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University Daily Kansan Thursday. Feb. 18, 1965
Coffee Drinkers, Unite!
Those nasty, nasty restaurant owners! How could they raise coffee prices? I mean, really... They know how addicted college students are to the stay-awake brew. Why, it's our life blood.
And now those ogres are raising the prices for those people who go out and sit and drink coffee, more coffee, and more coffee. It is of little, if any, importance, that they have to make a living out of their restaurant. After all, we are getting a college education, something extremely vital to our country's future and all that. How do they dare to raise prices? How do they expect members of the All Student Council to hold their late night meetings with coffee prices going up?
And now, in the true tradition of hell-raising college students, some irate coffee drinkers from the Hill are protesting. How noble of them. What would the campus do without demonstrators? After all, everyone knows they are the only link we have with the public. How can college students, intimidated by all sorts of social forces, make their needs and desires known if they don't demonstrate?
Things have been sort of quiet around the campus this year, anyway. Not too many people have gotten too riled up about the plight of dogs on campus or about the school spirit at bingo games. Some say the weather causes lethargy in students, some say that the college students are lethargic to begin with. That's what all the big circulation magazines are saying, anyway. And we always believe what the magazines say. We have to . . . we're in the same business they are.
But now KU students have come to the rescue of the criticized lethargic college student. They're protesting. Hurrah!
— Leta Roth
Beware - The Idiot Box
"Do you realize the trash you have been watching on the idiot box lately or even in the last year," a friend asked me the other day. "The taste of the programming personnel on radio and television has been sinking from being sunk to a new low over the last year."
Actually the idea hadn't struck me until my realistic friend described some of the shows that I remembered watching and some of the so-called advances in this shady field of blue shirts. I knew at once that we were being conned by the professionals and decided to do something about it. My friend warned me of the type of characters I would meet up with if I entered the acoustic halls of any of the electronic media. I unrolled my paper and sat down.
What had I been watching? And then it hit me. All the networks were big on comedies lately. What could I say complimentary about a media that showed me almost eight days of comedy skits eminating from a luxury hall for cows in San Francisco to a union hall in Atlantic City. Starting every afternoon I had seen men putting on their respective shows in some type of contest. The winner always seemed to be the last one on, and the audience would come and go according to the act that was playing. And even after these eight days, they still said they would have to have a final contest for the best man. Luckily, our wizards turning the dials on the new-fangled transmitters decided to switch programming about that time and not carry so much comedy. I like comedy but what would you do if we put out five comedy newspapers instead of just one. I'm sure you see my friend's and my point.
I'll never forget the math class early in November, either. We all sat up that night while the men watched machines and we scribbled furiously. The contest had come to a finale and these white or blue collar workers, without the benefit of a little honest printer's ink, were adding for us on these machines. What kind of a service it is when they are 35 per cent faster than four years ago with their calculations. That just means that you're that much more behind in your figures than you were four years
ago. I just can't understand a medium that won't let the average Joe figure out some of these things for himself. Here's a little box that can inform more people on how to vote than any other source. It can reach more Americans, give them more information and influence them more than whatever you can name. Almost 95 per cent of all homes have one of these boxed-up windows staring at them all day and night. What happened to the good old days when we could just take a chance and guess on the outcome of an election, a world crisis or some other event? Some people say we could be in trouble if the wrong people get control of this thing. Maybe they already have.
THINK OF IT. The box is ruining our country. It shows us the lands across the sea, the people who live there and the customs of those people. It induces our citizens to go abroad, spend their money elsewhere but in the United States and deplete our gold surplus. It gives children information on politics, voting, and other civic matters. Before you know it, your 4-year-old will be picketing city hall and stuffing ballot boxes. And commercials. Men in washing machines, 10 feet high washers, dandruff in the wedding cake, cars on mountain peaks... how's your kid going to know that you're not poor because there's only a 3-feet high washer in the basement or that mommy might be hiding another man in that washer? When he gets his driver's license, he'll be heading for the first mountain with his foot in the carburetor.
And how we stand for the type of programs the networks shove over on the American public? When I was a kid, I knew about the birds and the bees from movies, magazines and other little boys. Now, a kid spends so much time watching the boob-tube that he has to come to his parents. The number one show this year . . . Bonanza. Ever hear of it? Let me tell you the real story. Not one regular woman in the cast. Even if one slips in occasionally, they put her in clothes with a collar pushing against her left bicuspid and a hem so low on the dress that it catches in her button shoes, which button up to the knees over black stockings covered by bloomers. How can you possibly have a plot with such goings-on. Not one teenage girl has to get married, and never have I seen a boy pileup his old man's pony. Fortunately the featured family sometimes fights and shoots other men so the whole show is not wasted. Any young boy might learn how to defend himself according to his size by just watching the actions of the three different-sized brothers featured on this show. But watch your son! All these boys love and respect their father, and if it spreads to the young viewer, psychiatrists may have to hock their television sets.
I have heard that a new miniature television is coming out that you can wear on your watch! What would you do if we gave you a paper the size of a postage stamp and charged you as much as a regular size? And these small cameras introduced this year so a man could just walk around on a cow palace floor (watching where he placed his feet) and hold a complete camera ready to go in one hand, instead of having three men carry it. First of all, two of these men are now evidently on unemployment and the third is lazy or he'd be carrying that big one still. They cover the real reasons by calling the new things advances in the field. And now they say this is the age of letting media be your companion. Little TV's, radios, and some so small your kid might swallow them and he'd spend the rest of his life hearing the Beatles. I don't know about you but I'll stick with my dirty postcards. You have a hell of a time getting corrupted hanging around a television or radio.
Yes, my friend and I decided that 1964 had been a depressing year for the electronic media. As soon as all of these people get hep to just what television and radio is doing to them and the type of stuff they are watching, I bet there'll be a big revolution and everyone will go tear down TV towers and throw antennas into the river and write their newspapers and burn all their blue shirts. I've got faith that the American public won't take this outrage sitting down . . . in front of the idiot box.
—Van L. Moe
"What's The Matter With You Can't You Read Signs?"
BOOK REVIEWS
A SHORT HISTORY OF IRELAND, by Roger Chauvire (Mentor, 75 cents).
From St. Patrick to de Valera is the scope of this little volume. Roger Chauvire has endeavored to give a capsule history of Ireland from pre-Christian to modern times—an oft-forgotten land that has produced major figures for the world.
Chauvie views Ireland as an essentially tragic land, beset by tyranny and hatred. His chapters on recent Ireland and efforts to achieve the Irish Free State bear this out. The story is one that we can recall whenever we hear of the now-underground Irish Republican Army.
Chauvie recalls the great ages of Gaelic culture and the time when Ireland was an important center of learning. He describes the penal laws of the 18th century, the famine of the 19th century which sent many Irish to America, the parliamentary conflicts of Parnell, and the modern disputes.
There are 16 pages of illustrations, and there are good depictions of such figures as Shaw, O'Casey, Yeats and Thomas Moore.
Students of the drama, but also of literature of a comparatively recent era, will welcome these excellent new volumes. In attractive paperback form, Dell has produced volumes in its Classical Drama series. The Sophocles edition includes "Antigone," "Oedipus the King," "Electra" and "Philoctetes." The Euripides has "Medea," "Hippolytus," "Alcestis" and "The Bacchae." The Aeschylus has "Agamemnon," "Choeporoe," "Eumenides" and "Prometheus Bound." All are in modern translation. They make the Greek classics read with the contemporary excitement of an Arthur Miller or Edward Albee.
The Restoration volume is another kind of thing. The editors have endeavored to give us the feel and flavor of the period through a number of kinds of writing. There are samplings from Pepsys' celebrated Diary, from Dryden, from Bunyan, and from Congreve, as well as from a number of lesser-known writers.
SOPHOCLES, edited by Robert W. Corrigan; EURIPIDES, edited by Robert W. Corrigan; AESCHYLUS, edited by Robert W. Corrigan (Dell Laurel editions, 60 cents each); RESTORATION, edited by Alan S. Downer and Arthur C. Kirsch (Dell Laurel, 95 cents).
Dailij Hänsan
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Nakrd
Leta Roth and Gary Noland Co-Editorial Editors
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Don Black ... Managing Editor
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Don Black
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Fisher
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