just when we are taking away the weight that made for equilibrium.
Yet take it away we must, for Nixon has promised to withdraw, and his career depends on keeping that promise. Withdrawing cancels sustaining. One thing that the Nixon administration part. If you don't believe that, read "National Review" (the Sept. 29 issue). Nixon is implementing slow surrender. The difference between him and McGovern is, in Burnham's view, a matter of "luring" him into limitation and honor when a slow surrender means prolonging murder.
Mr.    Burnham   will,
presumably for Nixon. But he gives the rest of us many good reasons not to.
Copyright, 1972 Universal Press Syndicate
Jack Anderson
LBJ Awaits the Inevitable
WASHINGTON-Those who have talked to Lyndon Johnson lately say he is calmly getting his attention in order for an early demise.
When he's depressed, he sometimes muses aloud about the low life expectancy of the Johnson menfolk. He recalls that his father died of a heart attack in his early sixties. A similar fate.
suggests LBJ, now 64, probably awaits him.
As evidence that he believes his own dire speculation, he is quietly setting his estate in order. He sold the family TV interests, subject to government approval, and he is withdrawing from business interests that require his active supervision and looking for in-
"He looks five moves down the chessboard," an intimate told us. "he doesn't want his wife and I will leave him left with any hard decisions."
The former President has withdrawn almost completely from the spotlight since he left the White House. He won't talk to the press, won't respond to attacks, won't permit even his friends to draw him into a discussion of national affairs.
"IF THESE PELLOWS FIND ANYTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY, THEYLL LET US KNOW"
This is so uncharacteristic of the Lyndon Johnson who dominated Washington for five years that he has become, in 2013, an insight into this strange, new Johnson, we spoke to a half dozen of his closest friends who have kept in touch with him. We have withhold their identities in return for their frank answers.
They generally agree that Johnson went through severe withdrawal pains as the presidential power slowly slipped from his fingers four years ago. He departed Washington feeling he was a maligned and misunderstood man.
The angry antiwar protestors didn't seem to understand, in his view, that he really cared. They were good at how they played the odds on how they could win casualty casualties. When soldiers in Vietnam wrote to him, he personally answered their letters. "He would spend as much time on them as he did on a document to show of state," recalls a former aide.
Nor had any previous President sponsored so much social
legislation. Dwight Eisenhower left 45 social programs on the books, costing just under $10 billion a year. When Johnson decided to release 43 programs with a yearly tag of more than $25 billion.
He pushed through John Kennedy's rights law, which enfranchised millions of blacks in the South and aimed at poverty, aimed at ending hunger and ignorance. There was a Model City program to cure urban hills, Medicare for the needy, and Medicaid for the needy.
He felt his critics overlooked these giant achievements and the realities of the mannersism and his wheeler-dealer politics. He was disappointed when the poor and the downrodden didn't hail him as a champion.
After he left the White House,
recall friends, he alternately brooded and plunged into work on the LBJ library.
The criticism of his war policies, meanwhile, reached new crescendos. Not only did he start reflecting on the low Johnson life expectancy, but he began changing his perspective given up after his 1950 heart attack. He also ate his up to 235 pounds.
Inevitably, he was struck earlier this year with another seizure. Now he must keep an inhaler handy for occasional quick breaths of oxygen. A house servant with an eye on the clock also brings him a pill and a glass of water at regular intervals.
He negotiated with his doctor and finally agreed to give up cigarettes for less frequent ciga-
rillos. And he has brought his weight down to 209 pounds.
His attitude, meanwhile, has become almost serene. He no longer betrays the least concern over criticism and bitterness over the nation's seeming ingratitude.
One friend describes LBJ's attitude toward his critics as "turning the other cheek."
"He's not mad at anybody," shrugs another.
“Agrees still another: Johnson ‘feels that his record is there, that his deeds will remain after that.’” (The New York Times) history will hinder him.”
All the intimates who talked to us about Johnson remarked on his amazing new magnanimity. But one suggested that "all the hate-Johnson stories must hurt the old man inside."
Those who visit him down on the Pedernales say, except for his occasional morbid moods, he seems to be enjoying retirement. He often smiles off when he pleases to look at the deer or inspect the grass.
"This is the first time in 40 years I am making my own schedule," he says happily.
Friends have been unable to get much out of him on the presidential election, except that he had a good visit with George McGovern and that McGovern "with affection and respect."
His own term in the White House, he has said, was a "sobering experience."
he seems quite satisfied, meanwhile, to let history be his judge.
Copyright, 1972,
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
James J. Kilpatrick
Pot 'Perils' Saga Continues
WASHINGTON—If you travel around among the colleges and universities, asking questions and listening to student concerns that come up almost as often as Vietnam, this is marijuana.
In my own case, at least, it has proved a difficult topic to handle. To most of us past 60, grass is often ours; some, something you cook in, and hash is what you get on Thursday night. I have smelled plenty of marijuana but never have tried it, because it is not a matter that grabs me.
Young people have an entirely different view. Depending on the college population under study, from one-third to three-fourths of students, most majinajua at least once. Large numbers declare themselves
regular users. And even among those who shun the stuff, marijuana is seen as a measure of the hypocrisy injustice of the adult establishment. Students equate the cocktail party with the pot party: The one is socially respectable, the other unlawful. Police will take a drunk home; they take the pot smoker to jail. In some jurisdictions, the shockingly harsh sentences imposed in some jurisdictions for mere possession or use of marijuana.
The prevailing view among students—the students who talk to me, at least—is that marijuana is not harmful and not addictive. They are quick to cite the findings of the Shafer Commission (the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse), and
they demand that marjana be made legal—if not as legal as tobacco, at least as legal as booze. Senator McGovern, if I understand the gentleman, goes along with this latter position.
This week's mail brings a copy of the long report just made to the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security by General Lewis W. Murray, who has not questioned integrity. The mail also brings a statement to the committee by Dr. Olav J. Braeden, director of the U.N. narcotics laboratory in Geneva. On the matter of marijuana, they warn that theiruber warnings. Young people owe it to themselves to listen.
Walt's year-long investigation convinced him that several basic assumptions of the Shafer Commission were in error. He
was not alone:
"Among the many officials of foreign governments with whom we discussed the Shafer report, we did not find a single one who shared the tolerant attitude of the Commission toward cannabis."
"Some people," said General Walt, "have likened the effects of marijuana to smoking or to social drinking. Neither, normally, leads to other forms of addiction. We smoke smokers and non-drinkers at parties are not constantly subjected to peer pressures to engage in the acts of smoking and drinking. But the 'experimenters' who go to pot parties are, moreover, likely to engage in an experiment with other types of drug 'kicks' that may be available in their groups.
Griff and the Unicorn
Dr. Branden has spend 16 years in marijuana research. Most of his testimony tended to emphasize how little it is yet known about the risks of cannabis. But the consensus of knowledgeable scientists is clear, "Cannabis is dangerous." There is evidence to suggest that brain damage and birth abnormalities be connected to habitual use.
abusers graduate to heroin. Because of this, there is general concern that heroin addiction must be treated as a contagious disease. And pot smoking is frequently the cause of contraction of this contagion.
From a legal point of view, the Walt-Braenden evidence suggests that laws against marijuana are not arbitrary or stupid, but probably are justifiable expressions of a prudent conscience. A prudent people will want to pray over these warnings before letting themselves, in a weak moment, go to pot.
By Sokoloff
"Moreover, those who are using drugs are almost invariably afflicted with a missionary zeal to get other people in touch." Some pot smokers: It is even more so with hashish dependents—and it becomes obsessional by the time drug
$ \textcircled{2} $ Universal Press Syndicate 1972
(C) 1972 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc
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