4
Page 4-Tuesday, April 10, 1979-The Michigan Daily
F - A I
a'
I.,
,
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Eighty-Nine Years of Editorial Freedom
Vol: LXXX No. 152 News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
citg
limits
kL. h
kei th
ri
chburg
actly how Jimmy Carter planned
to streamline the bureaucracy or
overhaul the tax system. Objec-
tivity, then, is sometimes the
reporter's biggest straight-
jacket.
What stories were not written
from the city elections? First,
whenever I mentioned Kenwor-
thy's clothes as indicative of the
candidate's attempt to appeal to
a broader constituency -
something I thought was impor-
tant in assessing his campaign --
I was immediately accused by
Mr. Kenworthy of being preoc-
cupied with fashion. Soon, even
the other election reporters
picked up Mr. Kenworthy's line
and inforged me that I was being
"unfair" to the candidate.
Then there was the story of
Mayor Belcher and the potholes.
story I covered in March when
California Gov. Edmund G.
Brown spoke to the Detroit
Economics Club at the
Renaissance Center. Somewhere
in my original copy, I referred to
Brown as sounding every bit like
the presidential candidate he is.
Needless to say, the line got axed.
But as Remer Tyson, the Free
Press politics writer, told me
later, "You're doing the readers
a disservice if you don't tell them
the guy is running for President.
He didn't come to Detroit
because he's concerned about the
city's problems."
So, as many political reporters
have suggested, it is when the
reporter merely writes what a
candidate says that he is in his
least controversial role. But the
sad fact remains that the repor-
Outreach revisions' unwise
1 ~~I e
TTENDING CLASSROOM lee-
tures is only one part of a stu-
dent's education at the University.
There is another type of learning which
- 'allows a student to participate in
various social services -in the com-
_. unity. This alternative is called
oject Outreach.
So, when the Literary College (LSA)
Executive Committee voted to force
the Psychology Department to make
major revisions in the project, it made
an unwise decision which threatens to
damage this crucial learning alter-
native.
First, by asking the Psychology
Department to completely revise the
teaching structure of Outreach so that
faculty members and TAs must direc-
tly supervise undergraduates, the
Executive Committee is tampering
with characteristics of the program
which make it truly valuable. By being
placed in leadership roles, un-
dergraduates in Outreach can expand
£wtieir learning experiences and acquire
-skills which are not available in other
places at the University.
More importantly, since it is doub-
tful that enough certified "teachers"
will be found to supervise all of the
many sections in the program,
valuable projects and services will
Sihve to be eliminated. This would be
very detrimental to the many students
, who will want to take Outreach, but
will be turned away because there will
only be a few sections. Furthermore,
;-since part of the mission of any in-
4,~
aDecontro1 of
RESIDENT Carter's plan to grad -
ually lift the price controls on
domestic oil beginning June 1 is an un-
foitunate step and as Mr. Carter him-
'self called it, "aipainful step". But it is
at the same time a necessary step, if
t4e United States is ever to end its
dependence on imported foreign oil,
and the whims of the OPEC cartel.
Decontrol is required to give oil
gompanies the economic incentive to
9dduce more domestic oil. Unfor-
cthately, lifting the price controls will
atJo have the immediate effect of ad-
#ing anywhere between five and ten
ents to the average gallon of gasoline
the pump. Oil companies can also
ause a dramatic increase in revenue
der decontrol, as much as $10.7
lIlion by 1981 if these windfall profits
4Fa allowed to go unchecked.
So to harness the oil companies'
paway profits, the administration
b wisely proposed a 50 per cent
?Windfall profit tax." The revenue
®m this tax would be put into an
energy security fund," an innovative
Va to funnel federal grants to low in-
orne families to help off-set the bur-
deh of the higher oil prices.
STnfortunately, there are rumblings
frim Capitol Hill that the "windfall
prpfits tax," and thus the "energy
ecurity fund," may never see the light
4f day. Congressmen from the oil-
roducing states have consistently
fhpwn on past energy votes that they
ir more concerned with their narrow
tidgle-interest oil company constituen-
t than they are with the broader in-
tejests of the nation.
.Mr. Carter's Energy Secretary
Janes Schlesinger said last weekend
tjt the administration would proceed
with the decontrols, whether or not
Congress approves the "windfall
RrOfits tax." In the give-and-take of
Washington politics, that revelation is
particularly disturbing. What incen-
tive is there for a senator from an oil
state to vote for the tax if he knows the
administration will decontrol regar-
d(ss.
.$r. Carter should instead practice
th'e policies of one of his predecessors
i pjhe White House - he should speak
softly, but carry a big club. That is,
ThIO rf.f... ar ,te. A 4-..,1 n .nic
stitution of higher learning is to serve
its community, these ties will be
drastically cut by the new restrictions.
The Executive Committee made
their 'decision based on limited infor-
mation, failing to consider evaluations
from students and TAs directly in-
volved with Outreach. The committee
should talk with Outreach personnel,
listen to formal presentations from the
program's leaders, adn read the
enormously favorable comments from
students who have taken the course.
An argument has often been posed
that undergraduate supervisors in
Outreach' are more experienced and
receptive to their "students" than are
TAs in many departments across the
University. These undergraduate
supervisors have been through the
program before, know the agency per-
sonnel with whom the students must
work, and understand the personalized
day-to-day activities of the projects -
perhaps much better than would a new.
TA who would be unfamiliar with the
program's objectives.
Therefore, the Executive Commit-
tee must reverse its decision to make
major changes in Outreach, and listen
to the views of the students and super-
visors who are directly involved with
the program.
The Executive Committee has at-
tempted to fit the experiential "round
peg" of Project Outreach into the
University's "square hole" of
stringent curriculum policy, but in this
case, it is a poorly directed effort.
One week after the city elec-
tions, I am reminded of the words
of veteran Washington Post
reporter Lou Cannon. In his book
Reporting: An Inside View, Can-
non writes: "After elections,
political reporters regularly vow,
much in the manner of the
habitual drinker leaving his
favorite saloon, to do less "horse
race reporting" the next time and
to write more about "the issues"
or some other aspect of the cam-
paign." -
But then, as Cannon so aptly
observed, the vow is almost
never kept. After all, and as Mr.
Cannon noted, whether the jour-
nalists and the politicians like to
admit it, the readers are usually
more interested in "who's going
to win" - not what the candidate
thinks about road repair or fiscal
management. Even veteran
political writer David Broder has
written "Politicians are in-
terested, and the readers are in-
terested in the outcome. I don't
think we ought to denythat basic
fact."
THE QUESTION of covering
the "horse race" at the expense
of the 'issues' comes to mind
mainly because after any elec-
tion, I find myself wondering, as
journalists, how well we did our
job. And in hindsight, there is
always the tendency to say "We.
should have concentrated more
on this," or "Perhaps we wrote
too much about that."
And then I think of Jamie Ken-
worthy, who complained good-
naturedly throughout the cam-
paign that this reporter in par-
ticular was more concerned with
what he was wearing than with
what he was saying. Before a
debate here at The Daily, Ken-
worthy remarked, only half-
jokingly, that maybe the repor-
ters "will write what I say, for a
change."
The immediate reaction, for a
reporter at least, is a lot of soul-
searching. Is it, after all, the
reporter's job to regurgitate only
what the candidate says? If that
is the case, what is the difference
then between the newspaper ar-
ticle and the candidate's press
release? Not much, I would say.
BUT KENWORTHY'S reaction
is not unique. After his famous
"last press conference" in 1962,
Richard Nixon suggested that
one reporter cover the entire
campaign alone, one reporter
"who will report what the can-
didate says now and then."
So while political candidates
may have a valid complaint,
their remarks must be taken in
the context that, believe it or not,
they are usually saying the same
thing over and over again, at
every campaign appearance.
There is only so much you can
write about what Candidate X
thinks about housing in Ann Ar-
bor, even though Candidate X
may want the press to reproduce
his same housing speech ver-
batim every time he delivers it.
At The Daily at least, we made
a conscious effort to write only
"issues" stories, and to resist the
temptation of writing the "horse
race" stories. The result was that
late in the campaign, as one
political reporter complained to
me, "I want to write about the
issues, but there just aren't
any more issues. These guys are
saying the same thing they said
last week!"
THE ALTERNATIVE is for the
reporter to cover the entire cam-
paign, including the candidates'
personalities, their past political
performances, what they are
"really" like. The old story is
that every campaign reporter in
New Hampshire in 1972
deliberately avoided writing
about Ed Muskie's famous tem-
per, under the pretext of
remaining "objective." And "ob-
jectivity" also kept the political
reporters from writing in 1976 ex-
But the sad fact remains
that
the
reporte
ri who m
the rhetoric
erely
and
regurgitates
campaign
doing the r
disservice t
('lack iS
eaders
than if
probably
more
of
a
he wrote
nothing but 'horse race"'
stories
all the way through."
As "objective" reporters, we
were allowed only to write what
Mr. Belcher said, which is that he
fixed the potholes. We were never
able to challenge the Mayor on
his road repair program, or to
write that Mr. Belcher had fixed
the potholes using a cheap, shod-
dy filling that will fall apart in
another year.
TOM WICKER once suggested
that the national political repor-
ters would have served the public
better if they had written, ac-
curately, "Hubert Humphrey
opened his 1972 campaign today
by misrepresenting his 1968 cam-
paign." I maintain that in this
city election, we would have been
closer to the truth had we written
back in February, "Mayor
Belcher opened his re-election
campaign by misrepresenting his
record for the last year." Unfor-
tunately, we could not write that
story - objectivity, you know.
Without belaboring the point, I
am reminded of one other
argument with the editors, over a
ter who merely regurgitates the
rhetoric and campaign flack is
probably doing the readers more
of a disservice than if he wrote
nothing but "horse race" stories
all the way through. After all,
voters elected Richard Nixon in
1968 because he said he would end
the Vietnam War. The reporters
covering that campaign were too
"objective" to ask him how. And
Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976
by promising to balance> the
budget and streamline the
bureaucracy. And the reporters
were too "objective" to write that
that promise was impossible to
keep.
And in Ann Arbor, Mayor Louis
Belcher was re-elected because
he, said he fixed the potholes and
only one person was unobjective
enough to challenge him on that.
Unfortunately, not enough people
believed Jamie Kenworthy.
City Editor Keith Rich-
burg 's column appears every
other Tuesday.
, s
011 necessary
bargain. The administration is lifting
price controls for an express purpose
- to invite more domestic production,
and thus lessen our dependence on
foreign oil. Under the Carter plan,
however, there is no provision to keep
the oil companies accountable. And
history has shown that when left to
their own "good faith," the oil com-
panies have been more concerned with
padding their own pockets than with
aiding the nation in its energy needs.
Sen. Carl Levin, when he was in town
last week to stump for mayoral can-
didate James Kenworthy, came up
with what sounds like a fair proposal to
make the oil companies somewhat ac-
countable. Levin suggested that price
controls be lifted only after the oil
companies guarantee a certain level of
increased production by a certain
period of time.
Such a proposal sounds reasonable.
The administration should work with
the oil companies to secure some form
of guarantee that decontrol will lead to
increased domestic production. If,
production is not increased substan-
tially, to a level agreed on between the
oil companies and federal energy
negotiators, then Mr. Carter should be
required by Congress to slap the con-
trols back on.
At a White House briefing for repor-
ters before Carter's energy address,
officials outlined the increased
domestic production the ad-
ministration expected as a result of
decontrol. The official prediction was
that domestic oil production will rise
by as much as 150,000 barrels a day by
1980, 300,000 barrels daily in 1981, and
almost three quarters of a million
barrels a day by 1985. Still, there must
be some guarantee that the "painful
step" of deregulation will bring the
much-needed benefits of more
domestic oil in the long run.
Mr. Carter's second major energy
message, almost two years after
declaring the energy crisis as the
moral equivalent of war back in April
1977, is basically a sound and essen-
tially policy if the country is ever to
end its dangerous dependence on
foreign oil, a dependence that was
demonstrated markedly with the 1973
Aral nil hnvcntt and has hen demnn-
Letters
Class. explores new
To the Daily:
Brian Blanchard's April 3
column, ''After' Class,''
describing our weekly American
Studies section was not merely
grossly inaccurate but highly of-
fensive. Mr. Blanchard's article
is based on two observations of
our class sessions and one inter-
view with Teaching Assistant
David Papke. Apparently this
brief contact with us was far
from sufficient, because Mr.
Blanchard has come away with
none of the value of the course
and a semi-sarcastic attitude that
makes us look like a group of
chummy morons. In his haste to
criticize, Mr. Blanchard missed
the whole point of the class and
may have damaged more than
one reputation.
David Papke, the TA who leads
these meetings as an extension of
an American Studies introduc-
tory course, is portrayed as our
idealistic, manipulative
shepherd. Mr. Blanchard paints
him as the "broker" of Com-
munist dogma who "in using
Marxist interpretation . . . plays
the same indoctrination game
Capitalistic professors and TAs
play."
We, the students in this
discussion group, are portrayed
as sycophantic sheep who vacan-
tly nod ourheadsaswe are
schooled in the basic, tenets of
Marxism by our TA. When we are
not "competing to please him
with astute or witty comments,"
we are busy "hunting for further
examples of a warped America."
The class, an educational ex-
periment arose from, and con-
tinues to respond to, a dynamic
intellectual curiosity. We discuss
topics from a psychoanalytic
perspective, and from an
historical angle; we debate the
effects of artistic form and con-
tent. Each week we challenge
each other to explain, justify and
extend our arguments. We do not
gather each week to take random
pot-shots at American traditions,
h.i- o nn 1, t h.en in1 u rn
to encourage each of us to take
his or her analysis as faras it will
hold up under critical
examination.
None of us believes that Mr.
Blanchard approached us with
hostile intent; instead, we think
that in trying to describe an in-
novative course, he badly missed
the point. The true value of our
meetings lies in the questions we
ask each other and the issues we
are stimulated to consider after
we leave David's apartment each
week, In this university, with its
premium on force-fed infor-
mation leading to professional
degrees, we should savor a cour-
se that offers the rare oppor-
tunity to analyze and criticize the
things we do and why we do them.
-Susan llodgson, Lisa Berger. Michael
Kaplan, Cheryl Beshke. Marty Friedman,
BarneyPace, Khnista Lane ,Jerry Lehrmnan
,Julie Perkins, Betsy Schek. Michelle
Slosson, .Leonard Bernstein, Allan
Pearlman Ken Tracht. Keith Lee. Rick
Solomon,, Harvey Moscot.
"
Holocaust
To the Daily:
No doubt Jeffrey Colman
speaks for many Jews when he
insists upon the historic per-
manence of anti-Semitism, and
automatically brands anti-
Zionists as anti-semites. For
others, myself included, his wor-
ds strike adepressingly familiar
tone that echoes with illogic, un-
truth and disservice to the very
people he attempts to defend.
His purpose is to call attention
to the Holocaust and to convince
us of the need "to open for others
a glimpse into darkness." 'I
agree. Yet it is clear that Mr.
Colman is not so particularly in-
terested in the holocaust as in all
Jewish history: for him, they are
merely one and the same. He
writes: "The Holocaust . . . was
not an isolated historical event. It
is inherently linked to Jewish
history, both past and contem-
porary. For the Holocaust was
th. n-lmnfllnn fhn.ino -t h.
Holocaust? Or worse still, does he
mean that the Holocaust was
inevitable? If, as I suspect, Mr.
Colman believes that Jewish
history can be reduced to anti-
semitism and that the Holocaust
was its inexorable outcome, then
the question of guilt and respon-
sibility becomes irrelevant.
Inquisitioners and Nazis were
merely playing out a historical
process whose first determinant
cause was established when anti-
semitism was unleashed upon the
world. Anti-semitism is the great
given, the constant of Jewish
history. If this is a demoralizing
and depressing thought, it is also
a strangely comforting one: for it
dispenses Mr. Colman from truly
understanding history, from
asking difficult questions about
the nature, causes and persisten-
ce of anti-semitism. Incidentally,
it also allows for many to make a
feeble-minded, but superficially
convincing case for Zionism: sin-
ce anti-semitism arises
inevitably from the situation of
Jews living among non-Jews, the
only solution is to break that
relationship through physical
exit. This is precisely whatyHerzl
was talking about when he said
that the "honest" anti-semites
would prove the Jews' best frien-
ds.
Anti-semitism has never been
adequately explained.Itremains
fundamentally a mystery which
most of us have had to deal with
as part of out lives as well as part
of our collective past. And what
Jew does not brood about the
Holocaust? Of course: we must
do more than remember; we
must assure ourselves and the
world that the past will never be
repeated. But in order to do this
we must first shake-off the hyp-
notic conviction that it is the
nature of the past to be repetitive.
Zionism attempted to break with
history in such a fashion; yet a
Zionism based upon a "Masada
complex" is doomed to fall into
the trap of a self-fulfilling
areas
to be despised. But they are also
to be dealt with politically, which
means forcing them to declare
their intentions, reveal their
racism, thus unmasking their
true nature. They are not to be
presumed to speak for all their
comrades; for there are many
other kinds of anti-Zionists.
There are those who hate Jews
the way many Irish have hated
the British, or Americans hated
the Japanese. Or the way a
Palestinian Arab expelled from
Jaffa in 1948 hates the Israelis. It
is a hatred induced by conflicting
nationalisms compounded by
perceived ethnic differences.
Why insist that these hatreds are
not subject to change? Until
recently, most American anti-
communists were fanatically an-
ti-Russian. That today those
same anti-communists, feel little
hatred for the Russian people
represents a measure of political
maturity that most Zionists seem
to wish to forstall in the Middle-
East. The point is that, just as not
all Jews are Zionists, so not all
anti-Zionists are antisemites.
Israelis and other Zionists should
be trying to sever the ideological
identity of anti-semitism and an-
ti-Zionism when and where it
exists, not hysterically insisting
that they are one and the same.
They would only do this, of cour-
se, if it weren't their strategy to
mis-characterize, de-legitimize
and otherwise slander all op-
position to Zionism.
The fostering of simple-minded
ideological equations is wrong
and pernicious from whatever
quarter. When the U.N. equates
Zionism, with racism or when
Jews insist that to be opposed to
Zionism is to be anti-semitic,then
we should recognize the Big Lie
that sooner or later will rebound
to its perpetrator's discredit.
-Robert Schneider, Lecturer
Residential College