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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, February 16, 1968
Olympian attitudes
The winter Olympic games at Grenoble, France, gives mankind one more reason to beam with pride.
For despite other shortcomings, he has preserved over the years this great international institution of organized and friendly combat known as the Olympics.
The ancient Greeks are given the credit for starting the games. The Greeks, however, have been left in the background—the Olympics now constitute a battleground among world powers. While France glows with pride for playing host, Russia and the United States dream of the gold medals which will make each nation ten feet tall with empty prestige.
So important is the need to de-emphasize such unsportsmanlike conduct among the nations of the world that even the scoring is done on an individual basis alone at Olympic events.
Undaunted, though, the statistics-minded populace on either side, whose behavior is as unsportsmanlike as their appearance in sports-
men's gear would be clumsy, do their own national tabulating or have persons of similar conviction do it for them.
For once, let's give ourselves a real break. Let's take things in stride with the world's best sportsmen by enjoying the spectacle of their show, one that ought to rate as the greatest on earth. They ask no more than an audience to entertain.
The greatest of them see honor in a chance to participate in games with the best of their kind from around the world, not in winning. Winning just for the sake of national pride, is but a side issue.
And that's what we should remember as we watch their performance in the next few days. We owe it to them to have a sportsman's spirit if not his perfected skill. So let's demote sectarian or national pride—they make us too blind to see good in anything but a win.
- Swaeebou Conateh
  Assistant Editorial Editor
letters to the editor:
On Rocky, closed classes
To the Editor:
I have a major complaint—closed classes. Are they a farce or an absurdity, or what? Let me explain.
The real problem during enrollment is not what miserable hours one will be stuck with, but one of not being able to get into a class at all.
Due to various pre-enrollments, the situation is so bad that jokes about it are not even funny. Since I enrolled Friday morning of enrollment, I anticipated possible problems. But I also remembered that 14 letter groups (God help them) were still to come after me.
I had hope. This hope was shattered as I first perceived the big board of closed classes. Three out of my six classes were closed. Not only these three, but almost any other alternative.
But, to make matters worse. I learned tonight (Feb. 9) that one of the courses I desired, English 18, which was closed, has an enrollment of less than 20. What's more, a student enrolled in it tonight! Remember, this class was "closed."
Therefore, I am now in two classes of primarily grad students, and I don't look at my potential accomplishments this semester with optimism.
It's bad enough that less than 20 freshmen and sophomores can take a creative writing course out of thousands of students. But, the worse thing is that the closed classes board was an outright lie!
It's pretty bad when a student's academic career could be in jeopardy due to closed classes, especially phoney closed classes.
University of Kansas—there is something definitely wrong!
Dan Giumario
Alexandria, Va., sophomore
✕ ✕ ✕
The February 8 editorial, "Rocky is logical choice," has no grammatical errors. Having pointed out all of the editorial's good points, I will proceed to its inadequacies.
There is much in the first six paragraphs which is ridiculous, but I will move to the middle which is more specific, and therefore more easily refuted in a small space.
"The nomination of Nixon would alienate the Republican moderates and liberals and anti-Johnson Democrats as effectively as did Goldwater in 1964," says
the editorial. This is silly, first of all, because Nixon is not as strongly identified with conservatism as was Goldwater. Secondly, western, midwestern, and southern Republicans, having learned from 1964, will not gleefully practice over-kill on the eastern minority of the party.
Later the editorial says of Nixon, "He has a credibility gap equal to Johnson's and is almost as hawkish on Vietnam." This statement is just plain wrong. Nixon has no credibility gap with the vast majority of voters. Only Drew Pearson has a credibility gap anywhere near the size of Johnson's gulch. And Nixon is not almost as hawkish as Johnson; he's more hawkish than Johnson.
Further on, Sen. Charles Percy is quoted as saying that Nixon is the favorite of the Republican professionals. This, of course, brings forth images of smoke-filled rooms and callous politicians over-running the Republican rank-and-file.
One example of this tactic was the statement in the editorial, "In the recent Gallup Poll, Rockefeller showed twice the Republican support as in a November poll." Missing, however, was the fact that Rockefeller support was small in November, and double a little bit is still not much. With funeral services being said over Romney's aspirations, it is to be expected that some of his support would shift to Rockefeller.
This is the same clap-trap we heard in 1963 before Rocky got smashed in the primaries. At that time, polls of Republicans were conducted simultaneously by Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, and Congressional Quarterly. The polls all showed that Republicans overwhelmingly supported Goldwater. But most of the respondents believed themselves to be a minority in the party. They believed that some majority of Republicans somewhere out there were for Rockefeller. They had been brain-washed (to borrow a term from another Republican) by the strumously publicized, though mythical, Rockefeller popularity
Following later is the same old junk about the Republican party continuing "to be controlled by an ultra-conservative wing." The familiar implication is that some small group of "ultra-conservatives" (a scare word, never defined) has escaped from a nut farm and, by some magical method (never explained), has managed to exert control over the Republican party.
The truth is that the focus of party power has shifted to the West, Midwest, and South, basically conservative areas. Republicans are conservative, as shown by a January 8 Newsweek tabulation, which gives to conservatives like Nixon and Reagan almost twice as much strength as liberals Rockefeller and Romney.
The last paragraph of the editorial is a plan for Republican victory. It more closely resembles a desperate Democrat's dream. Rockefeller would be the worst possible Republican candidate. Wallace is only a pseudo-conservative, as Florida Republican governor Claude Kirk says, but even a pseudo-conservative would be more attractive to the majority of Republicans than liberal Rockefeller. Wallace would draw a maximum number of G.O.P. votes with Rockefeller as the Republican candidate, and LBJ's re-election would result.
St. Joseph, Mo., senior
—Kent Dannen
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Kansan movie review:
'How I Won the War attempts all, fails
By Scott Nunley
"How I Won the War" is an ambitious film that, from trying to be almost everything, somehow just doesn't work.
Given a bright young director, eager actors, lots of laughs, plenty of color and action, and some shock, "How I Won the War" has no right to be as dull as it is. It would be loyal from a fan of "Hard Day's Night" to argue that John Lennon needed greater exposure, but the fact is that his mumbled performance is among the dulest.
His reason for this is obvious: to combine the slapstick spoofing in his own film with the stark replay of actual World War II newsreels. The problem is that Lester kept trying too hard and finally had to spoof the newsreels themselves. Much of the potential of shock is withdrawn from the film with the loss of the newsreels' authenticity.
Richard Lester has always seemed to be awed by the use of color photography and some of his better work has concentrated on the less tricky medium of black and white. Apparently Director Lester recognizes his own predilections, because he chose to film a third of "How I Won the War" in monochromatic blue.
The plot itself can be briefly sketched. A green British officer and his citizen-soldiers are dispatched behind enemy lines to construct a pre-attack project. But the point of the plot is its pointlessness—the secret project is no more than a cricket field and ultimately the officer who conceived the project is displeased with its accomplishment.
No medals, no heroics, no meaning.
Lester echoes the content of his film in its chaotic and patently artificial form. The bumbling young officer—rather overplayed by Michael Crawford—is telling the story of how he won the war to his captor, a Nazi aristocrat. Continually, actors step out of character to reveal they know the story of their lives and when they will die; they are merely repeating the motions for the audience.
All of this, of course, makes the message very clear that war is absurd. However, it also tends to remove the element of suspense from the film, without which the accompanying weight of shock and disillusionment is very difficult to generate. When you know the miserable truth to begin with, dramatizing it scene by scene is less likely to upset you.
"How I Won the War" tries to be too many things—slapstick comedy, intellectual comedy, moral and social criticism, and a parody of its own artificiality.
What the film creates most pleasureably are adventures in language and image, long impassioned monologues juxtaposed with hilariously inappropriate scenes.
Michael Crawford handles this best—raving on about petty thievery—while the film shows him easily towing a massive earthroller up a steep bank and while a WWI British warplane is heroically shot down by WWII British soldiers, to the cheers of enemy Italians. The long scene is just mad, that's all, and no one needs to step out of character to point up the message hidden in the fun
The screen could certainly use a refreshingly outrageous look at war this season. But Richard Lester's spooning of the medicine is clumsy.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS