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University Daily Kansan
Friday, Jan. 16, 1959
Censored Sex
Writing editorials in Kansas is a cinch. The wheat-belt prophets should be ashamed to pick up their paychecks. When things get dull, and the piece on Afghanistan is already written, you simply pull out the file on moongazers.
Kansas has prohibitionists, fundamentalists, reformers, and faith healers, the healers moving to Southern California in recent years. But no species among the native fauna is more reliable fodder for the editor than the Kansas Board of Review.
The board passes on the state of public morality as reflected in the movies entering the state. A dirty movie has more trouble passing the state line than a bottle of Missouri whisky. The board usually finds the public mind a sink of iniquity, and edits public film consumption accordingly.
Whenever the board stirs a stump, the editor has tomorrow's editorial page taken care of. He either rears back on his hind legs and annihilates the board for censoring, or he rears back and blasts the film maker who has just suffered the board's depredations. It's a sure winner either way.
The film this time is "Smiles of a Summer Night," a Swedish pastry which probably deals with sex. Most Swedish movies do. We haven't seen the picture, and neither has anyone else in Kansas, except the Board of Review. Nobody is likely to see it.
The board is going to call in some "broad-minded people" to look at their prize. The implication is that the board members are not broadminded, but that's no shock. The width of the Kansas mind is measured in microns, and has been since before Comstock's palmy days in New York.
Some sort of review board is a good idea. There should be some agency to shield us from the flood of pap and papillae that Hollywood normally spews. But the board is oblivious to artistic merit, and passes only on morality.
The board passed "I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf" without batting an eye. Even Abbott and Costello have been seen in Kansas. But the Swedish film is immoral, the board says, and the University Film Series is running a good, safe standby film in its place.
One thing the board has never recognized, and probably never will. Some of us are natural-born moral lepers, and we like to be titillated. If we can't see dirty movies, we'll buy pornographic books or subscribe to college humor magazines.
A few benighted souls even feel they have a right to select their own entertainment. In some places, they do. But Kansas, in the traditions of camp-meeting morality, hallowed by custom and established by the Legislature, will continue its robotomies, hoping against hope that the mob will eventually be weaned of the desire for things unclean, immoral, obscene, and defiled.
Sometimes about the millenium, their wish will come true, followed by the Second Coming.
We Preach, Don't Practice
The recent overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and the subsequent resignation of U. S. Ambasador Earl Smith once again points up one of the big faults in our system of government.
America has tried to be the showcase for democracy since that day in 1776 when a group of men gathered to pen their names to the Declaration of Independence. We have talked in glowing terms of the rights of man.
While we mouth sweet talk about freedom for all, we continue to shovel arms to dictators in Latin American countries. These dictators, in turn, use American weapons to see that their people do not step out of line in search of such absurdities as freedom. Then, we sit around and try to figure why the people of South America stone our vice president.
Unquestionably, much of the agitation in these South American countries is worked up by the Communists. But when you stop to look at the record of this country in dealing with our southern neighbors, you can't help but wonder just how much agitation it takes on the part of the
Communists to develop these hate campaigns such as the Nixon episode.
The United States could not conceivably send direct aid to the rebels in their fight for freedom. But it certainly did not have to support Batista diplomatically and with arms.
What is needed now is emphatic support of the new Cuban government—provided of course that government shows it is willing to put the wants and needs of the people first. Another factor that would greatly aid the cause of democracy south of this nation would be to send Cuba a diplomat well versed in Cuban affairs.
This country cannot continue awarding diplomatic posts as "political plums" and expect to win the confidence of the people being served by these ambassadors.
America likes to play the role of the good guys in this game—and rightly so. There is no other way it should be. But someone in Washington ought to rewrite the script so that, even if we don't help the other good guys, we won't go around supporting the villain.
Bob Macy
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"JEE ME TOMORROW—I'M BUGY GRADING FINALS NOW."
A foxhunt official used a tin bathtub as a lifeboat to rescue a hound that had fallen into a flooded mine shaft. We admire his courage but wonder how he happened to have a bathtub with him on a fox hunt.
Short Ones
Dailu Hansan
UNIVERSITET
An author of a recent book on how to live without alcohol found out he couldn't.
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 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association.
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ented by National Advertising Service,
420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y.
212-694-8200. Press International. Mail subscription a semester or $4.50 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holliday examination periods. Entered as second candidate Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan. post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Malcum Applegate ... Managing Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Irvine ... Business Manager
    NOTEBOOK DEPARTMENT.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Al Jones Editorial Editor
It Looks This Way...
By Alan Jones
I haven't been well lately. I have an intense pain in the sacral area, aggravated by reading guff from every bleeding heart and big-mouthed politician in the country about how terrible things are.
First Anastas Mikoyan, a professional Armenian butcher who is currently drumming up trade in this country, has some eggs thrown at him. Washington is afraid Mikoyan won't like us.
Frankly, who gives a damn if Mikoyan likes us or not? He's a politician of the teady school, who has held office by being acceptable to the number one man of the moment. He was the animal responsible for the slaughter in Hungary. He directed the capture of Nagy and Maleter, and supervised the Hungarian slaughter.
Who wants to be friends with a beast like that? The people chucking things at him were Hungarians—the ones who escaped. They know Mikoyan for what he is, and they get my thanks if nobody else's.
And there has been a great protest against the executions in Cuba. Castro is a butcher, a blood-eaxed fanatic, the lament goes.
About a week ago, a TV newscast listed some of the torture instruments found in a Batista jail. There were pliers for the tongue, pincers and wires for the fingernails, iron boots for feet
The congressmen didn't say anything about these sophisticated little amusements, but are outraged because a few dozen sadists and legalized criminals are erased.
Congress is going to investigate the executions in Cuba, to see what we can do "short of sending U.S. troops."
We have about as much right in Cuba as a polecat at a lawn party.
We stood by, watching and ignoring, while Castro and his grubby army lay sweating in Oriente.
And now, the gentlemen of Congress find Castro's program "regrettable." We could do with a little less shocked piety and a little more concern for things that are properly our business. And our business, Cuba ain't.
Cuban Supports Castro
Editor:
Every hour, as the radios bring the last news, you hear the bitter comments about the executions in Cuba. Newspapers and radios are keeping a close count of the persons executed.
The United Nations is thinking about a way to make Castro stop the executions, and it makes me wonder why? The people that are being executed are war criminals, people that during Batista's regime tortured and killed thousands of Cubans. Why protest now because they are given justice, a fair trial and a generous death considering the one they gave others?
If the United Nations is so concerned about Cuba, why didn't they say something during Batista's regime when 20,000 Cubans suffered horrid deaths. Why didn't they speak when Batista, in his last attempt to stay in power, ordered the bombing of open cities that were on the rebel side?
We had to live through these bombings, we had to see, hopelessly, how Batista's air force bombed cities like Santa Clara during 23 hours in a row and five planes at a time; and now they try to tell us what to do.
Didn't the United Nations stop to think how many innocent lives were being lost then? Why complain now that the men guilty of such cruelties are being judged and executed?
If the government wouldn't take care of those criminals the people would take justice into their own hands, and then it would be much worse because they would receive what they gave, they would harvest what they planted with seeds of terror and destruction.
The Cubans were strong enough to fight a dictatorship and destroy it. The United Nations didn't offer them any help then, why not let them take care of what they acquired in a fight of ideals against corruption, power and money.
If we knew how to destroy a dictatorship, why think we don't know how to apply justice to the supporters of it?
Sonia Alvarez Cardenas, Cuba, junior
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Congratulations, Jayhawkers
Editor:
A look at this year's Jayhawker is certainly no waste of time. Last year, I had gone so far as to generalize after seeing the Jayhawker what low standards yearbooks of American schools have. I had to look twice when I opened this year's Jayhawker.
Not only its photography, writing and general presentation show imagination, creativity and originality, but also the spirit it disseminates is clear, modern and joyful.
Particular attention is deserved for the special effects in photography as well as text and design and the attempt to bring some life even into the normally dullest (and most used) sections like the presentation of the members of different houses.
I am glad to have some evidence to change my opinion about American yearbooks.
Harald Meyer Reinach, Basel, Switzerland graduate student