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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, March 27,1968
Kennedy's last stand?
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is seeking the presidency now because he has been losing ground steadily for the last two years and this could be his last chance.
This view is put forward by James Reston, columnist for the New York Times. Although it is not a commonly held view, it deserves examination.
Reston presents a Kennedy vastly different from the dynamic figure who spoke at Allen Field House March 18.
Reston claims Kennedy has lost some of the magic that helped him politically after the death of President Kennedy. The new McCarthyism, with its attraction for youth, Reston said, is diminishing his appeal. And Kennedy was never very popular with the conservative businessmen or even with middle-aged, middle-class moderates.
Also, Kennedy's policy of standing in the sidelines, delivering snipes at the administration, was losing him respect with the party leaders conservatives and liberals alike.
Perhaps Kennedy's bid will be the greatest gamble of his political career. With the majority
of party delegates pledged to Johnson, Kennedy must muster a tremendous amount of popular support to convince the convention delegates to dump LBJ.
Further complicating matters, McCarthy's candidacy could split the anti-Johnson vote and maybe allow Johnson to win in the Oregon and California primaries. Worse, with McCarthy, Kennedy, Johnson, and Wallace vying for the bid, the party could be so hopelessly split by election time the Republicans would win with Nixon.
So, Kennedy appears to be walking a tightrope. He could easily lose and put his Senate re-election in jeopardy.
However, Kennedy's strong convictions on Vietnam, and his personal charisma, might help him pull the nomination out of the fire.
With Johnson's recent unpopularity, McCarthy's relative obscurity, Rockefeller's refusal to run, and Nixon's ability to put his foot in his mouth, who knows—Kennedy may be the next President.
Diane Wengler Editorial Editor
Letters to the editor
Hoch facilities sorely lacking
To the Editor:
The third annual Festival of the Arts' first concert has opened with marvelous Oscar Peterson Trio setting the tone in Hoch Auditorium. I might add that KU should feel pleased to have been entertained by one of the musical giants in the jazz world.
However, it was unfortunate that the evening's festivities opened with a B and G man standing center stage shouting instructions up to the crew in the control booth. Most of us can see that Hoch Auditorium is obsolete and is fit for little else but a livestock show. Considering the building being in the state that it is in, one need not stretch one's imagination to realize that technical difficulties could occasionally arise there.
However, most "paying" audiences expect the technical difficulties to be ironed out by the time they take their seats.
One can overlook one mishap but not two in the same evening. I am referring to the "dancing spotlight." There is absolutely no excuse for this. The spot was set one place throughout the first set, why couldn't it have remained in one place throughout the entire performance.
It is quite disheartening to know that KU spent a couple thousand dollars to have the Oscar Peterson Trio brought here for our entertainment and does not allocate more money for a competent theatre technician.
I remember last year's Festival of the Arts when Count Basie played in total darkness throughout his concert with one spotlight creeping all over the stage trying to find the soloists for each number.
Considering that so little is happening at KU and that there are very few people being imported from the outside world for our entertainment, we should always be prepared technically to handle their shows. Perhaps we need an entertainer that feels he has been insulted when these things happen to just walk off the stage and refuse to perform until they are corrected. Maybe then we will get something done.
Let us hope that those unfortunate incidents do not happen
again in the future. Entertainers are a clannish bunch and it would be a little embarrassing to have statements making the circuit like, "The worst time to play is the week before Christmas in Philadelphia, during August in Florida and at KU under any circumstances."
Jonas Walton
Los Angeles sophomore
To the Editor:
We, the members of the KU pep band, would like to thank the KU student body, Alumni Association, Lawrence businessmen, and friends of KU for their help in making our recent trip to the National Invitation Tournament possible.
We have enjoyed supporting the team during the regular season and were pleased to have the opportunity to go to New York to further support them and also assist the Pom-Pon Girls. This was certainly one of the highlights of the season for us.
We especially would like to thank those people who labored with a close deadline to make the necessary contacts and appeals to raise the required amount of money. Space and fear of omission forbid listing these special people by name but this does not in any way decrease the most sincere thanks they deserve.
William L. Kelly, Director and the KU Pep Band
To the Editor:
In agreement with the crowd's inappropriately lengthy app'laurel for Mrs. Carpenter at the Kennedy convocation, you erroneously inferred in Monday's UDK that she was a widow, by describing her as the "wife of the late astronaut."
Scott Carpenter can be considered as a late astronaut since he turned aquanaut, but realize although he may be pulling up kelp, he is not pushing up daisies.
-Victor J. Barry
Seattle, Wash., senior
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Book review
Stuart's new book; Backwater comfort
By Scott Nunley
In Kentucky, as in most extra-urban regions of America, a strain of generally unrecognized art has continued to produce minor poets and novelists. "Mr. Gallion's School," the latest novel by Kentucky poet-laureate Jesse Stuart, is typical of this provincially-oriented clique.
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"Mr. Gallion's School" is the "new" Stuart, but in many ways it is as old as his initial "Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow." If the fever of rural-worship in Stuart (and in his avid and generally rural readership) has been dampened by his world-traveling and by the jetting of America into the telly age, the most basic of Stuart's directions and values remain little altered.
The novel itself is a tale of reform. A once-superior high school has fallen into a decay from which the novel's hero will extricate it. Courageous reform of other people's corrupt practices is the theme which Mr. Gallion orchestrates for the single accomplishment of himself;
"Sure, I'm one of them,' he said. "They know I'm one of them and they love and trust me for being one of them. They know I'm fair and honest with them. They know a teacher can't get by, doing something they are not permitted to do . . . had they been let grow up like corn planted in fertile earth but never cultivated, they would have been outlaws instead.'"
Aside from its turgid style of dialogue, Stuart's writing argues a simplistic worldview that provides its heroes with a moral fiber spun in a pre-electric kitchen:
"Worry is the worst of all diseases,' George said. 'It can kill you.'"
Simplicity and fiber, of course, make a warm and comforting weave. In this winter's poetry anthology "Kentucky Harvest," Jesse Stuart appears as a theme in his own right:
wings over the world in soaring hilltop fl
"He stands,colossus of kindness; his bold song
how way a giving man has to live.
His span restored, he gives out gratitude.
over the world in soaring hilltop flight;
'This is the way a strong man has to live.'
while at his feet the tribute garlands lie."
At the height of "local colorist" popularity following the Civil War, America's provincial artists tapped the power of the expanding frontier for boistrous humor and fresh vitality. Today, the regional writer has been left in the backwater of the exploding urban "frontier" and too often is content to repeat his votaries to the heroes of a placid past.
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Paperbacks
VERWOERD, by Alexander Hepple (Pelican Originals, $1.25) —Part of a new series called "Political Leaders of the Twentieth Century," detailed analyses of significant people. Verwoerd was the premier of South Africa who was assassinated in 1966, and the vigorous promoter of the policy of apartheid. More than any other modern South African, Verwoerd set his nation upon a course that some observers regard as ultimately suicidal.
The Latest Vietnam Casualty