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University Daily Kansas Thursday, Sept. 29, 1960
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
The Hucksters' Target
In years to come, this presidential campaign may well stand as Madison Avenue's first vast effort to influence the vote of the American public. Doubtless it will not be the last.
The hucksters are swarming like ants around the honey jar. They infest the camps of both candidates, who obviously have some feeling that it is not what they stand for but the way they look, walk and talk that will bring them victory. It would be unfortunate if their feelings were justified.
Both Kennedy and Nixon have cultivated and shaped carefully their own "presences" (to borrow from the huckster dictionary). Nixon's suits would do credit to any retired septuagenarian banker; Kennedy, flanked by his "advisers," has been seen fingering a more conservative cloth than he usually wears. Some have even accused him of wearing a bathing cap to bed in hopes his unruly cowlick can be tamed.
In the critical struggle to see which candidate can most effectively present himself as the older and — by a logic we can't understand — wiser man. Nixon seems to have the edge. After eight years of practice, he fairly radiates a mellowness that his opponent can't seem to match.
Kennedy did deliver a solid right to the law when it was announced that his wife would have a baby later this year. Feminine hearts all over the country skipped a beat at the thought of a little stranger in the White House nursery, and the older women began to feel a little maternal.
Kennedy seems to have another advantage that Nixon lacks. He has hordes of relatives, many of them beautiful and aggressive women who have already done much for him in the campaign. Hubert Humphrey was the first to realize their importance. Humphrey, who had only his wife with him in West Virginia, said he felt like
a small grocer competing with a supermarket.
Nixon has already tried to counter the Kennedy moves by throwing the urbane, distinguished Henry Cabot Lodge into the breach, hoping to offset the influence of the Kennedy women and the obvious appeal the candidate himself has for the female sex. So far the results have been encouraging, and Lodge has been given prime time for reaching housewives on TV. He will appear in a series of short addresses scheduled for weekday afternoons — soap opera time. We may look for Mr. Lodge somewhere between "The Guiding Light" and "The Edge of Night."
Eut the basic question remains to be answered: Why the hoopla? Who are the candidates trying to reach and influence? The answer: women.
Women of voting age outnumber men by some two million. In the campaigns to date, it is clear that few if any specific issues have been of such appeal as to justify what we may call the "female vote." Women have not voted in a bloc for any specific issue; but tacticians in both camps are sure they are influenced, perhaps unduly, by the personalities of the candidates. With this in mind, they have tried to create graven images of their candidates, images that hold some indefinable appeal for women.
In doing so, the candidates are doing themselves and the nation a disservice. By cloaking the real issues of the campaign under a false front of artificially created personal charm, they are interfering with the democratic process. If they can be made to understand this, the campaign may return to a sensible level on which the issues can be discussed with the voters on objectives terms — or as near to objective terms as possible.
Bill Blundell
The Theater Corner
UNIVERSITY THEATRE:
The first night of Christopher Fry's scintillating play "The Lady's Not for Burning," was rich entertainment fare for the theatergoer. Solid and often brilliant performances by most of the cast, coupled with the glittering dialogue created by Fry, overrode faulty performances by some players.
The charm of the play lies chiefly in the meaty lines the playwright gives his characters. Witty, acid and often beautiful in their descriptive power, they even touch the risque in a charmingly frank manner. Listen to Thomas Mendil, idealist and adventurer, as he gives a choice
piece of advice to Richard, the Mavor's clerk:
"Always fornicate between clean sheets and spit on a well scrubbed floor."
THE SCENE IS SET in the house of the mayor of a small market town, sometime in the 15th century. Using 20th century speech forms, Fry takes us through a crisis in the town's usually placid everyday life. Thomas Mendip, played by Jack Rast Jr., bursts upon the scene demanding to be hanged for the slaying of a ring and bone peddler in the town. The mayor, a pamperous, irascible and thoroughly lovable old chucklehead' portrayed superbly by Steve Beoser, dismisses him
The mayor's dilemma is complicated by the arrival of Jennet Jourdemayne, who is being persecuted for witchcraft. The mayor, aided by his mentally deficient advisers, decides to burn her at the stake. The whole attair has a happy ending, though, and the newly awakened Jennet, her freedom assured, finds love with the disillusioned idealist Mendip.
gruffly, but Mendip hangs on to set the theme of the play.
Richard, the mayor's clerk, and Alizon Eliot, who is already pledged to Humphrey Devise, the mayor's nephew, discover that they are in love. Richard, Bob Moberly. Alizon, Mary Ann Harris.
THE VIVID PORTRAYALS of the mayor and his advisers, the chaplain and the town justice, give the entire performance a professional glitter. The chaplain, played by Karl Garrett, and the justice, played by Ron Loch, are enormously funny and join the mayor in carrying the dialogue to its greatest potential. In a much more difficult role, Rast (playing Mendip) falls short of the mark. His projection of the character was adequate, but he hurried his lines somewhat and was sometimes inaudible in the rear of the theater. Richard, played by Bob Moberly, also mouthed his lines at times. Other parts were played with skill and verve. Costumes and settings were excellent.
THIS PLAY RUNS through October 1. Those who like good theater are encouraged to go, for the production is, in general, a superior one.
-Bill Blundell
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the took world
By M. K. McKinney Instructor of English
THE BOOK OF THE COURTIER. by Baldesar Castiglione, translated from the Italian by Charles S. Singleton, Professor of Humanistic Studies at Johns Hopkins, Anchor Books, $1.25.
If a review of the book were to appear as the lead article in the Times Literary Supplement, the writer would probably give us a learned essay on the ideal gentleman from the time of the Egyptians to the present day. I am not equipped to fit this book into the history of Western man's attempt to civilize himself.
The general reader, I suspect, will not be interested in this book, but he who is interested in the Renaissance will find it indispensable. "The Courtier" takes its place with Vasari's "Lives," Machiavelli's "The Prince," and Cellini's "Autobiography" as essential primary sources. Since the translator is a distinguished scholar in Italian literature, there should be no question of whether the English closely approximates Castiglione's meaning.
CASTIGLIONE WAS BORN in 1478 and died in 1529. He was a scholar, poet, courtier at the court of Urbino, ambassador to Rome, and diplomatic representative of Pope Clement VII at the court of Charles V. This book was written between 1508 and 1516, and published in Venice in 1528. The first English translation was made by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1531, and further editions of this translation came out in 1565, 1577, and 1603. Roger Ascham, who died in 1568, recommended it to the younger generation. Harold Nicolson in "Good Behaviour" quotes Dr. Johnson as saying that it is the best book "ever written upon good breeding." And Nicolson himself says that it was the "most influential manual in deportment and courtly education ever published." I don't think that these superlatives should be taken literally, but the book did have tremendous effect on Elizabethan literature by creating a pattern for courtiers like Sidney and Raleigh, by helping shape the courtly ideals of Spenser's "Faerie Queene," and by giving Elizabethan England the concept of the nonprofessional man writing for a court circle. It influenced Lyly in his "Euphues" by its use of dialogue in the treatment of problems of morality, etiquette, education, and love.
THE BOOK IS DIVIDED into four parts, and it purports to describe the ideal courter. According to Castiglione, his first duty is to be a good man; then he will be in condition to advise his prince. The courter, among other things, must be well born, be a man of arms, be able to use language well, and never be a sycophant. In showing his accomplishments, the courter should exhibit sprezzatura, or nonchalance as the translator has it, or spontaneity as others have it, or recklessness as Hoby had it. The idea is simply that the courter should be able to do the above-mentioned things effortlessly and casually. By doing them thus he conceals his art. In other words, the courter is a man of virtu, one who does gracefully and supremely well, and seemingly without effort, what his society says is worth doing. He is successful because of his great vigor and ability.
Social reform . . . does not give a younger generation the outlet for "self expression" and "self definition" that it wants. The trajectory of enthusiasm has curved East, where, in the new ecstacles for economic utopia, the "future" is all that counts.—Daniel Bell