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Tuesday, November 2, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Comment
Opinions on this page reflect the view of only the writer.
Political roulette
Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford finished neck-and-neck in the presidential sweepstakes. The great race, marred by fouls and strategic blunders by both men, is finally over. Now it's time to decide the winner.
Polling places from Seattle to Miami Beach have opened their doors already this morning to let the American voters work their collective will—one by one. How the voters will have arrived at their decision is hard to tell.
Some will blindly vote a straight party slate, casting their ballot for one man or another simply because he's the top banana in the party.
OTHERS WILL be more objective. Having watched the candidates on the evening news dozens of times, they will have reached an intuitive or "gut" decision as to which man is best. These are the voters who will say they are "scared" of Carter or are "bothered" by Ford's clumsiness or intellectual abilities. Former President Obama the impatient. The last time these voters were really satisfied was when John Kennedy was elected—except for those charmed by Richard Nixon.
Then there are the voters who actually study the issues and how the candidates stand on them. This year there's been a lot of talk about how the candidates have avoided the issues or taken unclear positions. Carter especially has had trouble with this accusation, but by rights he shouldn't hurt his chances. Taking definite stands damaged the chances of many men who have aspired to the presidency. Look what happened to George McGovern.
THIS ISN'T a new aspect of
presidential elections. In 1924, political observer Elmer Davis said that the voters seemed to like candidates who avoided controversy.
"At least they vote for men who say nothing and against men who say something," he said. "To do otherwise would mean the devoting of thought and effort to politics, and few voters and to politics, is useless, mixed with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life."
However John or Jane Q. Public makes up his or her mind, one thing remains certain. The roulette wheel of public opinion and caprice will stop somewhere, and it will be either on Ford's lucky number or behind and around and around it goes. It stops not even the pollsters know.
Night will soon fall and the polls will close. Thousands of people normally uninterested in, or "turned off" by, politics will gather around television sets in homes, bars and local party headquarters to watch the returns.
THE "ELECTION control" centers of the big networks will try to make some sense out of the tallies that trickle in early, and then massive banks of inscrutable computers will tell us who won before he wins.
There will be tears of joy in the winner's circle and tears of grief in the loser's. There'll be "aplause mingled with kisses" and then everyone will go to bed.
Tomorrow, life will proceed as normal. America will have a president.
Contributing Writer
We need Houdini encore
Americans love a showman, a challenge, a thrill. The idea of death fascinates them, and one who courts death can almost always hold their at-
Alas, there are few humans today who are true showmen—who have charisma, who make great boasts and have the talent to back them up.
ROCK STARS and comedians are about the only people besides sports figures who perform live for audiences. At times they excite, but few really control a crowd. Even when they do, it is all rather predictable.
I had often thought about this, but it never really hit home until this past weekend. Saturday, I saw an Evel Kneel motorcycle jump. Granted, the boy was having a good time his jumping ramp. But his show is so commercialized that there is no mystery.
The crowd didn't celebrate his triumph when he successfully jumped. Rather, they were disappointed that they hadn't achieved their goal all was all rather cheap and demeaning.
My thoughts about showmen were again rouled Sunday when I realized that Halloween 1976 was the 50th anniversary of their death, Daoudi, the extraordinary医师.
Houdini was an incredible man, a legend in his own time. It may be unfair to compare modern showmen with him. The death of vaudville and many
nightclubs has changed entertainment. Today a great showman don't have the same opportunities or the same chances to develop and refine an act.
Greg Hack Contributing Writer
made his escapes possible, and other untrue stories circulated.
Many people thought that Houdini, manacled, was dropped through a hole in an ice river. Unable to find the hole, the ice bolted into his body and "bubble" in the ice until he could escape his bonds and finally find the hole in the ice. Houdini did make several successful escapes from manacles after being pulled out by rivers. But the ice story wasn't true.
BUT EVEN stripping away the false stories, or even less, showmen who have been hisignant in every way.
It is true that Houdini made elephants disappear and swallowed needles and a cotton ball and pulled the needles back out—threaded. He ran into only one jail he couldn't escape from. He was the master of all others.
Whenever he appeared in a town, his first move was to challenge the local
authorities to let him escape from their jail. Houdini would be stripped naked, searched and locked in a cell. He would always escape. (He was not the one who knew was his match.) Sometimes he switched the other prisoners around. Some of the country's most dangerous criminals didn't know where they were, so they opened their cells and said, "Follow me."
HOUDINI worked hard to master every handcuff and lock made. He would take any challenge and win. Others would say they beat Houdini, but they lied. Houdini would show him, and illustrate him. Houdin offered great sums, usually 1,000 pounds, to anyone who could duplicate his escapes. No one was his match.
When mitigators of his handcuff escapes grew too numerous, Houdini sent his brother to their shows, armed with cuffs from which only Houdini could escape.
But when handcuff escape acts became the rage, so much so that Houdini couldn't stop them all, he moved to bigger and better trikes. He had run through and could tie up city traffic by performing the escape suspended from a flapole.
THE HEIN dreamed up the grandest escape of all. He was placed upside-down in a water-filled glass cage, his ankles locked into the cage's roof.
"Failure means a watery death," his posters proclaimed.
But Boulund was a great personality, besides being the world's greatest, most innovative trickster. He became interested in early aviation, bought an airplane and took a flying lesson, and became the first human to make an extended air flight Down Under.
When movies became big, Houdini jumped in. He made a serial and a few feature-length movies, which always featured scary and impossible escaping impossible torture traps.
HE COLLECTED magician's lore as one no one ever had, gathering the tricks, notes and advertisements of countless greats.
Most important of all, he attacked spiritualists who hurt other people and exploited their *disease* to communicate with dead loved ones. Houdini again took on all challengers and never lost. Such an attack is hard to imagine. And Houdini received much of the credit.
SCIENTIFIC American magazine and Houldin offered a total of $15,000 to anyone who could demonstrate psychic ability under test conditions. No one collected.
Houdini's tragic death from peritonitis robbed the world of a great magician, showman, personality and servant. I am glad many aspects of the early 20th century are gone, but I wish more of the excitement, romance, wonder and showmanship that Houdini personified were still around.
Fan says KSU bad name a fact
To the Editor:
I have lived in Kansas only about a year now and I attended my first Big Eight football game. My sister-in-law goes to K-State so she was able to obtain tickets when all supplies in Lawrence were cut off. She sat in a mixed section and I must say the people we met in
Section A were not really what I had expected even though I had heard rumors that the contrary, schools sat in Section A, discussing plays and other subjects in general but mostly
'OH, YOU'LL GET USED TO IT... HAPPENS EVERY FOUR YEARS.
I had been informed that people from K-State were crude, vicious, immature and at times hostile. Well, what I heard turned out to be true later. After the game we were walking back to our car when someone in a purple shirt held the head and relieved me of my KU cap. A few seconds later my spouses' hat was ripped from her hand and we were threatened with a sound thrashing because we went to KU. We saw a small boy, probably the son of a man and we threatened with more than five or six years old, knocked to the ground when his cap was stolen. There were also several older alumni who were relieved of their hats. We were informed by other friends at K-State that it was a common practice for students to bat hats, jackets and other property from other school's fans and band members whether they win or lose.
students remember it only takes a handful of people to give all of us the same bad name K-State has.
Henry L. Johns
Lawrence freshman
Although I think the hats and other property should be returned or paid for, the loss of many hats is nearly as much as the fact that other K-State students condone the thieves while the police and security people at the games turn their heads, and while a banker is watching townfolks live up to the bad reputation K-State has.
Maybe at 22 we ourgrown this sort of childish behavior and expect too much of others when I speak of good sportsmanship or of uncalled-for behavior doesn't start at KU and that my fellow
Accidental support To the Editor:
Proceeding on the assumption that the ideology of Jimmy Carter is closer to that of Eugene McCarthy than that of Gerald Ford and that, therefore, the McCarthy and
saccharine wishwashiness that has characterized Ford. I mean, really, what is the difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi? Their main ingredient is sugar, which is bad for people. The difference between Ford and Caterrion does not amount to a choice.
Bipartisan politics gives the illusion to voters that there really are easy answers. One may have the impression that a party affiliation will really tell you what a candidate stands
Readers Respond
Carter vote support bases are in a direct numerical relationship. I hope everyone, on the brink of action, realizes that a vote for Eugene McCarthy is, in reality, a vote for Ford.
Tom Krische Lawrence junior
Up with McCarthy To the Editor:
To the so-called McCarthy supporters who ran the ad in Wednesday's Kansan and to others, he said, in Freedom and Democracy:
If I had any inclination to vote for Jimmy Carter in moments of fear brought about by the election, I certainly cancelled by the effect of the ad "Paid for and authorized by the 1976 Democratic Presidential Committee Committee Inc." A vote for Carter is like casting a pebble into the splash will not be the same difference. A vote for Carter is a vote for more of the same
for. The idea of bipartisan politics makes for feelings of comfort. But then, I have been told, so does lobotomy. These problems are not lobotomies. There are grave and pressing problems in the world as you all know. The time of the thoughtlessly cast vote is gone—let our answers come out inside the old framework.
Both parties have been involved in slander against one another. If they are both pointing out real truth, and each candidate is ready to be trusted, let's scrap them both. McCarthy, running as an independent, is offering you a choice this year. You haven't read his name in the so-called "polls" because the media doesn't support him. But he is running and he does have support. He is not a part of binary fascism. Are you?
Stale social programs mar family life
By NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN (c) 1976 King Features Syndicate
Jimmy Carter may be the first presidential candidate to make The Family a recurring campaign theme. Until now, touring politicians have paid the Family occasional and ritual reference and then moved on to talk about peace-through-strength.
NOW WE have a Democrat campaigning on the promise to facilitate this very thing and a demand that we take action about the issue because for Ford to confront it he would have to talk about what the Democrats are doing to family life. Mr. Ford and top advisers as Mr.
What St. Jimmy the Tempted has in mind when he brings up the topic isn't very clear. Is family a code word for more money for the police, or for corporal punishment in the schools, or what? Perhaps the allusions to strengthening law enforcement only cater to pollsters picking up this concern as they try to determine what is on the mind of the great collectivity.
the people and by the people. He doesn't have the media on his side. He doesn't have a lot of money. Vote for him and show respect. But there is still hope for a same humanity alive in Lawrence.
Carter's answer to that question has been the day-care center. It's hard to imagine a more efficacious way to destroy what is left of our little families than to arrange the economic
halfway decent standard of living? What will be left of even the dehydrated nuclear family if both adults must work?
system so that it is impossible for even one parent to take care of infant children. It has been "the sadest and most painful parts of the Communist system in Russia and China was forcing parents to hand over their children to oppress institutional care of the state."
IF THATS the case, it's too bad, because there is a long, deep and genuine concern about our family life and its future.
First, there is the question of the so-called nuclear family (mother, father, 1.8 kiddiploos, 0.35 puppy dog and 0.2 puddy dog) whose family earn money family earn enough money so that the whole group can have a
Daniel Bentley
916 Tennessee
Not everyone is suited for reporting, and it is not the grave responsibility of a contributing writer to appear to endorse a set of candidates for sweeping action when there will be no opportunity for discussion and rebutal of her remarks.
NEITHER Ford nor Carter has indicated that objectionable behavior can arise from social or economic causes. The one exception sometimes made is low-income blacks or other minorities whose criminal members are excused on en-
It is proposed to treat women alcoholics individually. If that is so successful as the treatment, it is important that stock in a liquor company.
TELEVISION watchers the last few weeks may have noticed the arrival of the woman alcoholic. All of a sudden we are being told that it is shocking and unforgivable that almost all alcoholic women and therapists, are aimed at men. Estimates of how many women alcoholics there may be are flung about the airwaves. Last year it was battered wives; the year before it was battered babies. You never know how young problems are or how much they are the invention of job-starved professionals in search of a disease to cure.
I am referring to the article by Mary A Daugherty in the Friday, Oct. 29 Kansan in which she glosses over "election philosophies" and declares that "Although all candidates are deserving of a second chance choices are..." The writer had apparently not been privy to the information that all the candidates have strenued around Lawrence and the ad space of the Kansan. Her methods of selection were "...he has shown a knowledge of the community he represents and of the mechanics of the legislature in which he wants to work," (does this mean that Mr. Berman has not?); and "he is willing to stick his neck out for a variety of groups, whether their concerns are liberal, conservative or moderate."
Simon have more or less told us that we will not see inflation go under 6 per cent, three times the rate of the '80s and '90s.
Our two major presidential candidates are committed to the standard programmatic approaches, the medical examination and phlebotomy. There will be no public discussion of the possibility that it may be enough to drive someone to drink—a revealing phrase—if the someone is a member of the man holds down two jobs and the woman holds down one.
vivor mental grounds. The destructive, degenerate or dangerous behavior of everybody else is the product of either moral weakness or medical disability. Alcoholism is a disease. How many times you are looking at someone looking at the history of alcoholism among Indians, for example, it is always noted that spirits were introduced, and their use encouraged, by white men who did it for money. Alcoholism is not a disease in the sense that cirrhosis of the liver is, and alcoholism makes a political statement, even though they usually don't know it.
On Nov. 2 you can vote for Ford and give your confidence to a man who was hand-picked by a traitor to the best ideals of America. His vice president's right-hand man in the last campaign. Or you can vote for Carter, who very well may be "all things to all people," including Mayoral Day. (Who else can turn favors for the support they have given smiling Jimmy?)
Not of same suit
To the Editor:
Why must Ms. Dughery exciguate simplistic excuses? To address all her "reasons" would be painful; it will suffice to forgive Glew is really willing to stick his neck out for a variety of groups when his effectiveness rate in the Kansas House is so low? Ms. Dughery also says that American Party candidate Hillary Clinton's ambitions. "Compared with whom? Mrs. Hambleton's service of service to Lawrence was ignored by the writer.
But please register a protest vote against these two images created by skid PR and media staff. But they are running against the skid lie, for
If all editorial opinions are as accurately drawn as this she should say with everyone she is suited for public office," and my statement might also be true—not everyone is suited for journalism.
Laura Trausch
Overland Park sophomore
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