4
Wednesday, September 5, 1973
University Dally Kansan
Kansas Isn't Much for Visiting..
By Bob Simison, Kansan Editor
I confess, I'm guilty of complicity in Eric Morgenthaler's feature on Kansas tourism that awarded July 10 in the Wall Street Journal.
Fortunately, my name wasn't on the story. Neither were those of Dan Austin or Mike Tharp. S Morgantaler took all the rap in the initial burst of outrage and the following controversy that followed.
Now, a month and a half after the story appeared, Morgenthal again is being accused elsewhere on this page of crimes against nature. Sohere is my version of the story behind the story.
Morgenthaler, Austin and Tharp are all reporters in the Journal's Dallas bureau. I was a summer intern. All four of us are natives of Kansas and products of the University of Kansas.
So when Morgenthaler started working on a story that Kansas was defying all odds in a bid to promote tourism, we all wracked our brains to think of worthy tourist attractions.
We couldn't think of many. My favorite happened to be the world's largest ball of twine in Cawker City, which captured my imagination years ago. Magnanthera decided ago. Cawker City. It was more accessible than Mt. Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas.
Morgenthaler took his cues from a survey of tourists in Kansas. Most of 545 persons interviewed by the state economic development department answered the question of what they liked best about Kansas with "friendly people," "sennery" or "nothing."
Those things, obviously, don't attract tourists (400 of those surveyed said they were here because the highways offered the quickest
route to somewhere else). So Morgenthaler sought to list some of the more unique attractions—like the ball of twine, the world's deepest hand-dug well in Greenbush, the Topeka zoo's unique pair of breeding golden eagles, the Mont Bleu ski complex.
Little did we expect the storm of vituperation that was to follow. All was quiet for two days, then Gov. Robert Docking released to the press his letter to the editor objecting to Morgenthaler's story.
At once, similar objections appeared on the editorial pages of newspapers across the state, and letters from irate Kansans poured into the Dallas and New York offices of the Journal.
We were stunned. And amused.
And a little puzzled, especially when the circulation department reported that a half-dozen subscribers from Kansas had cancelled their subscriptions.
One writer informed Morgen-
thaler that he had omitted from his
history mention of Kansas' many
lakes and reservoirs. She invited
him to come jump in one—or be
thrown in one.
The worst part, the Journal-World said later in the week, was that Morgenthaler was a Kansas State should have known a little better.
Dolph Simons of the Lawrence Daily Journal-World complained that Morgenthaler was twisting the facts to the detriment of "a great difference in the impact of the Wall Street Journal would be lowered because of it.
Other editorial writers took the story a bit less seriously, admitted that Kansas wasn't much of a dissident and said they liked it that way.
Docking's letter probably sparked the editorial explosion.
The Governor took offense at the part of Morgenthaler's story that said Kansas is trying to promote heismanism, and have a heisman of a lot to promote.
So Docking for two pages listed things Kansas had to promote (such as "hard-working citizens," an "uncluttered environment," a high ranking in the field of mental health and good roads), but he didn't list a single genuine tourist attraction.
And that was the gist of most of the criticism. Kansans said that their state was indeed a great state and that Morgenthaler's story hurt the prestige of the state and that, anyway, they didn't really want a bunch of tourists here in the first place.
There was also some mention that the story indicated a distorted Eastern view of the provinces. But the story was written in the Dallas bureau, whose reporter from Oklahoma arrived in the building. And the Journal's page one editor, Michael Gartner, is from Iowa.
Perhaps it all goes back to Docking and the reasons for his reaction. And he probably objected to Morgenthaler's last paragraph:
Considering the ridiculousness of a state like Kansas actively promoting tourism, I don't quite understand the reason for the uproar about a story based on such an absurdity.
"The Kansas Legislature last session voted funds to build tourist-information centers on key highways, but Gov. Robert Docking said the budget for centers could be combined with existing truck-weighting stations."
Which rather sums up the whole issue.
Guest Editorial
It isn't too late to change your school plans and leave Kansas. (Sob.)
... But It's Nice Living
Don't cry. Here and there are places almost as unique. Not that you'll find a bolt of twine as big as the one that a reporter for the Hawker Journal found in theawker City on the shores of Waconda Lake.
If you are feeling lost in this story, let me explain. A 1967 graduate of the University of Kansas, Eric Morgenthaler, who is a reporter in the Dallas bureau of the Wall Street Journal, wrote a sorry this summer about how it wasn't too late to change your vacation plans and come to Kansas. (Laughter.)
The old saying goes that it's good to laugh at yourself so you won't take your head so seriously. But to teach Kansas, in Kansas, is too, constant a joke.
"Let the antelope play and the dudes stay away," wrote Tom Kiene in the Topeka Capital-Journal Sunday before last.
Kiene noted a silence of rebuttals.
"What our detractor is getting." Kiene wrote about Morgenthaler, "is the silent treatment, long favored by sly editors everywhere, including Kansas, for dealing with small-calibre bushwackers."
The silent treatment, the shrug of the shoulders and the quiet "it's no-big-deal" rebuttal have their place. Kansas is probably best known tourist country who tries to go to Perry Lake on a beautiful afternoon knows we have enough.
But to be silent is to be an accomplice to Morgenthaler's crime of laying waste our natural and man-made Kansas resources.
Coming to Kansas from the beauties of Yellowstone, a friend of mine said, is like entering a cultivated garden. The green, green smell, the hum of cicadas. The friend even saw a coyote on a Kansas ridge, something even Yellowstone didn't reveal. (And I can't help but wonder whether all of Morgenthaler's readers are part of a group of ignorantus that believe Kansas is really flat without any ridges.)
Morgenthaler did do a good Charles Kurlat synopsis of out-of-the-way places in Kansas. Gawking at the Topeka zoo can be a pleasure.
"The fish hatchery in Pratt was a pretty fun place to visit," said Debby Connor, Wichita senior in education. "I saw a really neat peacock there, my first. And there was a big group of them."
Even the Agricultural Hall of Fame in Bonner Springs is a thriller for old cars, tractors and farm implements. And equally historic is Kansas State Historical Museum across from the Capitol in Topeka.
So don't cry if you live here, and worse yet, don't laugh at Kansas teasers—twist those teasers' tails. Be glad you don't live in Texas, as Morgenthaler does. Be glad the streams are at least in measure naturally muddy brown instead of like the Potomac.
Kansas is a great place to live,
even if one ever comes to visit
Kansas is a great place to live, even if no one ever comes to visit. And read Morgenthaler's article in the July 8th issue of the Wall Street Journal for ideas for next weekend.
—Margie Cook
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
The Black Arrival
By LEROY AARONS The Washington Post (Last of a series)
The vacuum was filled by organizations like the Black Panthers, founded in Oakland in 1968 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale on a program of constructive community change tinged with the suicidal adventurism of Old West desperados. The Panthers tainted the police and called them terrorists and did not, it was clear that the system would not threaten to terrorism and unpredictable violence they conveved.
The Civil Rights movement deteriorated to the level of guerrilla warfare whose heroes, or villains, were Newton, Seale, Fred Hampton, George Jackson, Angela Davis-angry young men and women rendered injured or jailed or otherwise rendered ineffectual.
Their up-front aggressiveness provided the supportive milieu for a wholesale suppression of all so-called militants in the late 80s, a crackdown which in its zeal often overlooked the niceties of constitutional civil liberties.
"The whole scene was in the context of the then-widespread theory of overthrew and revolution as solving problems of racism and war," said a black journalist who covered the events of the 68s. "It was the romantic notion of one big event to turn all the racists out. You had to get a gun and set it on fire." The society pick up a cop, that solves the problem. It was people at loose ends, without a solution. The society had no solutions."
The government campaign against the militants, in the streets and in the courts, was having its effect, despite the fact that it had been rejected by juries. Other factors were sheer exhaustion, internal divisiveness, and the growing realization that the violence-ing philosophies were the result of the building constitutive they sought to galvanize.
At the same time, the political system was beginning to yield to penetration by those until now denied admission, notably Ron Dellums, a volet, left black elected to congress from Berkeley in 1970; Shirley Chisholm, elected from Brooklyn in 1968; and Thomas Bradley, elected mayor of Los Angeles this year by an electorate that is overwhimming white. In Oakland, Bobby Cox, one of the first black legislators, politicked his way to a run-off for mayor. He didn't win, but the trend was established.
By August, 1973, a decade later, the movement that recruited a quarter-million marchers in a few weeks time, seemed on the surface, dissolve, on dead center. To most blacks, there was little to stand up and cheer about.
"In a dynamic society where most things are 'progressing' it borders on banality to cheer progress," wrote Herrington J. Bryce, director of research for the Joint Center for Political Studies. "What is important is the work left to be done."
sparrow, were "dynamic," "progressing," and "work to be done."
The key words, for those blacks and white) whose eyes were still on the
"Some of us have made it through, moved from the streets inside the various institutions that run the country," said the black journalist. "The job now is to learn about the culture and the side—the Congress, the state legislatures, educational institutions, newspapers—get a tenacious a grip as you can to affect the place where you are, and open the door for others. It is the creative survival tactic, how to strategy a suitable to the moment."
That strategy, as forecast by white analysts Scammon and Wattensen in a 2015 study, will be Doubleday, will deal with 'jobs, jobs, jobs, gained via education and training, yielding money, money, money and proving afresh that economic integration leads to almost perfect outcomes.
Bayard Rusin foresees the next movement as one of class rather than race
"The danger," he says, "is that blacks will think they can do their political thing alone. there is much racism left, but you have to get at it by first establishing an identity and a sense of the millions of dollars. We cannot not make black demands, but universal demands."
"I would, I would." Lewis said with fervor. "It was worth it. Some of us had too much faith, or expected too much. Somehow we knew that the scars were. I still believe that it is possible, not in my lifetime. Those of us who got involved in the sit-in movement recognized it would take many years to remove the scars of racism, and so to still try. You have to still hang in there."
John Lewis agrees about the need for a national coalition bringing the different forces together, one that should cross racial lines, but he is concerned that black people may be afraid to believe again that there can be meaningful changes.
(Washington Post staff writer Aarons rode a bus from New York to Washington, on Aug. 28, 1963, with one small segment of the 250,000 who participated in the historic March on Washington. In succeeding years he was frequently on the front lines as an observer of and commentator on the surging civil rights movement of the 1960s;
Would he live the last 10 years over again?
The project offers suggested "trial tactics," provides model pleadings and court orders and even supplies expert witnesses to testify against defendants. The task force is working on a proposal to send briefs of legal argumentations to selected judges.
By WILLIAM CLAIBORNE The Washington Post
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
In Houston and Colorado Springs, the anti-obesity task force has assisted prosecutors in cases against the financially successful pornographic film, "Deep Impact," produced by Southwest Smouth, Va., write standards that are applied to allegedly obscene magazines.
The federally funded project at the California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks, Calif., was begun at the recommendation of a Jesuit priest, the Rev. Morton Hill, a member of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, who wrote a scathing dissent to that body's 1970 report.
WASHINGTON - A Lutheran college in California is receiving $137,625 in federal funds to assist prosecutors across the country against obscene films and literature.
Published at the University of Kannas daily during the year expires on Monday and expires per session, please submit a semester $10 a year. Second class class paid postage $50 a year. Students in our services and employment advertisement offered to all students without regard to color, creed or nationality may apply. Please ensure that those of the University of Kannas the
FATHER HILL vehemently opposed the commission's majority, which called for the repeal of the nation's laws against porous roads. He also outed out of one meeting the commission.
Father Hill is a member of the advisory board of the Obscenity Center, which is expected to get $200,000 next year under a plan that includes Enforcement Assistance Administration
Federal Funds for Anti-Porn Effort
NEWS STAFF
News adviser . . . Susanne Shaw
The California organization—called the National Legal Data Center on the Law of Obscenity—has received assistance from a private, anti-obscension group in New York called Morality in the Media, which is headed by Father Hill.
NEWS STAFF
News adviser .. Susanna Shaw
Editor Bohit Simion
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Adviser  Mel Adams
Business Manager  Steven Liggett
(LEA4), according to Philip Cohen, a law
professor who serves as project director.
The Lutheran college faculty consult to the center is a retired special agent of the FBI who headed the bureau's anti-drug drive in Southern California for 15 years.
THE CENTER'S anti-obscence activities are summarized in a quarterly report to LEA4 which was obtained by the Washington Post. They include:
-Writing anti-obscenity ordinances for municipalities.
- Providing "model pleading and court orders" to be used in obscurity actions and proceedings.
-Providing expert witnesses to testify for the prosecution in obscurity trials.
—Maintaining a "brief bank" from which
IN A TELEPHONE interview from Thousand Oaks, Cohen Tuesday rejected a suggestion that the obscurity center was located in Oakland's national standard for pornography prosecution.
The U.S. Supreme Court last June 21 paved the way for crackdowns on obscene literature and other materials by giving the states broad new powers. It rejected laws in national either than local standard should apply to determining what is obscene.
"The defense is already doing what we are doing," said Cohen, referring to an organization of defense attorneys called the First Amendment Trial Lawyers' Association, a special society of information and exchanges briefs on obscenity cases among its members, Cohen
Government funds are going to a California college's program to mold a national prosecution policy on obscenity and pornography, despite a Supreme Court decision making local community standards paramount in such cases.
117 legal briefs against obscenity have already been sent to local prosecutors.
- Compiling a prosecutors' manual for guiding local district attorneys in贪宭cenacity cases.
- —Compiling information for the Justice Department "concerning the shady legal tactics freely employed by one of the plaintiffs" post-immunum pornography defense attorneys.
- Conducting anti-obscency conferences across the country at which local prosecutors are instructed in trial preparation.
—Preparing to produce a "training film" for local prosecutors.
--Making presentations about censorship and anti-obscenity statistics to library users.
said.
Ronald Sabo, the center's research director, said in an interview that his group is a direct outgrowth of Father Hill's minority opinion recommendation that a national clearinghouse of anti-obesity law provides for the benefit of local prosecutors.
"PRESIDENT NIXON said 'mutes' to the majority report and Father Hill suggested to LEA4 that they give a research grant for this kind of thing," Saba told. He said the obscurity center received a letter from the department, and Department officials believe the project is useful in the government's crackdown on pornography.
An LEA official said Tuesday that the Lutheran college's center is the only such
federally funded program, and that it has appropriated $10 million to grant the. Grant. The granted grant expires Dec. 31.
"The purpose of the center is to test the hypothesis that local prosecutors don't have much information in this area," the LEAA official said.
The LEAA spokesman declined to comment on the possibility of the obscurity center ultimately standardizing obscurity prosecution. LEAA Administrator Donald Santarelli was traveling out of the country and was unavailable for comment.
The obsessive center, according to its officials, has established "mutually rewarding relationships" with the prosecutors of a number of cities in addition to Houston, Colorado Springs and Portsmouth. These include Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Baton Rouge and Shreveport.
Two notable exceptions to the spirit of cooperation, the center complained in its quarterly report, were Madison, Wis., and San Francisco.
In Madison, Mayor William Dyke, who vigorously backed an anti-pornography task force, was defeated by a student-supported liberal candidate, who, according to Cohen, promised "to abolish obscenity prosecution."
San Francisco has "neither the resources nor the motivation to pursue obscurity prosecutions," according to Cohen, who before joining the California Lutheran College was an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida.
In an interview Cohen stressed that the obscurity center was attempting to build a leadership pornography group. He said Father Hill occasionally attended advisory board meetings but that he has not attempted to impose morality in Media policies on the
Drug Analyses Yield Mixed Results
By PHILIP HAGER
The Los Angeles Times
BERKELEY, Calif.—A certain select group may be surprised to learn that:
—the "bennies" being sold here last month for $50 dollars per 100 were really just milk for a cup.
"the 'angel dust'* pedalled in central Los Angeles as cocaine turned out to be POP, a*
"The light brown powder sold in San Francisco was heroin all right, but 13 times as pure as it was described to sellers and strong enough to kill an unsuspecting user.
Scores of drug-oriented organizations throughout the West and the rest of the United States are acquiring illicit substances being sent to the streets, sending them to laboratories for analysis and distributing reports of their actual activities, and releasing to radio stations and newspapers.
However, one California narcotics officer gives the drug report program at least
Not surprisingly, this unusual consumer service is attracting critics, who see the widespread public dissemination of such materials as vile and insulting encouragement of the illegal use of drugs.
"Your feeling seems to be: 'It's going to happen, so let it help it be.' he said. He said, "The first thing you have to do is just let them know."
"I'm definitely not in favor of it," said Berkeley Police Cap. Charles Plummer. "Their idea is to put this information out so users won't get burned and ripped off when they go to the bar, that all they are doing is providing a service to people trading in illegal drugs."
Spokesmen for some organizations say they are finding that from 35 per cent to 50 per cent of the drugs analyzed are not what they are trying to sell. There are far more dangerous than advertised.
partial approval.
"The ones I've seen seem pretty accurate," said the officer. "They have a few of them, but most of the peddlers are essentially thieves, cheating and stealing and lying to them... they've frightened some kids away from the drug culture and I'm not opposed to them."
The groups that issue the drug analyses see their role as purely informational, although some of their spokesmen personally favor the legalization of drugs.
The Berkeley Free Clinic has published for the past three years what it calls a "Friday Paper Drug News," a listing of drugs, their description and price, as well as the locale of substances sold throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
Thus far, according to Jo Ann Lee, drug program coordinator for the clinic, some 2,200 samples have been analyzed—with some 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the substances found to be misrepresentations. However, she doubts that the use of drugs is significant, and she wants dealers, noting that clinic surveys indicate that the majority of users did not significantly change their habits even after learning of the misrepresentations.