iri Sidun Daht
Eighty-one years of editorial freedom
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
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THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1972
NIGHT EDITOR: LINDA DREEBEN
A messae from Wisconsin
THINGS ARE looking up for the former
history professor from South Dakota.
George McGovern, who was dismissed as
a Don Quixote only a few short months
ago, has now become the front-runner in
the race for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
The significance of McGovern's con-
vincing Wisconsin victory with 30 per
cent of the vote is that it indicates a new
attitude among the American body poli-
tic.
Voters in this country are fed up with
the corruption, inefficiency, and imper-
sonality of big government. The people
want a change, not just a little modifi-
cation; they want a complete overhaul.
George McGovern tells the voters he is
for change. And he tells them exactly
what changes he wants and how he is
going to bring them about.
That the voters want something dif-
ferent is further born out by the strong
second place showing of George Wallace.
Wallace appeals primarily to working
class whites, who represent a large por-
tion of the population, but who as a group
have no articulate spokesmen.
While blacks who rise to positions of
prominence continue to be black, poor
whites who rise to prominence are no
longer poor whites.
IT IS A SENSE of frustration, bitterness,
and bewilderment which prompts the
poor whites to cast their vote for Wal-
lace. Wallace speaks their language and
is sympathetic to their problems. Al-
though he doesn't offer any specific so-
lutions, his general talk about soak-the-
rich finds a receptive audience. A vote
for Wallace is a protest vote - a protest
against everything that's wrong in this
country.
Ironically, both Wallace and McGovern
attract many of the same types of voters.
They both have a sort of populist appeal,
although Wallace is closer to know-noth-
ingism than to populism.
THE BIGGEST obstacle now to McGov-
ern's nomination is that worn-out
relic of the administration that sent 50,-
000 young Americans to an early grave in
Indochina. Hubert Humphrey commands
a large following among organized labor,
the hard-core Democratic regulars and
people who like the Vietnam war. He also
has an enviable ability to raise money.
Although McGovern is now being called
the frontrunner, this position is tenuous
at best - just ask Ed Muskie.
--LINDSAY CHANEY
Editorial Page Editor
0
America:
than othe
corporation
stand; you
PROFES
about giant
from Washington now few1
largest corl
YOU CAN feel it in the air, the disil- of total in
lusionment, the alienation, the cynicism. 1965 it w,
Things in government aren't going right; knows. Se
worse, there's a growing feeling that you cent of al
can't do anything about it. It's like grop- Ford, AT&
ing in the dark for a light switch that Texaco, G
may not be there. For the first time later thes
the US frustration begins to embrace the the profits
very system itself. Three o
Take Vietnam: the public wants out; companies
we can't get out. We want a fair shake the tax la
on taxes; we know we aren't getting it. We through -
want better distribution of income; the lowance. t
gap isn't closing. We want Congress to The norma
control corporate wealth; instead, the cor- tax rate th
porations pay the congressman's bills.
Everywhere in the dark we stumble into PEOPLE
things; the economy - inflation is bad why they
enough, unemployment is bad enough, but becauseo
to get them together! (though m
The taxi driver's wife tells him she needs a sideline
more money. Why? You should see the lace is vo
price of vegetables and ground beef. But ances.
what's this? The headline says Agriculture Here'sa
Secretary Butz "hails higher meat prices." family no
He says "they provide. the best way to for every
insure a good supply of the better cuts a $10,000-a
of beef that I prefer." of $19. We
The public looks at Washington in dis- for the ah
belief. The ITT thing, for God's sake. The Pro
The huge concern shreds the documents tee hasi
of its lobbyist and then looks as innocent billion inf
as Little Eva ascending into heaven. Its year. Som
president's salary is three times Mr. Nix- general ti
on's. It runs its own foreign policy with affluent.S
the aid of the CIA; it finances political things? -
conventions. So what? It does no more senator fo
Something's got to give
r multi-billion, multi-national,
ns. Nothing criminal, you under-
u can't indict a smell.
SORS HAVE been telling us
t corporations for years, but till
have listened. In 1950 the 100
porations controlled 38 per cent
ndustrial assets in America; by
'as 45 per cent. Today? Who
ven big companies got 17 per
1 corporate profits in 1956-GM,
&T, Standard Oil of New Jersey,
Gulf Oil and IBM. Ten years
same seven got a quarter of all
s.
f the biggest concerns are oil
The oil industry has holes in
ws you can drive a tanker-truck
- depletion allowance, drilling al-
he import quota (tariff) system.
al big oil company pays a lower
han a charwoman.
E ARE getting fed up. That's
voted for George Wallace. Not
of his stand on busing alone
host competent demagogues have
of bigotry). But because Wal-
calizing a dozen festering griev-
an illustration: a $200,000-a-year
w gets a subsidy of about $70
$100 of its mortgage payments,
a-year family gets an average
e run a kind of welfare system
ffluent.
oxmire Joint Economic Commit-
just estimated that about $63
federal subsidies are paid every
ne are good, some ark bad. In
he payments tilt .in favor of the
Why doesn't Congress equalize
- not easy with Russell Long,
r oil, or James Eastland, senator
for farm subsidies, standing in the way.
Congress is pockmarked with road blocks.
We lack disciplined political parties in the
Canadian or European sense.
Every poll shows that the average man
wants Vietnam stopped. But bombs keep
falling. Can the individual do anything?
Apparently not. Leaders tell us not to
worry, combat soldiers are coming- back,
home. Isn't that fine? The bombs have a
nice technical name, "protective reaction";
they are used only when the enemy has the
arrogance to track our fliers over their
territory.
The bombs keep falling. In Holy Week,
if you took Communion, you didn't think
about them; it's not your responsibility.
Anyway, those little brown peasants aren't
Christians; that slant-eyed dead baby in
the ditch was probably never baptized.
Take the wafer; it's all right.
OUR GOVERNMENT is busy with other
important matters. For example, it is
ferreting out conspiracy and just at pre-
sent has a couple of informers to illus-
trate how efficiently it works. Robert
Hardy says the FBI employed him not
only as informer but as agent provocateur
and encouraged him to perform a criminal
act in helping to organize conspirators at
Camden, New Jersey to raid the draft
board file.
The FBI also has a paid stool pigeon in
the Harrisburg case against Father Philip
Berrigan and a couple of nuns, who were
plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger. Don't
laugh! What with the ITT spectacle and
the FBI the funny things are getting to be
the most serious. There should be more
of them, too, when Edgar Hoover gets his
huge new home built on Pennsylvania Ave-
nue right across from its parent, the Jus-
tict Department. The FBI building will be
bigger than Justice.1
Half a dozen books we have read lately
take a rather dim view of all this: The
Party's Over by top notch political writer
David Broder; A Populist Manifesto, a
splendid summary by Newfield and Green-
field; America, Inc., Mintz and Cohen;
Uncommon Sense, by historian J. M.
Burns; Money in Politics, Herbert Alex-
ander. They all discern the same dis-
turbance and- rising resentment. There is
an undercurrent of fear. The public is an-
gry, they say, and keeps asking questions.
WHY IS infant mortality so outrageously
high in America when doctors have an
average iniome of $40,500? Why does Mr.
Nixon offer a $100 billion deficit in three
years and 'not staunch the hemorrhage of
lost tax revenues? (Mr. Nixon's happy solu-
tion is to reelect him so he can give us
a national sales tax (VAT); it will have
such majestic impartiality that the million-
aire and the washer woman will each pay
the same 6 per cent sales tax for a bowl
of chili con carne.)
Why is it that-half the members of
Congress have interests in law firms, banks
and TV stations? Why doesn't the gap
between rich and poor get smaller? ac-
tually the $10,600 gap between the average
income of the top fifth of the public and
the :bottom fifth in 1949 increased to
$19,000 in 1969.
THESE WRITERS express concern, I
think, for the same reason. History tells
us that is enough people get angry enough
about enough grievances at the same time
they will begin striking out and breaking
things and they are not very discriminating
about what they break. A competent dema-
gogue can lead them almost anywhere.
Reprinted by permission of the New Repubiie
0 1972, Harrison-Blaine of New Jersey, Inc,
° °ROSE SUE BERSTEIN __
-Daily-Rolfe Tessera
Generals who cry wolf
Chaplin,
"Because you have silenced Suppres
a man, you have not conveit- forms ha
ed him." -Artist Ben Shahn fidgety g
* * * learn thi
ARTISTS WITH political c a n - lentlessly
sciences have always caused thy dissid
their anxious governments to re- tims of s
coil in horror. After all, pue caught th
dialectic commands a small aud-
ience: people with endurance; CHARL
people already committed to a and film
particular point of view; students turned to
trudging through assigned read- in Switze
ings. visit here
But when the political message colade a
is delivered more subtly-through blocked b
a poster of Guernica, in the pages nedy airp
of Sartre's Paths to Freedom tri- Plaza Ho
logy, on screen with an allegorical gram at
Z - then problems arise. with farm
Anyone has access to political the Holly,
messages deliveredsthrough art will prese
forms, thus anyone can ibsorb Academy
those messages. many Apr
Solzhenitsyn:
SINCE DECEMBER, Pentagon pundits
had been predicting a major Commun-
1st offensive in South Vietnam. The result
was a mass of "protection reaction
strikes" - to safeguard American troops
from offensives that never materialized.
While American planes pounded sus-
pected Communist positions in North
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Army offi-
cials were attempting to attribute politi-
cal motives to the invisible offensives.
First, we were told that the Commun-
ists were attempting to take advantage
of U.S. troop withdrawals by mounting a
major attack. Then, we were advised they
were planning to take advantage of the
favorable weather of the Tet season. Fi-
nally, military sources assured us that an
offensive would begin so as to embarrass
President Nixon, during .his trip to the
People's Republic of China.
And all the while, the bombing .'con-
tinued -- with no sign of increased ene-
my action.
LAST WEEK; the offensive finally came,
and it was met with a volley of "I-
told-you-so's" from Army intelligence ex-
perts who ingeniously decided that they
had been correct all along, but had mere-
ly miscalculated the time 'and place of
the offensive.
U.S. military brass have apparently lost
some faith in their intelligence units over
the past few months, however. Two weeks
ago, a communique sent to the Pentagon
predicted a "substantial increase" in
Communist activity early in April. The
report was given little credence by both
Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander
of American troops in South Vietnam,
and Ellsworth Bunker, the American am-
bassador.
Both men left the country to spend
Easter with their wives, and did not re-
turn to Vietnam until Tuesday. Mean-
while, the latest dispatches from the field
report that the Communists are within
60 miles of Saigon on the western front,
and the ARVN is hanging on for dear life
just south of the DMZ. . .
AT THE RISK of appearing paternalis-
tic, one might suggest the U.S. Army
Intelligence Division take a refresher
course in emergency preparedness-start-
ing with a manual entitled "The Boy Who
Cried Wolf."
-ALAN LENHOFF
Editor
sion of political art
as never been easy, but
governments never quite
s, and they continue re-
to weed out the unheai-
dents. This week two vic-
uch suppression attempts
he limelight.
ES CHAPLIN, comedian
star extraordinaire, re-
New York after 20 years
erland. Upon his return
, Chaplin will receive ac-
after accolade: crowds
both his arrival at Ken-
'ort and his entry to the
'tel; a special film pro-
Lincoln Center was filled
nally attired guests; and
wood film establishment
ent Charlie with a special
Award at its Oscar cere-
ril 10.
Politics
in art
.
d
Talkin' about the
Incredibility GapB AKDLE
By MARK DILLEN
JF YOU'VE been watching or reading the news lately, you know
there've been some pretty surprising things happening. Like the
Human Rights Party winning two City Council seats. Or George
McGovern running away with the Wisconsin primary. Or General
Motors recalling 130,000 Vegas for having engines that tend to blow
up.
And to many it's really quite disturbing. After all, who wants
all those cars blowing up on our freeways? But beyond that, they've
added a new twist to the American scene and given us a new
phenomenon that only we, as progenetors of a great and high culture,
can truly appreciate.
It's called the "Incredibility Gap." Incredible, isn't it? Just when
you though you had the last one licked. As you remember, the way
the "Credibility Gap" worked was that you just weren't able to tell
whether the honchos in government and big business were telling the
truth. What with the Pentagon Papers and all, it seemed as though
you had to believe just the opposite.
BUT NOW to believe just the
opposite is no longer right either, :'-. -
because everyone is so amazed at '.:;<
what is happening that they don't
have any good contradictory state-
ments prepared. The result is that
they end up doing the most un-
believable thing of all: telling the
truth.
Hubert Humphrey, for example,
clears his breast with startling
revelations about his childhood
weaknesses: "I was not much of
a sprinter in high school, always
more of a long distance runner."
George Wallace has also conced-
ed that he is just "an averagef
guy," while big Ed Muskie has
admitted that his sole big draw-
ing card is that only he is able to
beat Nixon.
BUT THE SWEET breath of
fresh honesty extends far beyond
the heretofore smelly confines of
the political arena. Following our;
President's lead of keeping such>
non-partisan issues as war, depres-
sion, oppression, repression and>
suppression safe from the -lutch-
es of those who make themselves
our enemies, unexpected develop- '"
ments in world affairc arp enocdng '
But all these honors are feeble
attempts to compensate for tY e
slander heaped upon Charlie's
name in the fifties. A victim of
the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy's
witch-hunting, Chaplin was ac-,
cused of having Commu nist sym-
pathies and immoral habits.
When he left the United States
for Switzerland, Chaplin was told
he must submit to hearings on the
McCarthy charges if he ever re-
turned.
And now, the man has returned.
The charges will probably not be
heard; and Chaplin has decided
not to discuss the issue with the
press. But behind him lurks a
giant shadow of accusations, easily
tossed about but less easily d s-
pelled.
DRAMATIC IRONY may have
reached a peak in some of Chap-
lin's films, but it's been supersed-
ed by the reaction to Charlie's ar-
rival here. The same people who.
cast him away as an undesirable
character, who felt it worthwhile
to rid the country of an evil in-
fluence, now grant the aging star
a hero's welcome.
MEANWHILE, across the Atian-
tic, Nobel prize-winning novelist
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn complains
of harassment by the Soviet gov-
ernment. It is doubtful, in fact,
whether Swedish officials will be
allowed entry to Russia to pre-
sent the author his Nobel honors.
Chaplin was condemned in a.
red-baiting America. Solzhenitsyn
is condemned in a western-fearing
Soviet Union. Soviet officials have
expelled him from the Union of
Writers, calling him a traitor for
his critical writings.
"The plan," he said in an inter-
view April 2, "is either to drive
me out of my life or out of the
country, throw me into a ditch or
send me to Siberia, or to have ne
dissolve 'in an alien fog,' as they
write."
There is no reason for Soviet
officialdom to be as paranoid as
the Solzhenitsyn treatment indi-
cates they are. The Soviet Union
has survived more than 50 years,
some of them filled wizn turmoil
and doubt, but now they certainly"
have nothing to fear from a small
group of liberal artist-intellect-
uals.
Indeed, public opinion of the
U.S.S.R. is endangered more by
its suppression of artistic freedom
than by passages from The 'First
Circle.
In any case, disagreeing with
what Chaplin and Solzhenitsyn
have said in no way justifies slan-
dering their characters.
WHAT CAN we say now but
"Sorry, Charlie?"
We can, hope that the Nobel
prize delivery goes on next week
as scheduled: We can hope t h a t
memories of McCarthy are strong
enough to prevent his successors
from ever attaining the power he
held.
Wecan hope that poet Richard
Lovelace's words of 1642 on sup-
pression will finally be believed
It is, after all, true that "Stone
walls do not a prison make, nor
iron bars a cage." .
Exiling Chaplins and tormenting
Solzhenitsyns !will not, in the long
run, achieve the end of silencing
their opinions. Such actions, more
than anything else, forge people
into martyrs.
0
*
Charlie Chaplin as 'The Kid'
Letters to The Daily
Jury lists
JURY LISTS should include all
voting citizens. Waiting until May
1, before updating these lists,
(Daily editorial, March 28) is now
clearly an injustice to those 18
to 20 years old.
The American Civil Liberties
Union of Michigan wrote to the
Chief Justice of the Michigan Su-
preme Court in February, gsking
that circuit and district courts
of the state revise their jury selec-
tion procedures to deal with the
extraordinary situation.
The jury lists in the state must,
by May 1 of each year, be. esti-
mated for the one-year period
beginning the following September.
Each county clerk must, also by
May 1, complete a, list of all re-
gistered voters in his county. This
list is then nura b +hD zhe fnit.
Thus, none of the new voters can
possibly appear on juries before
September 1972.
Worse, since the new lists must
be submitted as early as May 1.
1972, and will not be revised until
the following May 1st, only those
18 to 20 year olds who manage
to register between September
1971 and May 1, 1972 will appear
on the new jury lists. This means
that, until September 1973, only
those few who manage to register
before May 1, 1972 will be able to
represent their peers on the juries
of the state.
IT IS QUITE clear that the new
18 to 20 year old voters will not
be represented on juries in any-
thing remotely resemhbng their
proportion of the population. As
Zoning issue
To .The Daily:
I FIND IT unfortunate that a
political issue has been made of
an incompleted Planning Depart-
ment study of* zoning in the South
University area..
The Daily printed a letter by
the so-called Citizens of Tenbrook
which, contained some basic mis-
information and misunderstand-
ings. The proposed rezoning, if ac-
cepted, is unlikely to cause either
the deterioration or the removal of
student housing as the letter writ-
ers fear, but in fact is intended
to retain the less-expensive housing
which now exists.
-Ethel Lewis
Ann Arbor Planning
Commission member
March 30
h {*