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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Nov. 5, 1964
Game-Day Pests
SATURDAY'S HOMECOMING FOOTBALL game promises to be one of the most exciting and interesting contests in the Big Eight Conference this year.
Yet, many of the 45,000 fans who come to Memorial Stadium this weekend will not enjoy the game. They will, on the other hand, spend the afternoon being pushed, shoved, mobbed and vilified by the group of spoilers who always attend such contests. Everywhere one goes on Homecoming afternoon, he is bound to be forced to contend with the actions of these persons.
OF COURSE, the afternoon will be an exciting one and many actions which would usually be considered objectionable, will be overlooked in the spirit of the day. For some, however, exasperation is bound to prevail and their day will become a failure.
PERHAPS THE FIRST kinds of pests which will be encountered by Saturday's fans will be the rude and inconsiderate drivers who seem on game days to dominate the streets and highways near Memorial Stadium. By the time one arrives at the game, his original good humor may well have been destroyed by the motorists he encounters while on his way.
The athletic contest pests come in various types, some more annoying than others.
Spirits therefore somewhat dampened, the spectator will arrive at the stadium and will probably encounter the second kind of common spectator-sport pest—the shover.
THE SHOVER is a person who apparently believes that people can be pushed into an arena in much the same way as sausage is stuffed into a grinder. The shover exerts a steady pressure both on the back and the patience of the person in front of him.
After a brief but nonetheless infuriating goround with one or several shovers, the spectator will find himself inside the stadium. Here, with a
feeling of relief, he will make his way to his seat —only to find pest No. 3.
Pest No. 3 is the seat-staler. The seat-staler is the person who, due to an outrageous administrative manipulation, has been assigned a seat at the far north end of the stadium. Since the seat-staler does not like to sit in the north end of the stadium, he selects another, more desirable seat instead.
AND SO, upon arriving at one's seat, one is quite likely to find it occupied. The result is a sometimes awkward situation which can end in violence, especially if the seat-stealer also happens to be among the fourth group of pests—the drunks.
THE DRUNKS are listed in plural form because that is how they are usually found at the games—in groups. The drunks will be scattered throughout the crowd in clumps. From these gatherings will be heard the type of witticisms one usually finds scrawled in public washrooms. If one—or one's wife—is sensitive to this type of thing, he may well have his afternoon spoiled.
After the game, one has to run the same gauntlet that he ran at the contest's beginning. There will be the shovers and the discourteous motorists.
THE DISCOURTEOUS MOTORISTS may after the game be even more discourteous as they too will have been subjected to the shovers, the seat-stealers and the drunks.
By the time one arrives at home after the Homecoming contest this weekend, one may well wonder just why he was so anxious to get tickets to the game in the first place.
It would seem that the local police department with the assistance of the university administration could make certain moves toward the elimination of at least some of the football-game pests. One realizes that steps are being taken, but there seems to be a great deal of room for improvement.
Marshall Caskey
Culture Boom
A quick glance at some of the latest cultural statistics might give one the impression that the United States is presently in a culture explosion. And rightly so, look at these figures:
Theater and opera attendance has soared 115 per cent during the lifetime of television.
The number of amateur painters has jumped from 30,000 to 40,000 in the past 15 years.
Twice as many people attend concerts as go to baseball games.
Some 19 million classical LP's were sold last year.
The purchase of hard-cover and paperback books is increasing three times as fast as the population.
In the 1940's about a dozen art movie-houses were operating whereas about 500 are continuously screening art films.
Standard Research Center predicts "the trend toward culture will create a total arts market of about seven billion dollars by 1970."
And to top it off, 100,000 persons went to view the "Mona Lisa" in one afternoon.
SOME SAY THESE figures mean nothing. Russell Lynes, managing editor and contributor to Harper's Magazine and noted analyst of contemporary American manners and mores, asks what it means when people attend the Metropolitan Museum just to see a painting by Rembrandt for which someone paid $300,000.
ONE FACT STANDS FAST: more people are being exposed to culture. New theaters and centers are springing up all over the United States. The Lincoln Center in New York is the most recent. Another drive is underway to construct a $30,000,000 center in Washington, D.C. Everyone seems culture-conscious, summer stock on up.
CULTURE IS COMING to the populace, and the Kansas City area is no exception. Kansans are fortunate to have a center for the arts so near. On Nov. 10 the Kansas City Philharmonic orchestra begins its season, which one can attend whether or not he knows Liszt's "Mephisto Waltz," which is the opening number. The Nelson Gallery has continuous art showings and recently featured a display of works by Van Gogh. Katz drug stores are bringing famed Louis Armstrong to Kansas City. Most of the classical recordings are available. This summer, Starlight Theater presented musicals, "Porgy and Bess" and "The Sound of Music" in its annual series. Even Sears and Roebuck is selling top quality paintings bought by Vincent Price.
MAYBE THE PEOPLE do not know anything about the arts, but one thing is for sure. They cannot continue to attend concerts, see art films, appreciate paintings, read good books and hear classical music without a little culture rubbing off.
— Don Black
Iranian Shah Inspires and Guides 'Revolution'
THE LEGEND GOES something like this:
Fourteen hundred years ago, an ancient Persian monarch named Anoushiravan ordered a chain attached to the outside of his royal castle. Anyone seeking justice was at liberty to pull that chain, thereby giving rise to the ringing of a bell inside. It is even said that once a donkey caused the bell to tinkle, and upon investigation, it was discovered the animal had been subjected to ill treatment by his owner.
ONE IRANIAN SCHOOLBoy who heard that legend in the 1920's never forgot it. Today he is Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.
IMPRACTICAL FANTASIES perhaps. But the Shah, in less than a generation, brought his near-feudal country farther along the road to modern democracy than even he would have believed possible, to the point where Iran is a rampart of the free world system.
"Today I know that my youthful ideas and dreams of social justice were impractical" (the Shah once vowed to himself in his youth that he would have a complaint box for his subjects), "but my conscience has never ceased to warn me that my most important duty is to improve the lot of the common man in Iran," the Shah says today.
FOR ONE THING, Iran is situated at the crossroads of the East and West: it is where Asia and Europe meet. And her civilization, molded between the old worlds of China and India on one side and those of Egypt, Greece and Rome on the other, has produced an almost legendary outpouring of delicate art. rich rugs and miniatures and glittering mosques.
IRAN'S UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS, such as Mithra and Mani, have left their traces all over the world. Iranian fine arts have always been rich inspiration sources to Asiatic and European artists, and the scientific works of Iranian scholars were for centuries used as textbooks in the universities of Europe.
THE TERM "IRAN" has always been used by native Persians to designate their indefinitely bounded country. The term, however, only became current in western usage as the name of the kingdom proper after 1927, in recognition of its reinvigorated life and newly asserted independence. That reinvigoration was under the hand of the present Shah's father, the founder of the New Iran.
More occupations, devastations and periods of decadence have dotted Iran's 25 centuries of existence than it can keep record of. And what the Shah feels and very few ordinary westerners may realize is that "Our eventful and sometimes calamitous history has carried us to a position where if ever—God forbid—Iran should fall, all the Middle East and subcontinent of India will fall along with her, causing Africa to withdraw from the Free World and upsetting the balance of power."
Throughout the 19th century, just when the United States was enjoying its first real fruits of its independence and when the Industrial Revolution spread social and economic progress throughout Europe, Iran remained lifeless, internally chaotic, rotten corrupt, underdeveloped. She was a weak country then, and strong nations preyed mercilessly upon her.
BUT JUST AFTER WORLD War I, at what seemed to be the climax of Iran's deterioration, when everyone said her name would disappear from the list of free nations, a young prime minister, Reza Pahlavi, took the reins of the government as king. Until the time of his abdication in 1941, that Shah directed programs of political and social improvement that, although they still left much to be desired, paved the way for the Iran that is today.
BUT WORLD WAR II again saw the same ugly situation in Iran that World War I had brought. She was overrun from every direction in spite of her neutrality declaration, and in order to avoid total destruction of the land he had struggled to develop, the first Reza Pahlavi abdicated, his son maintains, leaving the younger Reza to take over at one of the most crucial moments in Iran's history.
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"MY RESPONSIBILITIES were indeed great, far greater than those of my illustrious predecessors," says the Shah. "I have had to combine the moral leadership traditionally expected of a Shah with a program of reform and reconstruction in every field. When I look back over the 21 years that have elapsed since I became king, I feel it was only the grace of God that we have steered clear of the dangers that threatened us on all sides."
CONDITIONS WERE AGAIN at their worst in the struggling nation. It was about this time that a diplomat in Teheran issued the statement, "Corruption is the lubricant of the Iranian economy." Justice was bought and sold as easily as stock is today, tax rights were purchased, government jobs were literally auctioned off, contracts freely given, conscription waived.
NEWS WEEK MAGAZINE says, "The western pundits said the Moslem potentates were through. They were sure fiery young colonels with Marxist visions would sweep the remaining kings off their thrones, and it actually happened in Egypt and Iraq.
"But some Moslem monarchies — Morocco, Jordan, Saudi-Arabia, Iran — have survived. The Shah of Iran, for 22 of his 44 years the occupant of Iran's Peacock Throne, has believed men like Egypt's Nasser missed the boat, and has set out to prove he himself didn't."
THIS FIRST INVOLVED the Shah's winning the confidence of 15 million ignorant, underprivileged peasants living still in
feudal bondage. He first tried convincing reactionaries that reform was in their favor, but that didn't work.
So in 1961, he took matters into his own hands and dissolved the landlord-dominated Parliament. By decrees he was no longer hesitant to use, the Shah introduced real land-reform programs to uproot feudalism. He knew that some reorganization at the top would have to precede a revolution from below.
SADLY ENOUGH, not only his land reforms but his housing, food, clothing and education reforms all met with violent opposition from "black reactionaries and Red subversives." So he did the only thing left to do: he took the all-important land-reform measure directly to the people in popular referendum. He received 98.99 per cent of the ballot. So began the Shah's "revolution from the throne."
THE GREAT REFORMS in Iran since the Shah found he had the support of his people are almost beyond comprehension. Absentee landlords in Iran have almost completely disappeared. Today 519 villages once held by the throne have been granted to 42,000 families. The Shah himself literally gave his own huge land ownership away, and is now landless. A third Five Year Plan is now in effect to further expand an agriculture abundant in wealth and promise.
— Corinne Newberry