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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, November 14, 1968
The 'fast' gimmick
Good ol' American pragmatism has struck again.
A gimmick to rival the ingenuity of Madison Avenue, a "fast meal," is being employed by students to solicit contributions for a scholarship fund.
Dub it "Yankee ingenuity" or better yet, with respect to the University community and apologies to the history department, label it manifestations resulting from the days of frontier individualism.
Whatever it's colored, the ascetism of the East is being ridiculed by a commercial fast, complete with the back home chow of corn bread and beans. Only the addition of apple pie could further bastardize the practice of fasting.
This is not to say the goal of contributing to a KU scholarship fund is not a worthwhile project. Scholarships and encouragement to "high-
achievement youth from the Lawrence area" are no doubt admirable aims. But why commercialize and socialize the ancient and noble act of fasting to secure funds?
Fasting is as universal as religion, with its most famous adherents ranging from Gautama Buddha to Mahatma Gandhi. And if Westerners want an authoritative source, a bearded radical from Nazareth is recorded to have said, "When you fast . . . your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Surely there is a more honest way to solicit money than making a gimmick of ascetism, and perverting an honorable practice in the process.
Richard Lundquist
Assistant Editorial Editor
Kansan Book Review
'Soul on Ice'
By SCOTT NUNLEY
High. Very high. Flying. Look! where I am, snatched up, clutching Eldridge Cleaver by the hand.
It's dizzy up here shouting in rhythm "Yesyeses" from the gut and my cautious moderate skepticism left far behind. (No clouds, clear gold.) Its chill cramp may catch up with me, of course, but for this moment let my mind leave me high on the beautiful poetics of "Soul On Ice."
The dynamics of Cleaver's book alone is staggering in its intoxicating rush from the despair of 400 winters of Castration, through the suicidal determination of yesterday's Black Resurrection, to a final catastrophic affirmation of hope in tomorrow's Coronation.
"Soul On Ice" ultimately is not preaching the momentary surge of Black Power. Its scope includes all Americans (perhaps all men) and its "power" demands the sexual and psychological health of the entire species.
If it's not a message you want to hear, then stand back from the source: I certainly wouldn't recommend a personal barring of the schoolhouse steps that might bring you entirely too close to the blazing tongue of that damnable Black Panther, ex-convict, Black Muslim prophet at the podium inside.
It would be much safer to unbar every door and drag all the old furniture out under the sky, unpinning the uptight hinges if they squeal.
Because the message will get through anyway—the book, the voice, the man have burned past the watchdogs—and they will listen (you will listen, I will listen). It is worth the pain in your ears. It is eloquent. It is fantastic in its feeling of Truth. And it is healing.
Healing, heal me. When I cry. Because Eldridge Cleaver is preaching beyond the fires (to the final end of combustible ragpiles), beyond the hatreds (to the wedding of strong and admiring opponents), and beyond the current pessimism (to a health so vast and profound that hope will be its in-breath and its out-breach).
In the prisons of California, Cleaver read and led and thought through the degradation of his fellow black inmates. The lyrics of their needs pour from its embarrassingly honest letters:
"He has imperative need of the kindness, sympathy, understanding, and conversation of a woman ... to sniff are crossed and uncrossed beneath a table..."
But the black man is denied this natural sexuality by a social system so insidious that it victimizes the white masters as well.
All of us are convicts of this class-stratified sexual prison that divides Mind from Body, white-thinking Administrator from black-laboring Menial. Forced by his class image to downgrade the brutal strengths of the Body, the white boss cuts himself off from the source of his masculinity.
“. . . she achieves an image of frailty, weakness, helplessness, delicacy, daintiness. . . The mechanism of her orgasm, which begins in her body and ends in the psychic depths of her mind, becomes short-circuited in the struggle between her mind and her body.”
Attempting to make her man more masculine by contrast, the white woman only ultra-feinizes herself:
Any society that fragments its sexual models along lines of class difference must fail to achieve any one, unified sexual image. Failing then to provide whole and healthy directions for the sexual growth of its men and women, the divided society will finally fail to achieve any real and satisfying fulfillment.
These Body-oriented whites took rhythm and blues from the Black Menial, renamed it rock and roll, and turned on the White Administrator to an ecstatic return to the source of his own masculinity—to his own long-taboo body.
Cleaver's vision of hope, of rescue from this horrible schizophrenia of the sexes, began with Elvis and triumphed in the Beatles.
As the Beats and Hips opened the vanguard of a return to guiltless association with the black man, the entire white population was re-learning the health of its body and expressing the great immediate joy from high school to White House.
"Soul On Ice" consumates its own fantastic message in a final overwhelming letter "To All Black Women, From All Black Men:"
"I have returned from the dead. . . . I have danced the limbs of the cat, have seen Satan face to face and turned my back on God. . . Black woman, without asking how, just say that we survived our forced march and travel through the Valley of Slavery, Suffering, and Death. . . But put on your crown, my Queen, and we will build a New City on these ruins."
Chant this book in the company of your friends.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom--UN 4-3646
Business Office--UN 4-4358
A student newspaper serving the university of Kansas, Lawrence, KS.
PUBLISHED by the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Acceptance fee is $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, religion, national origin expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Executive Staff
News Adviser George Richardson
Advertising Adviser Mel Adams
Managing Editor Monte Mace
Business Manager Jack Haney
Managing Editors
Pat Crawford
Google Jenkins
Alan T. Jones
Steve Morgan
Allen Winchester
City Editor Bob Butler
Editorial Editor Alison Steimel
President
Richard Lundquist
Sports Editor
Ron Yates
Assistant Sports Editor, Bob Kearney
Feature and Society Editor
Associate Feature Editor
Associate Feature Team
Sharon Woodson
Copy Chiefs
Judy Dague
Lina McKee
Don Westhausen
Sandy Zahradnik
Kathy Saulens
Promotion Pam Flatton
Circulation Mgr. Jerry Bottenfield
Classified Mgr. Barry Arthur
Advertising Manager  Mike Willman
National Advertising Manager ...
The Hill With It by john hill
"Mommy," said the six-year-old twin boys simultaneously from their respective twin beds.
"What?" said Mommy, coming into the room and turning on the light.
"Mommy," said little Matthew, "would you sing us a lullaby before we go to sleep?"
"All right, all right. Hold my beer and I'll see if I can find one on the radio."
"No," said his brother, Mark, "read us a story from the Story Book." He pointed to a book between A Child's Garden of Perverse and Candy.
"Look," said their mother, "just one quick nursery rhyme before the commercial's over. Here goes. HumptyDumptysatonawallHumptyDumptyhadagreatfallandalltheking'shorsesandalltheking'smencouldn'tputHumptytogetheragain. Now you two go to sleep and don't—"
"Obviously a Christ figure," said Matthew thoughtfully, more to himself than anyone else, "although I'm bothered somewhat by the obvious symbolism of the King's horses, especially by the way they come ahead of the Kings men. . .."
"It's just a stupid nursery rhyme," their mother said, exasperated,
"now just—"
"Perhaps," said Mark, "approaching it from a more sociological level on a slightly different plane than the martyred hero symbol, the King's horses, inherently being inferior, were called upon, however, in a crisis to work as equals along side the King's men, which would be a commentary on minority groups frustrations and their—"
"For Crissake!" said their dear, sainted mother. "It's just a nursery rhyme. So stop with the King's horses already!"
"Then on a philosophical level," Matthew said, pausing for the length of time it would take to thoughtfully puff on a pipe, "it is enigmatic that Humpty-Dumpty was left broken, reminiscent somehow of Jack left with a broken crown, at the conclusion of his epic, with Jill tumbling after, apparently symboling the Freudian theory that—"
"Epic!" their mother screamed, "I'll epic you! Now it's just a nursery rhyme. So go to sleep now, and no more discussion!"
She turned the light out and started to leave.
"But mother," said a small voice in the darkness, "we find it meaningful to explore and evaluate the various sub-levels of-"
"I'll meaningful you if I hear one more word. Now when I was a kid, it was just a nursery rhyme and you're talking all about it not's going to make it any different. You've evaluated the hell out of it so go to sleep."
She shut the door and ran back to the second exciting half of Lost in Space, not hearing the sound of the pitter-patter of little feet heading straight for a copy of Candy. . . .
Letters to the editor
Gen. Walt, the other minority
To the Editor:
To the Butler:
In response to the speech by
General Lewis Walt:
Dear General Walt:
I was one of the civilians that witnessed your speech on Monday afternoon. I was not one of those who popped their gum or commented aloud, but I regret that I share in their disbelief as I heard about Vietnam as it has never been told before.
While you paced back and forth in the shadows as if telling a secret, you told of alleged atrocities committed by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese. In fact, since most of your speech dealt with these acts, I got the impression that you enjoyed these the most. You told us about a war that wasn't a war but one that we're going to win anyway. You told us about the people of Vietnam who flocked to the polls to exercise their new freedom but you forgot to mention that several newspapers were recently closed for criticizing the Saigon government.
You told us about your giving the purple heart to a "colored boy" and how proud you were of him. You told us about the many American boys re-enlisting to stay and fight. You told us how your experiences in Vietnam had been some of the "most rewarding of your life"
and how the enemy had lost some three-hundred thousand men.
You told us about a little Vietnamese girl who walked five miles to return a soldier's watch, thus reassuring us of the moral fiber of the Vietnamese people. I'm sure she has a bright political career ahead of her.
And lastly you told of a soldier who having been wounded three times, wished to return to the states, and who in your opinion had a "type of attitude that we don't need over there."
To these comments and the others that you made, I can only reply that yes, there is a war in Vietnam, General Walt. It is being fought by American men. And someday, General Walt, there will be peace.
Richard Johns
To the Editor:
Overland Park sophomore
We are not saying we love the
After reading the Kansan almost every day for the last year and a half, we find a great deal has been said concerning Peoples Voice and SDS. It has come to our attention, however, that no one has spoken for the other minority group on this campus: the average students who support this country, right or wrong.
war in Vietnam; in fact we find it deplorable, but in all seriousness, we don't think much can be gained by parading around with a coffin. True, it gets you publicity, but what kind and which group do you think it impresses?
Also, we don't think our present system of government is ideal; there is infinite room for improvement, but personally speaking, it is the best form we've got. Like Mike Warner we feel now is the time for unity, but although we will share our food, our ideas and our money, we have no great desire to share our bodies.
In regard to the military, we feel the draft system could and should be changed or destroyed altogether, but harassing a group of veterans, who fought in the past to protect this country against such trivial things as Nazism, during their evening meal, will only promote indignation as well as indigestion.
Our suggestion to Peoples Voice and SDS is to apply their talents to areas where it would be more effective. And to the Kansan we suggest that there are others on the campus who are just as newsworthy.
Wanda Daniels
Eudora sophomore
Jackie Saltzman
Lenexa sophomore