MMMME Variations on violence with tire irons and pencils By NEAL BRUSS TWO LATE-MODEL CARS, I think a '59 Ford and a '63 Plymouth, chased down Hill Street, with brakes churning a n d tires screeching. Simultan- eously they made a hard left turn' and then cracked up in front of East Quad. Several guys climbed out, mid-teens in boots with hard stacked heels. There was a fast and ugly fight with tire irons; one of the guys smashed the windows of the Ford with his iron. Another pulled out some flares and tried to burn down the Ford. There was more fight- ing and then running away when at least five police cars wheeled up, their blue lights twisting, A problem: it was a very dark midnight, eye glasses were, at home, the rumble happened very quickly. So one cannot know how much of this rumble has been put together by the mind. IN THE FRONT END of police cars are huge well ground engines which pull cars to scenes in no time. In the trunks are fire extinguishers. A couple of the police in their packed blue jackets turned out their fire extinguishers to soak the smouldering upholstery of one of the cars. Some guys who live in East Quad came out to watch. Several agitated for a panty raid. One told me he heard that the guys who were fighting had driven from Detroit and that there had been some teenage chick screaming, "Don't kill him, don't kill; him." twitching of the muscles at the presence of out- bursts of intensive anger. Some feeling of nausea, as if the clanging of tire iron on auto glass jangled his aesthetic sensibilities. And what were his thoughts? That the Univer- sity is a great civilizer or a very cruel tranquilizer or both. One would imagine that some of the Quad tenants watching the police had been perfectly com- petent drive-in fighters in their teens. But never again. One either threw bottles or saved one's hands for drafting pencils. One could not have both. VIOLENCE. Some things are anachronistic: per- sons should not try to rack up points by talking about them. One such thing is physical violence. In Vietnam physical violence is an issue; here it is not. The presence of a group of rumblers outside East Quad proves this. Their physical violence is more bizarre than a worry. But since violence is so basic to human affairs. one should look for non-physical violence around the University. Violated minds. Truncated imaginations. Shattered aspirations. Broken dreams. All this is not new. Plenty of men have been writing in liberal magazines on non-physical vio- lence, articles which debunk the idea that sticks and stones may break one's bones but names will never hurt one. But the violators are not exposed. No one calls the cops when non-physical violation takes place. OUR THANKS THEN to the unnamed rumblers for showing us the nature of what is not our violence. WHAT WERE the observer's at the occurence of a scene of usually placid East University feelings? Surprise such heat in the neighborhood. A C4e £ftdigan a4 Seventy-eight years -of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan under authority of Board in Control of Student Publications ynard St., Ann Arbor, MichhNews Phone:' 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily exp ress the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. 420 May NIGHT EDITOR: HENRY GRIX SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1968 4 On the seventh day, Daily-Peter Dreyfuss GULLIBLE'S TRAVELS Capittalist realism in Dearborn. By BILL LAVELY IF YOU RECOGNIZE and appreciate contemporary, art vhen you see' it, you're going to get a real thrill by cruising down Dearborn way for a look at the new Presto-Whip factory. The factory, which is in the final stages of com- pletion, boasts 'a scale trio of aerosol cans. Remi- niscent of Warhol's comparatively crude soup can experiments, it is 'safe to say that this exposition has captu'ed and refined the spirit of those early efforts and raised it to a general principle. Only 15 minutes /by expressway from Wonder- land, Michigan, the three towers grace a commercial/ industrial landscape on the edge of Dearborn, and are flanked by a New York Central overpass and a Daley Burger Drive-In. THE SUREST MARK of the work's acceptance in the community, and perhaps at the same time a measure of the aesthetic acumen of the blase locals is the total indifference shown the work by thous- ands- of passing motorists. In this situation, the avant-garde is way behind. A spokesman for the company appeared from the factory as I pondered the three towers. He was anxious to 'explain some of the finer points of the work. In the first place, he told me, this revolutionary. construction is entirely functional. In fact, he said solemnly, each can contains 8,100 gallons of liquid sugar. Eight thousand one hundred gallons of corn syrup. Knowing full well that beauty is the promise of function, I required no further justification for the existence of this cloitre de canettes. WHILE STANDING at the foot of the three friendly giants, I was led subtly, symbolically to consider the beneficent implications of our advanced technology. This utilitarian approach to art must be Ameri- can industry's answer to the rigid soviet'doctrine of practical art. The three-can set obviously embodies the basic elements of "capitalist realism." The Presto-Whip representative turned my atten- tion from the highlight of the site to the factory building itself. ALTHOUGH NO' SO striking as the cans, the design of the building incorporates many innovative features worthy of note. For example, the factory facade, including the three dimensional foot-deep lettering that stretches the length of the building, is made entirely of scalped styrofoam. "Come back tomorrow," the spokesman urged. "We're going to cover it with glitter." they OUR CANDIDATE pounds on h and promises us four years c fortune and good will. If humanity remembers anyth the phenomena of electoral po will not be the canned speeche vacuous promises. It will probabl McLuhanesque flowering of pos buttons and bumper stickers. In a throw-away beer cans, self-destro tomobiles and fish-wrapping new bumper stickers have unheralde ity. They won't go away. That the paraphernalia shoulc the promises is not so absurd. Co outlive their contents. Books outl authors. WHAT IS disillusioning is the1 sumption that campaign have no substance. What is furth tering is the assumption that n ises are anchored in truth. Part of the blame rests with+ verse concept of democracy. We neged on our personal will and the authority of some omniscien ity which exists only in textbook the minds of fanatics. Because this fictitious majority er-impersonal we can not relat wishes and we drift carelessly ft trum to waste basket. Should wf you? Why? You're just a minorit majority. campaigned is pulpit OUR FOREMOST THINKERS have con- of g o o d sidered this problem and decided that the workings of democracy and burea- ing from cracy (which seem synonymous these )litics, it days) will eventually work toward good- s or the ness and truth. Our politicians, who are a ly be the bit more pragmatic, have decided that the ters and people should f i r s t be educated before an age of democracy can work. )ying au- Both our thinkers and our politicians wspapers, exhort us to patience, telling us that the d tenac Leaning Tower of Pisa wasn't bent in one day. d outlive But the fallacies of their arguments are ntainers obvious. Certainly an unfeeling and unbe- ive their lieving people, no matter how much edu- cated or how long processed, cannot cre- ate on a public level what the do not live tacit as- on a personal level. promises S0 YOUR FEARS that the political sys- ner shat- tem will repress you are unfounded. o prom- It has already robbed your instincts to be- lieve in others and has castrated y o u r our per- ability to be true to others. have re- It has used ruses like the convenience accepted of knowing that everyone else is out grub- t major- bing for grades or grabbing for headlines s and "in too. It has solidified your sterility by giv- ing you what you think you want. y is sup- You are fooled. You will never realize te to its that the majority is no bigger or no bet- rom ros- ter than you. You will never know that e believe the will of the majority can be no more ty of the responsive or more human than your own will. But maybe there is no reason for you to understand as you sit idly among your campaign miscellany and mutter sadly "What the hell?"- -EDITORIAL DIRECTORS Dustng off the father of liberal educao By RICHARD GREENE T WAS AN OLD tattered picture. You can see it for yourself 3 right in Haven Hall. Go up to the third floor and into the history department lounge. Turn to your right as you walk in the door and'look behind the periodicals and the cardboard boxes stacked on top of the filing cabinets. 'You would think that someone would hae. attempted to destroy the evidence. But no, its still there, so covered with dust that you don't want to even pick it up. The once-gold frame is spotted with wear and the oil cloth has pulled away from its old cardboard backing and flops stiffly down in front of the face when you pick it up. The great, noble face looks straight ahead pondering who knows what, probably the deep problems of his time. I PICKED ST UP and showed it to my friends on the steering committee on the history student assembly. We had just met with the faculty to discuss some points of depart- mental reform. "You can barely tell who it is," said one, "The color is almost gone." "It looks like it's been dropped a thousand times. " It's a symbol of our age." "hat's why we're here."' "You mean what are we doing here!" We laughed at that last one. And I set the tattered picture of Erasmus, humanist and father of the liberal education, back on the filing cabinet. I'm really not kidding you. You can see it for yourself. Tattered, worn, and half-destroyed, on the third floor of Haven Hall. 4 T 'I' Sunday morning Ston By JACK BENIMBLE ONE OF THOSE sunny Indian summer Fri- day afternoons in late September when going to classes is a crime and you can wear baggy corduroys with bare feet all around campus, we all dropped mescaline together, about ten of us, (It was my first time). It takes about a half hour to hit you, or so they had said. We all piled into Jack's Bar- racuda and took ,to the streets like dying In- dians in battle, waiting to go straight to heav- en, and savoring those last few moments of life and reality. You do not notice when it hits you, only 'At , on me THE DIAG - Oh, god, we brought our- selves limping and on stretchers,'of the mind to the golden Diag and we flopped down on the life-breathing grass, our maternal land and earth, and opened our forum of verbal masturbation. "My god," someone said, "there are at least 50 people here stoned out - I can't believe it!" They had all come, like us, fearing iso- lation and the lonesome reality of facing one- self, to the Diag, seeking Mecca in others' faces. The straight people were filing by on the sidewalks. some noticing, others not . .. it Thtag in him . . he would have to struggle with it himself, as he repeated it over and over, trying to make us believe how selfish the world was, trying to drag us down into his pit of truth. BUT WE REFUSED. "Let's go for a walk," I said. We floated into the stream of people drifting away from the Diag, until we saw it only from a distance. Then we stopped, and looked back in awe. "Greeks," I said. "They are ancient Greeks gathered at their aged marble amphitheatre. for learning and debate . . . look at them." The Diag was a beehive. The center of ac- Indian summer and r e a d it. "Death to the University. De- struction. Join Us." "This must be a joke," I said. This one is actually trying to convince people of some- thing or other. Doesn't he realize that nothing is of any consequence? 'Shouldn't we go back and talk to him and explain everything?" "No. He's straight. That's the difference." WE SAT DOWN again and ritualized, nod- ding up and down just for the sheer feeling of it if not in agreement. We looked around us and saw a fantastic zoo. A man was wear- hurried by time and the bells' urgency. Time. "You, know," I said lazily, I could die right now and it wouldn't even faze me." "That's right. . : it wouldn't be any dif- ferent from anything else," someole agreed. A leaf floated down and we admired its brown, crisp deadness. * ** LATER I SAT alone in my room, after I had left them all, and wondered what would happen next - if I would ever really come all the way down. I'didn't know if I wanted to. Then she arrived, half unexpected. She had been looking for me all afternoon. We looked 0