_
"Psst-want to see some dirty pictures?"
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily exp ress the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in-oll reprints.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1968
NIGHT EDITOR: MARCIA ABRAMSON
A crisis collage
We awoke Sunday morning to read a cheery item in our Times. Of 538 electoral
votes, with 270 needed for election, the Times predicts that Richard Nixon will re-
ceive 346, George Wallace 77, and Hubert Humphrey 42. Not knowing quite what to
think or say, much less how to advise those who share our political views, we have
chosen three alternative reactions out of our welter of emotions. They are printed
here without prejudice, without assurance that they represent the total range of
alternatives, or even the certainty that any one of them will represent our final views
or those of The Michigan Daily.
-THE EDITORIAL DIRECTORS
Repugnant two parties
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' s I
FOR MONTHS Democratic leaders have
been lulling themselves into blissful
sleep by incessantly repeating this almost
mystical incantanion: "Nothing unifies
the Democratic Party like Richard Milh-
-ous Nixon."
But now with the dimensions of a Nix-
on landslide irrevocably clear, suddenly
we are saved from the psychological nec-
essity of voting reluctantly for Hubert
the Hawk out of childhood fears of Re-
publican ascendency.
While the upcoming Nixon administra-
tion m a y prove tragic for America, it'
should be instantly recognized that the
massive proportions of the Humphrey de-
feat opens up new possibilities for the po-
litical left.
THE UNPREDICTABLE vitality of the
Wallace candidacy has provided vivid
evidence of the depths of national repug-
nance for the two party system and the
ease w i t h which Americans today can
abandon their traditional voting pat-
terns.
Consequently, the left should immedi-
ately undertake an anti-war political
crusade designed to give voters in every
state in the union the opportunity to ex-
press their repugnance with the two party
system.
Where possible efforts should be made
to get new parties on the ballot, in other
states Peace. and Freedom candidate
Eldridge Cleaver should serve as a rally-
ing point, and in still other states highly
organized write-in efforts should be un-
dertaken immediately.
THE GOAL should be first to bring the
rally of the war and beastiality of the
ghetto home to the American people at a
time when they are offered a choice be-
tween two intolerable political alterna-
tives.
Secondly the next seven weeks should
be seen as a trial run for a far better or-
ganized and more unified effort to de-
velop a potent party of the left designed
to confront the two-party system in 1972.
We s h o u l d indeed consider ourselves
fortunate in the midst of political des-
pair.
For now we are free from the psycho-
logical fetters, of "lesser-evilism" and can
begin to build a permanent political left
in this country and at the same time rat-
ify at the polls our permanent disgust
with the bankrupt Democratic Party.
WALTER LIEPMLNN-
A cont est
in liabilities
FORTUNATELY, it seems to me,
this is still September and so
there is still some time left in
which to make the choice which
the two conventions have offered
the country. There is good reason
to think that neither candidate is
very popular except among the
regular members of his own party.
As a result the ticket chosen in
Miami was greeted with boredom
and resignation. The ticket chosen
in Chicago was met with bitter-
ness and something very much like
a wish not to win the election.
This overriding unhappiness is
due to the obvious contrast be-*
tween the two uninspiring candi-
dates and the magnitude and
complexity of the problems the
next President must deal with. It
may well be that there was no one
available, not Nelson Rockefeller,
Eugene McCarthy nor George Mc-
Govern, of whom one could say
confidently that he was the man
who could lead the country
through the international con-
fusion or could pacify the danger-
ous discontents here at home. -
BUT TO SAY there \vas no one
else who was clearly adequate is
cold comfort, for it is to say that
one is not sure that those who
were chosen are adequate. It leaves
us with the fact that the choice is
between Ricahrd Nixon and Hu-
bert Humphrey, and that neither
of them inspires confidence.
Here in the middle of Septem-
ber we see that the professional
politicians in both parties pro-
ceeded on the fundamental as-
sumption, which is statistically
correct, that the active dissenters
-the young, the intellectuals, the
clergymen, the blacks-do not
amount to more than a quarter
of the registered voters. The elec-
tion will be decided by the undis-
senting majority, by the "unpoor,
the unyoung, the unback" who
are opposed to disorder and to
violent change.
Some of the members of this
majority could go over to George
Wallace, but they will not go to
the left, and the winner in No-
vember will be the man who hs
put together a conservative coai-
tion.
This may well be the correct
diagnosis of the aray of forces
in 1968. It is obvious that a great
majority is furiously angry against
the burning and the looting in the
black ghettos. The white backlash
is a reality. It is also plan that the
ideology and the programs of the
New Deal, which have dreated the
welfare state, have become un-
popular in their recent incarna-
tion when they are called the
Great, Society. There is no doubt
that the preponderant majority
is against the war iri Vietnam
as President Johnson has waged
it.
The campaign begins with a
contest in liabilities. Humphrey is
carrying the unpopularity of Mr.
Johnson and Nixonis carrying his
own record and his party's ide-
ological eccentricities. Will anti-
Johnsonism or anti-Nixonism pre-
vail? I do not iknow. But there
is as yet no sign that there will
be a clear choice in which one of
the candidates stands out clearly
as a man who can lead this coun-
try out of its troubles.
The " serious question the voters
have to answer is which ticket has
the best chance of being able to
put together an administration
that can govern in the turbulence
of our time. it is easier to ask
this question than to answer it,
and as a matter of fact I think
it is not possible to answer it to-
day before the two parties con-
front one another in the cam-
paign.
THE REPUBLICANS could put
together a very competent and en-
lightened administration, for they
have a large pool of younger Re-
publicans on which to draw. It is
not certain, however, that Nixon
knows enough of these Repub-
licans outside of the party workers
whom he knows so well. Nor is it
certain that he will not impose
or feel compelled to impose an
ideological veto on some of the
most promising new Republicans,
The Nixon Republicans are a
wider set than the Goldwater or
Reagan Republicans. But they are
not nearly so wide as the whole
Republican constituency.
There is also the question of
whether in the course of cam-
paigning Nixon will not commit
himself to a military solution in
Vietnam. If he does this, he will
make it almost certain that his
administration will fail just as
Lyhdon Johnson's hasfailed.st,
"There is also the question of
whether he will appease Sen.
Strom Thurmond and the Wallece
people and thus will make the
racial conflict in the cities in-
soluble. We know from the past
that Richard Nixon is not by na-
ture a confident and prudent man,
that h<tis in fact an unconfident
and imprudent man, and that his
course can be erratic and danger-
ous.
If he will conduct a candid
campaign, if he will convince the
voters that he can be trusted with
control of nuclear weapons and
the enormous military powerof
the United States, he may suc-
ceed in neutralizing the old anti-
Nixonism which is Hubert Hum-
phrey's last best hope of winning.
IT IS VERY difficult to make a
case I think for a continuation
of the Johnson-Humphrey Admin-
istration. Humphrey will probably
be able to bring home sone of the
dissenting Democrats. They will be
afraid of Nixon. They will renem-
ber the Humphrey of formerlays.
But the fearful breach between
the Johnson Administration and
the intellectual community, the
young and so much of the religious
community will not be repaired
easily by Hubert Humphrey. The
alienation of the intellectual and
moral leaders of the country who
are a small minority in' numbers
has left the Democratic Party
without its mind and without its
soul.
These alienated teachers and
students and artists and clergy-
men are not to be confused with
the hippies and the Yipies. They
are the saving remnant of the
Democratic Party, and without
them it is a collection of interest
groups and wheeler-dealers and
old politicians.
The renovation and restoration
of the Democratic Party requires
time in which, relieved of the re-
sponsibilities of office, Democrats
can sort out the inner muddle of
the party. The old politicians will
have to retire, the younger men
will have to mature, the youngest
will have to grow up.
If, as one must hope, the Re-
publicans will do well if they are
elected, the Democrats will have
a rival to compete against in their
labors of renovation and renewal.
4
Letters to the Editor
Fascism on the horizon
A CALIFORNIA housewife last week
asked for the abolition of high schools
and the establishment of "military-like
academies whose first order of business
would be the gospel of patriotism." All
high-schoolers would be required to at-
tend.
The wind smells of fascistic foulness.
Support for Richard Nixon's "Southern
strategy" and George Wallace's "North-
ern strategy" points up the futile and
fuddled expectations of a fission between
American politics and American people.
Granted that conservatives are uptight
because of a "liberal" press and academ-
ia, their glee in rushing to the bastions
of repression seems intentionally pointed.
And the pationwide reverence (polls cal-
culate it at 70%) for police state per-
formances a la Chicago can not be ignor-
ed as "backlash."
THE PARALLELS to Germany, 1935, are
dangerously vivid. Careful manipula-
tion of the subliminal hysteria hugging
the mainstream could create the p u r e
fascist state if not another Hitler. Mayor
Richard Daley's argument that American
fascism is more humane ("no one w a s
killed in Chicago during the convention")
is hardly worth the distinction.
Institutionalized radicalism would be
ineffictual as well as a sell-out to a bur-
geoning system that seeks precisely to
neutralize dissent by legitimizing it. At-
tractive as the internal security of a le-
gitimate radical party is; it could never
maintain a power base in a reactionary,
parochial state. M o r e to the point, it
would have to sacrifice its integrity (and
hence its radicalism) to become legiti-
mate.
AT THIS POINT, where America has re-
jected its loyalists because it does not
want to pay the price of their loyalty,
there remain only individual alternatives
of reciprocal rejection.
For the revolutionaries (all 153 of
them) there is suicide. Forf the romanti-
cists there is Canada or Iceland or Swe-
den. For the rest of us ...
Cynicism
To the Editor:
ALTHOUGH it is an impossible
task to counter all the distor-
tions of The Daily, I must object
to John Gray's "book reviews"
(Sept. 15) wherein the reader. is
burdened with an outpouring of
cliche and uncritical generaliza-
tion.
Let me state some specific facts.
I am concerned about quality and
relevance in undergraduate educa-
tion. In the last four years that I
have been at the University more
time has been devoted to my un-
dergraduate courses than to any
other pursuit (including research
and direction of graduate research
to which I am also emphatically
committed).
The chemistry department is.
actively concerned about under-
graduate education. The curri-
culum has been revised in num-
erous ways in recent years and is
under continuing evaluation. Last
year recent graduates from the
chemistry program were sent
questionnaires in order to de-
termine how their background was
serving them and how it could
have been improved.
Although graduate teaching fel-
lows are used to assist in freshman
laboratory and recitation, con-
siderable effort is expended in the
pursuit of quality instruction. This
effort includes: an orientation and
training session prior to classes
for new teaching fellows, merit
raises, awards for excellence,
sacking for incompetence, and
monitoring of progress by the
senior staff members.
A few students place out of
general chemistry and we are
pleased to facilitate this process.
Of those who do not, none have
told me that they consider Chem
104-106 "high school level."
The lit school is concerned
about undergraduate instruction.
In recent years the distribution re-
quirements have been liberalized,
the pass-fail option initiated, and
a residential college begun. In
spite of our enthusiasm for our
subject, and the pressures caused
by an expanding frontier, no one
I know, in the chemistry depart-
ment, would favor more chen-
istry for chem majors at the ex-
pense of the liberal arts. Mr.
Gray's disparagements of"Eng-
lish literature for an astronomer"
is regrettably narrow minded.
Why are you an undergraduate
at the University of Michigan?
Because there is quality education
available for thosewho will grasp
it. How did it elude Mr. Gray?
Perhaps he swallowed too many
issues of The Daily without chew-
ing them thoroughly first, and ob-
tained as a result, a gutful of
cynicism.
-Prof. Paul Rasmussen
Department of Chemistry
Equal time
To the Editor
I READ with considerable inter-
est Urban Lehner's Daily, Sept.
13 eloquent plea for equal time for
candidate George Wallace. I must
say that it took some ingenuity on
my part to understand your mo-
tives. The Daily, as I recall from
over a decade of experience, has
not been generous or even fair in
its representation of all shades of
public opinion on the campus. Is
this editorial another example of
the moral double standard of the
Left?
-Prof. Stephen Tonsor
Department of History
Sept. 13
Contradiction
To the Editor:
REGARDING t h e article by
brother Neal Bruss titled "Free
the pigs: The sty's the limit"-it's
beautiful, the best I've read in a
long time.
Yet, for all its merit, there is
some confusion arising probably
out of the contradiction of the
unliberated writing about libera-
tion. The first two of the last four
paragraphs of Bruss's article dem-
onstrate this.
Bruss writes, "The politics of
pig liberation will require whites
to be very uncompromising in de-
nying the seductions of the Amer-
ican system and its seducers. The
white liberators will have to learn
to stop being bought off w i t h
comforts and ad hoc solutions and
to realize that educations and jobs
which do not work toward t h e
emancipation of/pigs only tightens
the spell."
The contradiction here lies in
the fact that brother Bruss is a
registered student in an authori-
tarian bourgeois institution, name-
ly the University. (The word
"bourgeois" is generally hissed
and denied its descriptive function
by none other than the bourgeo-
isie, black and white alike -
Watch yourself reader.)
Bruss continues, "Whites will al-
so have to recognize, with a min-
imum of self-flagelation, who in
America is a pig"
THE CONFUSION. There is no
need for any self glagelation; it is
counter-productive and sick. What
is needed is self - destruction.
Whites must destroy the pig with-
in their own selves. Recognizing
the pig is but thedfirst step to-
wards t he pig's destruction, in
ourselves, in "Amerika," and on
the whole planet.
We must joyfully destroy the
pig by any means necessary, the
last of these means being the in-
creasingly r e a 1 one of violence.
Only then can you create your
New Man, Total Being, or what-
ever you call your fantasies about
regaining your humanity - fan-
tasies that must become real.
I h a v e altered the poetry of
brother Bruss and brother Homer
to clarify the point that we do not
want to free pigs as such, but to
transform them into free men.
I HAVE USED the word "pig" to
describe that part of society which
oppresses humanity such as state
apparatus like the beureaucracy,
the military, the police, and other
institutions.
"Pig" especially means authori-
tarian structure and the oppres'.
sive culture's effect on the indi-
vidual, namely repressive charac-
ter structure and its bodily dy-
namics.
In closing I must say that all
this talk of pigs is very unfair and
insulting to the real pigs.
-Bob Thomson
Sept. 11
South Africa
To the Editor:
ARTHUR Goldberg, former U.N.
Ambassador, recently called for
the immediate and outright se-
cession of all intercourse,rin what-
ever form, with the Union of South
Africa.-
In the eyes of the Afro-Ameri-
can community, failure to meet
the ambassador's program of eco-
nomic and social boycott can only
be interpreted as the most willful
travesty on the principle of racial
equality. And no other principle
needs more protection; no other
commitment . needs m o r e to be
saved from the morass of con-
temporary mediocrity than it.
The University of Michigan
must cease to operate, and must
immediately take steps to remove,
the Lamont-Hussey Observatory,
located near Bloemfontein in the
Union of South Africa. The re-
mpoval of this installation must
coincide with a declaration that
in the strongest language censures
the inhuman and revolting policy
of apartheid. In the name of hu-
manity, let there be no further
M
Sour grapes
Alas, poor Horatio
HUBERT HUMPHREY is not Eldridge
Cleaver. He , is not even Eugene Mc-
Carthy. On the other hand, he is not Lyn-
don Johnson a n d he is especially not
Richard Nixon.
What he is, according to The New York
Times as well as most other reputable
prophets, is very badly behind in what is
rapidly boiling down to a three-way
Presidential race. A race that includes
neither McCarthy, nor, for d11 reasonable
purposes, Cleaver.
That a Nixon presidency would be a
disaster is not the question at hand. Few
have been deceived by the New Nixon
propaganda of the past few months, and
Nixon has done little in the campaign
thus far to dispel the fears he has tra-
ditionally inspired.
AT ISSUE is whether the revulsion gen-
erated by the thought of a Nixon ad-
ministration is (or should be) sufficient
to overcome the sometimes compelling
reasons for allowing Humphrey to lose.
And the only reasonable way to ana-
lyze this issue is to compare the benefits
for the left to be derived from achieving
a Humphrey victory by hard work now
with those offered by t h e alternative
courses:
i A rnadipanirth or fifth narty .ither
corrupt, dehumanizing society drastically
in need of overhaul. Nor is there any real
evidence that most blacks desire anything
more than their share of the material
benefits and privileges of middle class
living in twentieth century America.
* A fishing trip on election day, indi-
cating complete alienation from the sys-
tem and consummate doubt t h a t any-
thing can be done ever to change it? But
if apathy and non-involvement are the
new games, they might as well be played
under a less repressive (Humphrey) rath-
er than a more repressive (Nixon) regime.
* Allowing Humphrey to lose on t h e
theory that the forces, of virtue within
the Democratic Party will thus be en-
abled to capture control of the powerful
party mechanisms? Even w e r e that a
possibility (and it probably isn't) the his-
tory of "reform" efforts to revamp the
Democratic party give the lie to such op-
timism. Once in power, "reform" Demo-
crats seem interested only in maintaining
themselves in power, and thus through
some weird contortions of conscience and
logic end up resembling strikingly t h e
machine they replaced.
1968 must be, unfortunately, a year for
lesser-evilism, simply because n o t only
the other candidates but all the alterna-
"I am speaking for that great silent
majority within this country.."
p
6 ~
4 ~
By KEN KELLY
HEREAPPEARED on this
p a completely irrelevent
phillipic following Dennis Mc-
Lain's - glorious milestone last
Saturday, signed by three New
York chauvanists.
This smug persecution - "com-
pelled by honesty"' - purported
to put McLain's feat in "proper
perspective." It wonders how any
pitcher can take pride in winning
a game when nobody's batting
.300, and why dthe American
League pitchers don't win all their
games. The latter would certainly
be a majestic bit of mathematics
(the pennant presumably could be
decided with an elimination flip
of the coin among the ten/1.000-
percentage teams), and the form-
er betrays an incredibly gullible
succumbing to the Howard Cosell-
Chicken Little histrionics indulg-
ed in by that new breed of aliens
ated sportswriters. The fact is,
there is little appreciable differ-
ence in the overall averages of
both leagues, and the home run
output in the junior circuit is
higher.
Then, in a sacred tone, it pro-
claims it is "highly unjust" to
compare McLain to Dizzy Dean
or Lefty Grove because of an ex-'
pansion that has existed for eight
years (and that created a team
one of the writers claims alleg-
iance to), an argument that is
specious at best'and groping at
worst. As Dean, not prone to
modesty, said: "You gotta be a
arpn niar o+ win 3 0 ames
on less fetching tidbits. And since
the sports-writers' power-elite is
based in New York, the overglori-
fication of New York players is
strewn across the country (wit-
ness Look's big spread on Ron
Swoboda-the Mets' closest an-
swer to a slugger-currently hit-
ting .240), even to the point that
Leonard Koppett of the Times re-
cently warned against this jour-
nalistic provincialism.
Indeed, the indictment itself re-
lies on it - everyone is happy
that Koosman has won 18 games,
but so have a lot of other pitch-
ers, and it certainly is wonderful
that the Yankees are staging a
late-season salary drive after 4
years of humiliating sluggishness.
But trying to make out that win-
ning 4 games (all by one run)
from the Tigers in what is De-
troit's only losing streak of the
year is anything more than the
breaks of the game is a glossed-
over myth.
AND IN THEI# "gesture of
respect" the writers try to imply
that McLain is a 30-game winner
only by a "fluke rally" -- the
same type of fluke that is called
winning a pennant and that
marks the difference between a
winner and a loser. And that the
Tigers have pulled off no less than
37 times this season. It certainly
wasn't McLain's best game, but so
what? Nobody pitches 30 no-hit-
ters, and McLain pours it on
when it counts.
Indeed, coming from writers
whose home teams (especially the
Mets) are sadly lacking any
I