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University Daily Kansan Fridav. Nov. 18. 1969
In Violence, a Lesson
Once again the South has erupted in violence over the issue of racial integration in public schools. The demonstrations in New Orleans, the clubbings, the naked savagery all have lessons to teach the North, which has grown smugly complacent over its "enlightened viewpoint" on race relations and civil rights.
Beneath the surface, the crackling tension fostered by centuries of suppression of one race by another and the subsequent elevation of the Negro by court order is injuring the nation grievously.
The odious kettle of stew now boiling in Louisiana cannot help but show us vividly — and for the hundredth time— that feelings between the races are not as amicable as the reformers would like us to believe.
It is plain that no mere words, be they spoken by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court or by any other notable, can put a halt to the terrible inner conflict that rocks us.
In New Orleans, the complete abandonment of every pretense of decency and tolerance cannot be viewed with the customary "it can't happen here" attitude which characterizes the North these days.
It is true that throughout the North, the Negro is discriminated against. The measures taken are not the blatantly hostile suppression of an entire race that can be seen in the South; but
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
the effect is the same — the loss of equal opportunity for the Negro.
Northern Negroes still cannot live in some housing developments; they are not welcome in some restaurants; they are forbidden entrance to some schools. This is almost never done openly. The methods used are devious, cunning. They are frustrating and baffling to the Negro.
A look at the town we live in gives us a good idea of how, in a less obvious way, the conflict between the races extends throughout the nation. Here the matter broke into the open over the swimming pool in town, which was allegedly segregated. There are other centers of racial discrimination in this town, but they slumber undisturbed. Few, including the town's Negroes, wish to disturb them and provoke possible violence or hostility.
What, then, can we gain from following the course of violence in New Orleans and the less noticeable but still pernicious discrimination in the North, and in this town? Only this; that no amount of preaching can ever take effect if those who preach tolerance cannot themselves practice it.
At KU, we have a wonderful opportunity to do so. We can start in our classrooms, our dormitories, our social relationships. We are fortunate that it is never too late to be tolerant of our fellow men.
Bill Blundell
TV Builds Bulging Waistlines
By Bill Blundell
When I went to the closet the other day to bring out a couple of winter suits, I found our predatory friend the moth had beaten me to it. Peering through the holes in one sleeve of what used to be a pretty nice worseted, I decided to visit one of the clothing stores that still honors my checks.
"The gentleman is not a 41 extra long," he said firmly. "The gentleman requires a 42 long."
I asked the man at the store for a size 41 extra long. His eyes traveled down my frame as he shook his head, smiling with that secret wisdom tailors seem to share with doctors, plumbers and various other repairmen.
Incredulous, I told him that a 42 long would make me look like Gandhi in a Santa Claus suit. He shrugged. "A simple tailoring job," he said. "We pinch in the shoulders, so; we tighten across the chest, so—and there we are."
So there we were, with me standing in a baggy brown suit while he made chalk marks all over it. While he was measuring, he explained the change in size.
"Do not feel bad. All Americans are getting the big rear end, you know? They sit all the time now. The people who are making up the suits, they don't know this yet. So we have to take them in."
Now I know what happened to the slim-hipped figure of yore. It's TV. The Big Eye is making fatties of all of us.
This wasn't much help. Alarmed to think that at 26 my ballast was already shifting, I went home to try to find out why.
Night after night we sit before the flickering screen, unaware of the rolls of fat slyly building up around our midsections. The sedentary life of a TV addict, coupled with the enormous appetite that goes with viewing, is broadening the national bottom at an alarming rate.
I decided to observe my family to test the theory. One Sunday night was all I needed. My wife sprawled idly on the sofa, watching with lidded eyes as Lassie, trusty old scout, once again raced to the rescue of her goody-goody master and mistress, who were hanging by their fingernails from a precipice. My wife wouldn't have known the difference if they were drowning in a vat of cold cream. Usually she is allergic to dogs and hackneyed plots as well, but activity on the magic screen is enough to insure her languid attention.
The kids were riveted to the set. They sat like two frogs on a pair of lily pads, their eyes bulging and
their mouths agape, waiting for excitement.
This is the snare TV uses to trap us. We will sit through hours of mediocrity, waiting for something to happen. TV has a sense of immediacy about it, and that fascinates us; but we shut down our thinking process as we wait for that something. And we eat. We pop crunchies, munchies, corn curlies and other indigestibles into our mouths as we watch the latest pronouncements on underarm odor or other attractive topics.
What to do? Ban television from the home? You can do this, if you don't mind your kids whining for Captain Kangaroo and your wife nagging you because now she'll never know if Brenda and David finally find happiness together.
Set up a rigid, limited schedule for family viewing? This is comparable to the heroin user telling himself that he's only going to take one injection a day.
I think I've found a better solution, even if it is somewhat expensive. Every Sunday morning, I remove one tube from the set. The repairman can't get there before Monday night, giving me two solid days of quiet and mental rest. Of course you miss the football games, but you can always sneak the tube back in...
INHERT THE WIND: GRANADA:
BLACK AND WHITE
"Inherit the Wind" is a fine motion picture. It boasts a superb cast. The dialogue is crackling good. But somehow it fails to quite catch the tremendous drama of the famous Scopes trial at Dayton, in which Clarence Darrow, the Devil's Advocate, met and literally destroyed William Jennings Bryan.
At the Movies
It is the misfortune of most motion pictures that they never seem to be able to live up to the events they try to portray.
The actual events of the trial as reported at the time were far more dramatic than this motion picture. Also, the stage play starring Paul Muni as Darrow and Ed Begley as Eryan seemed to capture this dramatic fire where the picture didn't.
This was certainly not the fault of the cast. Spencer Tracy was Darrow to the core, with all the squinty, penetrating cynicism and brilliant insight of the great barrister. Frederic March, another of
The central part of the picture is the dramatic appearance of Bryan himself, the prosecutor, on the witness stand in the trial of Scopes, a schoolteacher who was being tried for teaching the theory of evolution in the classroom. Darrow, his other witnesses discredited by a partisan court, calls Bryan to the stand to testify as an expert on the Bible. In a brilliant assault on the Great Commoner, Darrow reduces the prosecution's arguments to rubble and destroys Bryan himself before the viewer's eyes.
the handful of truly talented screen actors that keeps this reviewer going to the movies, played Bryant superbly — almost too well, in fact. March himself is completely lost in the character of the pompous, righteous man who fought with all his heart for ideals that time had discredited or passed by.
But there is something phony about this key scene. Bryan disintegrates too rapidly; there is none
Gene Kelly, playing the acidic H. L. Mencken, does a good job; but he gets in the way. This picture, good as it is, could have been vastly improved if Kelly were used to lend the trial flavor instead of interfering with the central conflict between the two courtroom antagonists. His part is too large, although his lines are excellent and perfect Mencken.
of the tearing suspense, the gradual wearing down of the witness that the story calls for.
In spite of the drawbacks, this is still a fine picture, however. It is a relief to find a screen effort so superbly acted and dealing with such meaty and significant subject matter. Recommended to everyone.
- Bill Blundell
It's not that Nixon didn't have the experience. Ike often consulted him for strategic advice. But telling him to use a 7 iron from 135 yards out hardly made the Vice President an expert in foreign affairs.
"YOU CAN KEEP THE 'A'—BECAUSE YOU WERE SO CLEVER THAT NO TIME DURING TH' EXAM WAS I ABLE TO DETECT HOW YOU WERE CHEATING."
From the Magazine Rack
Luxuries and Status
"If I were Margaret Mead—and, as it happens, I'm not—I could explain this thing in sociological terms. But in any terms it is a strange tale.
"It is the story of a discovery that the Carrier Corporation stumbled on not very long ago. Carrier perfected a new air-conditioning and central heating system for the home and was very proud of the fact that the unit did its work unnoticed. Hidden in cellar or attic, it was invisible to any caller and so silent that nobody could hear it."
"BUT SALES lagged unaccountably, and Carrier was puzzled. Then one day the firm realized what the trouble was. Americans don't want a luxury appliance unless their friends can see it. It's not enough just to be comfortable, though this was once considered a pretty good end in itself. Now everybody must know that you have the money to make yourself comfortable.
"Obviously something had to be done, and done fast. Carrier did something fast. It built a control panel of shiny chrome, eight by fourteen inches, or roughly the size of a watercolor, that can be set in the wall of a downstairs room, preferably the living room, in a conspicuous spot. The panel consists of various on and off buttons, a thermometer, and three dials which tell, among other things, the humidity, the barometric pressure, and the time.
"TO SHOW how this instrument might fit in the décor of a modern house. Carrier sent out some publicity photographs. In one the chrome panel is embedded in a pine-paneled wall just above a bookcase, where a painting might ordinarily be. It is flanked on one side by a statue of Buddha and on the other by a leather-bound set of Anatole France..."
(Excerpted from "Luxury Symbols" by William Zinsser in the June 1960 Atlantic Monthly.)
Worth Repeating
The question is, in effect, can we afford to live in private opulence and public squalor? Is the exploitation of what Packard estimates will be a $20 billion teen-age market by 1970 more important than the improvement of public services and education for those youthful consumers? If we don't acknowledge and activate the right answers to those questions we stand to lose a World Series of somewhat larger dimensions than the one recently played.—Edward P. Morgan
Daily Hansen
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extension 111, news room
Extension 376, business office
Th the I 167.
philo of es
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22,
N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates:
$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon
during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University
holidays and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept.
17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under # of March 3, 1879.
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