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University Daily Kansan Friday, April 5, 196
Anything for a Winner
The great American dragon god, Success, has reared its head in college football ranks and devoured Fair Maiden Ethics.
The dialogue that has accompanied the mess in the Southeast Conference is not unlike the Stan Freberg parody, "Saint George and the Dragon," which follows the Jack Webb-Dragnet format of "all I want is the facts."
IT WOULD appear that Wally Butts, the former athletic director at the University of Georgia, used a hot line to Alabama football coach Bear Bryant to relay some strategic information which may have affected a football game last fall.
As in the Freberg record, the present cast of characters seems more disturbed about the dragon devouring maidens out of season than they are about smashing dragon eggs.
Official investigative bodies in both Georgia and Alabama have set out to get "just the facts, ma'am."
With an incredible display of nearsightedness, the dragon slayers are concentrating on stamping out brush fires without looking for the pyromaniacs who are setting them.
IT IS understandable. Going to the source of the trouble would step on some very highly-placed toes. It would involve alumni.
The alumni are the builders of the shrines where the Fair Maiden Ethics is sacrificed with wholesale enthusiasm. The alums want winners at the old alma mater and, being knowledgeable procurers of success, they know where to go.
The handbook for shrine-building alumni is the coach's won-lost record. It is every bit as reliable as Dun & Bradstreet.
The proud sons of the Alabama Crimson Tide wanted a change from the still harbor waters of mediocrity. The Tide must rise to sweep all before it!
WELL, WHEN you want to make a big splash, you look for a man experienced and successful in swimming through deep and troubled waters.
The High Priest of High Priests in the Temple of Football Success has been, for years, one notso mystical Bear Bryant.
At the University of Kentucky he put sharp claws in the Wildcats' football paw to match the basketball scratch. Down at Texas A & M, where he next reigned, Bryant soon put the Aggies atop the heap.
He was the logical choice to raise the Crimson Tide from its status as a ripple. He did; a national champ pleases even the most lethargic alum.
BEAR BRYANT was hired to produce winners. This business of weaving strong moral fiber in the players is left to them that care not a whit for resounding success. The cloth of victory is not high in moral fiber content.
Well now, even the most avid Disciple of Football Success is wondering about the High Priest. They loved him in November, but the frost of scandal has nipped the romance.
The irony of it all is that now after the hired Dragon has devoured the Fair Maiden, the responsible parties are standing in shock.
NOT IN shock that the Fair Maiden Ethics was devoured, but in shock that their Dragon was caught wiping his chin in public.
Well, I agree with them. Maiden devouring should be done in seclusion.
But let's hope that they don't kid themselves into believing that Maiden Devouring will end when they slay an occasional Dragon.
If they want to stop this business of Devouring Maidens out of season, they must tear down the Temple of Football Success, and scatter the worshippers from the Holy Land.
— Terry Murphy
CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbroth Carey (Bantam, 40 cents).
Contrary to popular opinion, this is not about Clifton Webb and Myrna Lov. It is about a famous efficiency expert (he really was), his big family, and the good old days. A dozen or so years ago it was a big seller, and there probably is still a market for its nostalgic recollections.
SOMETHING IN COMMON, AND OTHER STORIES, by Langston Hughes (American Century, $1.75 paperback; $3.95 cloth).
For two or three decades Langston Hughes has been known as one of the leading Negro figures in American literature, with his poetry, his short stories, his plays, and his lyrics for the Rice-Weill musical. "Street Scene." Now here in a handsome edition is a collection of his short stories.
There are 37 of them in this volume,11 of them appearing in book form for the first time.Hughes selected them himself,and they are widely different in subject matter,though all contain the common theme of human compassion.
Especially revealing is Hughes' marvelous feeling for language, which has revealed itself in his poetry. The stories appeared in such publications as the New Yorker, Esquire, Story, American Mercury and the African, and the titles include "Rock, Church," "Who's Passing for Who?," "African Morning," "Heaven to Hell," "Father and Son," "Powder-White Faces," "Sorrow for a Midget," "Mysterious Madame Shanghai," "Trouble with the Angels" and "Breakfast in Virginia."
THE MOONLIGHT, by Joyce Cary (Doubleday Anchor, $1.25).
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Though this is one of Joyce Cary's lesser-known novels it deserves considerable attention for its handling of a controversial theme. It is strong in character development, like Cary's other novels, but unlike some of them it has what the movie-makers might call a message.
Cary wrote the book in an attempt to rebut Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata," with its story of the evils of sex and the need for repressing the sexual instinct. Cary certainly does not call here for absolute freedom, but he recognizes sex as being so basic that careful regulation of it becomes necessary for society.
His leading characters are women, and the situation involves the spinsterish Amanda, 32 and leading a sheltered and Victorian existence. That existence is complicated by the courtship of two young men, and she comes into conflict with her aunts who have run her life so many years.
Cary selected his title, "The Moonlight." in opposition to Tolstoy's "Kreutzer." Here is a revealing and disturbing novel, serious and somewhat heavier than such books as "Herself Surprised" and "The Horse's Mouth."
Short Ones
He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas. — John Ruskin
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In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: They must not do too much of it: And they must have a sense of success in it. — John Ruskin
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. — Samuel Butler
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Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. . . Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.—Mark Twain
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.—Mark Twain
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Daily Hansan
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service. Excited to work with News service; United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. Accepts examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
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Merchandising Mgr.
Looking Beyond The N.Y. Strike
(Editor's Note: Melvin Mencher, who wrote the following article, is on the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. Until last June, he was an assistant professor of journalism at KU.)
New York-A good deal of hogwash has been dished out about how the newspaper strike here proves that people need and miss their newspapers.
The truth is, as a study the Columbia journalism school is making indicates, readers don't miss their papers much and apparently what they say they need in their newspapers is nothing that would motivate a man to choose newspapering as a career—unless he were a gossip columnist, an advertising salesman, or a police reporter.
THE GENERALIZATION that this strike proves radio and television are not substitutes for newspapers is, like any other vague statement, meaningless.
It is true that radio and television do not display advertisements as well as newspapers. It's hard to advertise lamb chops, celery, pickles, and doughnuts on radio and TV. And it is equally true that the radio newscast with its 10 items in five minutes cannot really give the news.
But the truth is that most people are completely satisfied with radio or TV news and feel it adequately informs them. Most newspaper readers would be content if their newspapers carried the news in abbreviated form as do the radio stations.
ITHINK the newspapers will have to seek their role in extensive local coverage, leaving the national and international field to such giants as the New York Times and a few other big newspapers. Eventually, our provincial press will be supplemented by these few huge regional and national dailies. The electronic revolution has eliminated the obstacles we once thought made such developments impossible.
The local papers should be thinking of how to amplify their local coverage. For the last 15 years or so, editors and publishers have been told the opposite: to come out of their isolation, to take world news to their readers.
Well, that was good advice and it was welcomed, especially by those publishers whose major concern is the balance sheet. It opened a clear path to newspaper heaven: Instead of hiring two or three more reporters to cover their communities, these publishers—at an expenditure so minor it would deprive them only of a couple of cigars a week—started filling their pages with world news. And all the while nobody minded the store.
SOME OF the eastern dailies are now re-emphasizing local coverage, and their towns and readers are all the better for it. They've moved their pundits out of the office and into the school board meetings, for example. And they have found readers are fascinated by the knowledge of what is happening to their tax dollars. They have found schools are surprisingly ill-equipped to educate children, that too many teachers are incompetent, that the curriculum is inadequate.
If readers then want to know what is happening in the world and most are happy with little more than radio news—let them go to the national dailies for extensive coverage, as most perceptive people are now doing.
If there is a major weakness in the American press, it is in local coverage.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
YOU'LL FIND COACH ANTH' BOYS HAVE A NEW RESPECT FOR THE
ACADEMIC PROFESSORS AROUND HOMECOMING TIME.