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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Feb. 28, 1963
Half-Truths Aid Critics
Question: Who among the nation's political leaders do you believe?
The most recent of the calculated, opinion-molding lies from Washington was revealed by the disclosure from Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., concerning participation of U.S. servicemen in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Answer: No one, apparently.
LAST OCTOBER United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson denied that U.S. military forces participated in the invasion.
We need not bemoan the fact of political life that government officials feel compelled, for reasons of national interests, to suppress the facts or arrange them to serve the particular need of the government. The effects of news suppression in a "free society" deserve lamentation in a multi-volume account.
The paradox that we shall consider is the backlash suffered by those who go fishing for political advantage by deliberate application of half-truths.
Sen. Kenneth Keating, R-N.Y., has led the minority party's political hay-making activities in regard to the presence of some 17,000 Soviet troops in Cuba. President Kennedy and other Democratic leaders criticize Keating and his fellow hay-makers for using a dead issue to their own advantage.
THERE IS REASON to believe that the Republicans have kicked this football around until nothing remains but a deflated shell of the original crisis. But just when the public is about to believe the Democrat's contention that the Republicans are out of bounds regarding Cuba, the Democrats are caught in a lie.
This does more than make a person wonder about the truth of statements made by the President and Democratic leaders; it lends a note of
cedence to the whole political haystack of contentions piled high by the Republicans.
Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-III., said that contrary to claims by the administration (thereby claims by Democrats). U.S. servicemen did take part in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The natural conclusion—for some people—that follows is that if Dirksen and Keating were right about the Bay of Pigs, they may be right about Cuba's still being a major threat to U.S. security.
SO THE DEMOCRATS and President Kennedy are chin-high in the business of supplying the loyal opposition with political tidal waves. For reasons of national security, the administration feels that it must deal in half-truths.
But surely by now the administration is aware that there will always be Dirksens and Keatings around to challenge the half-truths. What have calculated half-truths netted the party or for that matter the United States? What they sought to suppress came to light anyway.
And it came to light in a manner that hurt the administration and added credibility to the charges of the Republicans.
But the paradox is that they must suffer the repercussions of telling the truth or delay the repercussions and add the embarrassment of having the Republicans expose the truth.
The alternative—telling the bald-faced truth seems too crass for serious consideration by anyone steeped in the refinements of political science.
PERHAPS THE TIME gained by delaying the truth is worth the price of embarrassment suffered by the party. If so, the President and his party leaders deserve the honors belonging to martyrs.
Regardless, it makes you wonder—"Who, if anyone, is telling the truth at a given time?"
anyone, is telling t
Guest Column
Segregation From The Inside
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"No, mister, I don't remember you but if you say I shined your shoes a few weeks back, well, I'm not goin' to argue. I can't remember every one and you know what you say about all of us lookin' alike — well believe it, mister, you all look alike to us.
By Ron Corwin Syracuse Daily Orange
"But anyway you tell me that I was talkin' to you last time and I said some things that you were interested in. You say I told you how it feels to be a 'Negro.' Well, then either it wasn't me you were talkin' to (sometimes you get us confused with one another) or you didn't understand what I was sayin'. I don't know what it's like to be a 'Negro.' You ask Ralph Bunche that; he'll tell you what it's like to be a 'Negro.' I only know what it feels like to be a 'nigger.'
"YOU SEE, mister, well, it's like Ralph Burch. he isn't a colored man. He's white. Now I know you gonna say that his skin isn't white. But I got some things to say about that. First off, a man's skin ain't what makes him a colored man. It's a lot more 'n that.
"Mister, Ralph Bunche's skin is the only thing about him that isn't white. Same for Thurgood Marshall and Robert Weaver and Jackie Robinson and a whole mess of 'em. A guy like Robinson, for instance. He's the vice-president of some kind of big coffee company and he's got a big office with secretaries and all. And he's always wearin' a tie and jacket. Even on weekends when they show pictures of him at home with his family, he's got a tie and jacket on. They even invite him to parties to make sure that there's 'one' there.
"But they makein' a big mistake because Robinson ain't a colored man. He's white. I mean just look who he wanted to win the last election for president. He was rootin' for Nixon. Now this man, Kennedy, he's no great shakes. You know what I mean. He makes a lot
of noise in those speeches of his but if that guy Meredith didn't decide to take the chance of having himself killed, Kennedy wouldn't have anythin' to shoot off his mouth about in civil rights.
"BUT NIXON would have been even worse and Robinson wanted him elected. Robinson should've stuck to stain's bases. So when you tell me that Robinson is a colored man I say it ain't so. And I say the same thing for Bunche. Be honest, mister, Does Ralph Bunche have natural rhythm? Is Ralph Bunche a great lover? Hell no! And we both know it. There isn't a thing colored about Bunche except his skin. Now that's enough for some people but not for the 'liberals.'
"They say, 'It's not the color of a man's skin that counts.' It sure isn't. It's how white he is under that skin. And for all intents and purposes Ralph Bunche is white—just like you.
"I really spoke on this before. Could you see Ralph Bunche playin' the bongos? No—because you won't let him (that's one reason which I already talked about) and more important to me he doesn't want to. Now you may say that's the same thing but I don't think it is.
"Understand me, mister? Do you see what I'm trying to say? It's simply that Ralph Bunche is no more like me than you are. And, mister, I don't have to tell you how different we are. I'll let the nervous sweat on your brow answer that. Come to think of it we even sweat for different reasons. You and Bunche sweat from nerves and you andmaybe you'll get ulcers. But I sweat from work and I get calouses and blisters.
"Not only have you taken from Bunche and the others everything that made them 'colored' but they have wanted to get rid of those
"GIMMET THE other shoe, mister and I'll explain some more why Bunche ain't a colored man. New shoes. huh?"
same things. So you can make them white—that is white enough—because they want to become that way. Well some of us are ready to make that sacrifice and become white and that's how some of us get 'accepted'
"You see the thing is you getta feel things, but ain't got the time to talk about that now. I'll talk about feelin' the next time. The thing I want to say now is that some of us think things about the Negro culture (or what you call the 'nigger' in us) are worth saving and being proud of.
"BUT OTHERS of us aren't going to do that. I like playin' the bongos and I'm teachin' my boy how to play the bongos and believe it-or-not mister, I have to teach him how to play 'em. He wasn't born known' how. And this'll throw ya' but I could even teach you how to beat those drums if you'd let yourself go for a little bit and feel the music instead of thinkin' it.
"And there's a group called the Black Muslims who tell us 'that we shouldn't be ashamed to be Negroes. That we should be proud to be Negroes. That's part of what they say that the white man ain't ever gonna' let us be free. They say that the only way we'll be free is if we have our own land. And guys like Robinson and Bunche and them, well, they can be partly free if they promise not to be 'niggers'—if they become white. But let's face it, mister, even Bunche can't go into a restaurant in the south or live in some neighborhoods in the North.
"MALCOM X, he's one of the heads of the Black Muslims and, man, you should bear this guy talk. He's got the whole argument of history on his side. He says, 'Brothers, you are not free! The Bill of Rights is for whites only! You were not free yesterday; you are not free today; and you will not be free tomorrow. And at this rate
(Continued on page 3)
"HOW'S HE COMING ALONG ON TH' COURSE DESCRIPTIONS FOR THE NEW CATALOG!"
BOOK REVIEWS
FIVE PLAYS OF THE SOUTH, by Paul Green (Mermaid Dramabook, $1.95); COMPLETE PLAYS AND PROSE OF GEORG BUCHNER, translated by Carl Richard Mueller (Mermaid Dramabook, $1.75); METATHEATRE, by Lionel Abel (Dramabook, $1.45).
The continuing enrichment of the paperback field is illustrated in these three beautifully published and edited volumes. They offer to discriminating readers the kind of subject matter and insights not provided so inexpensively a few years ago.
First of the three is Paul Green's "Five Plays of the South." Green is best known, perhaps, for his epic drama of North Carolina, "The Lost Colony," which is shown to many tourists each summer. But in the thirties he was in the vanguard of the proletarian movement in drama, and was one of the standout names of the adventuresome Group Theatre.
He gives a kind of Faulknerian (or perhaps Glasgowian) look at the South in "The House of Connelly," which seemed so superficially in the magnolia-and-palmetto tradition that it actually became a movie for Janet Gaynor and Lionel Barrymore back in 1934. The turbulence that underlies the seeming placidity of much of the South is illustrated in this play and in his dramas of the underprivileged and depressed—"In Abraham's Bosom," "White Dresses" and "Hymn to the Rising Sun." "Johnny Johnson" is his fifth play represented here—a fiery, semi-epic, semi-musical portrayal of war. It clearly belongs among the protest literature of the thirties.
CARL RICHARD MUELLER has translated the three plays of Georg Buchner—"Danton's Death," "Leonce and Lena" and "Woyzeck," plus two prose pieces, "The Hessian Courier" and "Lenz." Buchner was a playwright of the romantic era, born in 1813 and dead in 1837.
But his plays, instead of being romantic, are experimental, full of dramatic and psychological treatment that would almost place them in the school of Brecht. "Woyzeck" has become well-known as the basis of an opera by Alban Berg called "Wozzeck."
In "Metatheatre" we have a group of essays that examine both the contemporary and traditional theater from new standpoints. Lionel Abel's contention is that "metatheatre" is the term needed to describe what he considers the only form possible to the contemporary playwright who wishes to treat a subject gravely. He feels that tragedy, for example, is unrealizable today.
Abel himself wrote a successful off-Broadway play of 1957 called "Absalom." He has done criticism for Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, Commentary, the New Republic and The Nation.
Dailyji Fransan
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