Alle id tgan Bathy
Eighty years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan

Friday morning
What is Nixon afraid of in bed?
by daiiel zwerdliug

*i

420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich.

News Phone: 764-0552

Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.

NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1970

.iwrr rr 7



y'
:I

Ifll

S ;

/ ''

I

W HAT IS Richard Nixon afraid
of at night when he climbs
into bed with Pat? Somewhere,
someone is trifling with American
morality. "Pornography, if not
halted and reversed, could poison
the wellsprings of American and
Western civilization" warns this
White House oracle. They're trying
to turn "Main Street into Smut
Alley" says his vice president.
It's the fault of the Presidential
Commission - Presidential Com-
mission! - on Obscenity and
Pornography, which recommends
in ten tedious volumes of inter-
views, polls, controlled sensory ex-
perimentshand various other re-
search .that "federal, state and
local legislation prohibiting the
sale, exhibition or distribution of
sexual materials to consenting
adults should be repealed."
REPEAL pornography laws! A
presidential commission? Not Nix-
on's. This August body of 18 men
and women-sociologists publish-
ers lawyers psychiatrists profes-
sors a judge a rabbi and priest -
was appointed by President John-
son in early 1968 and you can bet
that no one, not the President nor
any Congressmen nor anybody
with a sound political head be-
lieved that this commission would
two years and $2 million worth
of research later say flat out with-
out any reservations in the heat
of nationwide political campaigns
that'all the righteous assumptions
a b o u t pornography corrupting
morals of adults (or children),
whether it's books or photos of
pouting lips or penises or lesbian
sex or group sex or oral sex or -
in sum, that all these assumptions
stand on: Nothing. No evidence.
No scientific facts. And therefore,
the commission would declare,
that more than one hundred stat-
utes and state laws and ordin-
ances which outlaw so-called por-
nography should be thrown out.
But there it is in eight-point
type rolling off the presses of the
United States Government Print-
ing Office in Washington D.C. The
Commission and its staff had been
working in silence to avoid pre-
judicial publicity, so the Whitn
House. was truly surprised and
shocked when a preliminary draft
leaked to the press in September.

tory? The Puritans drilled holes
in tongues of citizens who, sang
"obscene and profane songs" in
1711. From a legal standpoint,
obscenity legislation poses a night-
mare. The hundreds of laws which
prohibit "obscene" materials never
bother to define the word "ob-
scene."
Some suggest that obscenity
means something which "tends to
corrupt morals." That's too vague,
so along came the Supreme Court
in 1957 in the landmark Roth vs.
United States case, and devised a
test for determining whether
something is obscene: the material
must appeal to a "prurient" inter-
est in sex, it must affront "con-
temporary community standards"
regarding the depiction of sexual
matters, and the material must be
utterly without redeeming social
value. But how do you know if a
book or movie is prurient? Ac-
cording to Webster, prurient ma-
terial sexually excites you. Excites
you? or me? or the judge? which
judge? Patently offensive to con-
temporary community standards?
meaning, the nation as commu-
nity? New York? or Flint? No'so-
cial value? Says who? In /just 13
obscenity cases before the Su-
preme Court, the justices have
issued 52 separate opinions. If that
doesn't say much for equal appli-
cation of the law, think of thou-
sands of different judges in thou-
sands of different courts across
the country.
MOST SIGNIFICANTLY: The
Commission couldn't find a single
piece of convincing evidence which
shows a correlation between ex-
plicit sexual material and decay-
ing morals, sexual deviancy or
sexual crimes. It tried. It inter-
viewed lower class youth, students,
workers, white collar people; went
to reformatories, scanned police
records; paid people to sit for 90
minutes daily for nine weeks and
look at the hardest most vivid
photo of sex you could possibly
imagine, taping electrodes to their
genitals and playing, them full of
questionnaires (most subjects got
intolerably bored), and found "no
reliable evidence to date that ex-
posure to explicit sexual materials
plays a significant role in the
causation of delinquent or crim-

recommended banning porno-
graphy distribtuion to youths un-
der 16 without parental permis-
sion.
IT'S CURIOUS that with all the
emphasis these days on scientific
research, the President and mem-
bers of Congress who have spent
almost zero time studying the
pornography issue can suddenly
repudiate two years of research.
But of course, it's not what they
wanted to hear. Listen to Charles
Keating Jr., Nixon's only com-.
mission appointee (a Johnson
commissioner resigned): "One can
consult all the experts he chooses,
can write reports, make studies,
etc., but the idea that obscenity
corrupts lies within the common
sense, the reason, and the logic
of every man. Those who will
spend millions of dollars to tell
us otherwise must be malicious or
misguided, or both," Keating says,
and then asks us to credit the
American people with the intuitive
knowledge that "one who wallows
in filth is going to get dirty."
PRESIDENT NIXON said it
stronger. In a major statement
only last week, he declared the
Commission "morally bankrupt":
"The pollution of our culture,
the pollution of our civilization,
with smut and filth is as ser-
ious a situation for the American
people as the pollution of our
once pure air and water," he
says.
"I am well aware of the im-
.portance of protecting freedom
of expression. But pornography
is to freedom of expression what
anarchy is to liberty; as free

men wililngly restrain a mea-
sure of their freedom to prevent
anarchy, so must we draw the
line against pornography to pro-
tect freedom of expression."
You won't find those analogies on
the SAT's.
Nixon ends his speech quoting
Alexis de Tocqueville from more
than a century ago: "America is
great because she is good - and if
America ceases to be good, Amer-
ica will cease to be great."
NOW IT'S TIME for the answer.
What does Nixon fear in bed?
It's all in the report. Americans
like sex, no, love it and aren't al-
ways afraid of it, besides. Look
at the research graphs and charts
and statistics and interviews with
psychologists and teachers and
sociologists. They say (in the
words of the report): "Exposure to
pornography appears to be a usual
and harmless part of the process
of growing up in our society and a
frequent and non-damaging oc-
currence among adults" W h o
patronizes the peep shows, the
adult bookstores and the d i r t y
movies? "White middle-aged,
middle class, married, male(s)
dressed in business suits or neat
casual attire."!! Who has been ex-
posed to explicit sexual materials?
"Approximately 85 per cent of
adult men and 70 per cent of adult
women in the U.S."-why that
must include most of the people
who vote for.. .
Now: What kind of sex do
Americans enjoy? Researchers
showed men and women photos
and textual descriptions of 20 sex-
ual situations, and guess what
type of sex aroused them most?

Cunnilingus! Oral-genital sex!
But . ..that's sodomy!
Look at it Richard: that's Amer-
ica!
Anyway, despite all this furor,
maybe Americans aren't so coni-
cerned about pornography as we
think they are. When the cam-
eras aren't watching, the majority
of adults say they think other
adults should be able to read and
see whatever they choose. They
get a bit uptight when you ask
them more specifically about sex-
ual topics, but then, the people
who say they want controls on
sexual materials also tend to say
that newspapers shouldn't criticize
the police or the government. And,
the studies show, it's true that
some people are quick to warn
about the degenerate influences
of pornography - but it's always
the other fellow who will degen-
erate.
IN ANY CASE, the work's all
done, the commissioners have gone
home, and Bantam Books, Inc. is
selling copies of the report at local
bookstores because the govern-
ment surely won't send them all
over the country. May God deliver
us from the scourge of earlier ci-
vilizations, although it may be too
late because as Nixon's man Keat-
ing said, "Never in Rome, Greece,
or the 'most debauched nation in
history has such utter filth been
projected to all parts of a na-
tion."
Canada's prime minister says
that government has no place in
the bedrooms of the nation."
Shhhhhh .. . The President-is ...
sleeping? At least let them turn
out the lights.

V

#I


Letters to The*DIy

Election Pickings

JOHN NANCE GARNER once said the
Vice Presidency isn't worth a pitch-
er of warm spit - which by anyone's
standards is not very much. Garner
knew whereof he spoke; he was the
vice president under Franklin Delano
Roosevelt for one term. That was
enough.
Fortunately for anyone looking for
a job in the nation's governmental in-
dustry, the worthless vice presidency is
not vacant at this moment. Only more
worthwhile occupations like governor,
senator, congressman, state legislator
and county or city official slots are op-
en. And come Tuesday, these slots shall
be filled by those who garner enough
votes in their respective areas of com-
petition.
For too long a time in the recent his-
tory of this technological age, com-
puters have taken the fun out of these
electoral battles, telling us almost in-
stantly on election day who will win
and by how much.
"Bosh to the computers," we say. It's
time to bring the human element back
to the electoral process! It's time to
Let the People Decide! Because they
know.
For example, any solid citizen could
have predicted that Hubert Humphrey
would be defeated in 1968 by Richard
Nixon. After all, there was a New Nix-
on this time.
Michiganl
i. U.S. Senate: Philip A. Hart (D) vs.
Lenore Romney (R) pick percentages
2. Governor: W ill i a m G. Milliken
(R) vs. Sander Levin (D) pick percent-
ages
3. Secretary of State: Emil Lockwood
(R) vs. Richard H. Austin (D)
4. Attorney General: Frank J. Kel-
ley (D) vs. William S. Farr Jr. (R)
5. U.S. House of Representatives, 2nd
District: Marvin L. Esch (R) vs. R. Mi-
chael Stillwagon (D)
6. U.S. House of Representatives, 5th
District: Gerald Ford (R) vs. Jean Mc-
Kee (D)
7. State Senator, 18th District: Gil-
bert Bursley (R) vs. George Wahr Sal-
lade (D)
8. State Representative, 53rd Dis-
trict: Raymond J. Smit (R) vs. Donald
Edgar Koster (D)
9. Members of the Board of Regents
of the University of Michigan, choose
two:
Paul Brown (D)
James L. Waters (D)
Paul G. Goebel Jr. (R)
Jack H. Shuler (R)
10. Parochiaid: yes or no

And was a computer needed to fig-
ure out that the late Lurleen Wallace
would win the governorship of Ala-
bama just vacated after two terms by
her husband George?
Of course not! It only took good old
human know-how and intuition to fig-,
ure out the results.
And we would like to provide a for-
um for such perceptiveness in our first
annual Election Pickings. We have se-
lected 32 races we feel have the poten-
tial to exert whatever significance
electoral politics can exert on our so-
ciety, and we are asking our readers to
guess who shall be the victors and who
the vanquished.
Furthermore, in the interest of ex-
pressing confidence in the human abil-
ity to logically assess, we are asking
that the percentage of votes for both
candidates be listed in our two head-
line-making state races: Hart vs. Rom-
ney for the U.S. Senate seat; Levin vs.
Milliken for governor.
This effort shall not go for naught,
of course. T h a t person making the
m o s t correct selections shall receive
the wonderful prize of an American
Apple Pie from the Cottage Inn Pizza.
All entries m u s t be in by midnight,
Monday.
Hail to the victors.
15. Illinois: Ralph Smith (R) vs. Ad-
lai Stevenson III (D)
16. Indiana: Vance Hartke (D) vs.
Michael Roudebush (R)
17. Maine: Edmund Muskie (D) vs.
Neil Bishop (R)
18. Maryland: Joseph Tydings (D)
vs. J. Glenn Beall, Jr. (R)
19. Massachusetts: Edward Kennedy
(D) vs. Josiah Spaulding (R)
20. Minnesota: Hubert Humphrey
(D) vs. Clark MacGregor (R)
21. New Jersey: Harrison Williams,
Jr. (D) vs. Nelson Gross (R)
22. New York: Charles Goodell (R)
vs. Richard Ottinger (D) vs. James
Buckley (Conservative)
23. Ohio: Howard Metzenbaum (D)
vs. Robert Taft, Jr. (R)
24. Tennessee: Albert Gore (D) vs.
William Brock (R)
25. Texas: Lloyd Bentsen (D) vs.
George Bush (R)
26. Utah: Frank Moss (D) vs. Laur-
ence Burton (R)
27. Vermont: Winston Prouty (R) vs.
Philip Hoff (D)
28. Virginia: Harry F. Byrd, Jr.
(Ind.) vs. Ray Garland (R) vs. George
C. Rawlings (D)

TU reply
To The Daily:
CHARLES MORGAN, in the
Wednesday, Oct. 21 Daily, raised
some valid questions concerning
the Tenants' Union's demands of
the University for more housing.
Our demands were not arbitrari-
ly drawn up and presented. We
researched the housing crisis fair-
ly thoroughly, through city and
University offices relating to
housing. Our demands resulted
from our findings and conclusions.
The University can build hous-
ing cheaper than any private
builder on any given site because
HUD's College Housing Program
has money available for subsidiza-
tion. According to the Office of
Student Community Relations,
its money is more readily available
to the University than any sub-
sidizations for private developers.
Since 1967, there has been vir-
tually no construction of low-
cost housing or single student
housing. Yet, the Ann Arbor va-
cancy rate in July, 1967, was 2.3
per cent. And the University's
Ann Arbor enrollment has since
increased by 2,161 students. (An
unofficial city estimate of last
year's vacancy rate is 0.3 per cent,
with a projection for next year
of 0.0. per cent. Any vacancy rate
below 5 per cent can be consider-
ed an indicator of a supply short-
age.)
A HUD appropriations applica-
tion (Northwood V) dated March
28, 1969, listed a "Total Student
Housing Deficiency" of 3,231 stu-
dent spaces in 1968. The same
form indicated "a potential de-
mand of more than 1,000 student
families, .. . supplemented by fac-
ulty needs, estimated, at least, at
several hundred more." The same
form also indicated that "lack of
more subsidized housing . . . tends
to limit the number of low-income
students who might otherwise en-
roll here." The University of
Michigan is still a "rich kid's
school," to say nothing of low-

income workers forced to com-
mute to work in Ann Arbor.
Having factually established the
need, we looked into the develop-
ment of University housing. Fu-
ture housing plans do exist. And
the Office of University Housing.
is working on a "means test" with
the Office of Financial Aids.The
problem lies basically in funding.
Our demand that the University
consider the Golf Course and the
unused Residential College site
(on North Campus) simply points
up that land need not be acquired
to begin immediate construction.
ACCORDING to a University
administrator (in a private con-
versation), if the University were
to begin construction of 5,000
units tomorrow, a crucial housing
shortage would still exist when
these units opened. In these terms,
our demand is not only reasonable,
it is inadequate.
We demand that the new Re-
source Allocation Committee be
mandated to find the necessary
funding. (This committee was es-
tablished to review University
priorities in spending.) This, pre-
sumably will be done in conjunc-
tion with HUD possibilities.
Our last demand is that this
housing, in planning and living
stages, be controlled by the future
potential residents, through com-
mittee involvement and public
hearings, to insure that student
and community needs are met.
Please refer your questions to
our office on the first floor of the
SAB, 763-3102 or 764-4404.
-Ann Arbor Tenant's Union
Oct. 26
Sisters Rising
To the Daily:
FOR MANY of us, the realiza-
tion of the seriousness of women's
oppression a n d the decision to
fight this oppression in an organ-
ized, collective way have b e e n
reached, as other self-conscious
persecuted groups h a v e reached
it, through bitter personal exper-

ience. Some of us experienced op-
pression through our educational
institutions, some through the job
circuit, some through the familiar
boy-girl syndromes. When you are
ostracized for being an intelligent
or strong or creative' woman, you
are not free. Whenyou are push-
ed into what society thinks is a
suitable woman's job or when you
are patently denied a job for
which you are qualified because of
your womanhood, you are not
free. When you are forced against
your will to spend your entire life
at home with your children and
your untidy house, you are not
free. And when you are afraid to
spend a Friday night with your
sisters because you thing people
will see you and say, "That's be-
cause she can't get a man," you
most definitely are not free.
We in Sisters Rising feel that
the foundation of true liberation
is friendship, understanding, and
trust; and we want to begin
building and strengthening these
bonds among women by inviting
you to celebrate with us the ven-
erable holiday of Hallowe'en,
when we remember and honor our
sisters who throughout history
were burned, stoned, and other-
wise mutilated f o r practicing
their only alternative to the Sys-
tem - witchcraft. So fly on your
broomsticks (or whatever other
mode of transportation you pre-
fer) to the basement of 331
Thompson (watch for the signs)
at 9 p.m.: we'll cackle, brew, con-
jure, and laugh together,' throw
communal hexes on deserving es-
tablishments, and give each other
the strength for the struggle.
-Sisters Rising
Oct. 26
The Editorial Page of The
Michigan Daily is open to any-
one who wishes to submit
articles. Generally speaking, all
articles should be less than
1,000 words.

-

How to denounce a top-level re-
search report? Nixon's press sec-
retary Ronald Zeigler pointed out
to newsmen that The Commission
Was Not Formed By The Nixon
Administration Which Therefore
Does Not Subscribe To Its Views.
Then the Senate washed its hands
of this smut by officially voting to
denounce the commission, 60-5.
HOW COULD OUR Presidential
commission repudiate almost 300
hundred years of American his-

inal sex behavior among youths
or adults."
That doesn't say pornography
is good (although two psychiatrists
on the panel did suggest that it
contributes to a well-rounded sex
education). It merely says that no
one can prove pornography is
bad, and therefore the govern-
ment shouldn't tamper with the
freedom of speech in an effort to
dictate personal morals. The com-
missioners did feel a little wary of
abolishing youth controls, so they

"

why then' this restlessness?
Guiding light ot the coffee machine
by stiiaii gafues

Luddite. Eng. Hist. One of a band of
workmen who (1811-16) tried to pre-
vent the use of labor-saving machinery
by breaking it, burning etc; -said
to have been called after Ned Lud, a
half-witted man who about 1779
broke up stocking frames.
'THE COFFEE machine can't move from
place to place but it always moves.
Day and night, its plastic covered veins
pulse with electric current, supplying en-
ergy to the whirring, humming components
-whose function is to heat their dis-
charge. Yes, behind that lifeless enameled
front door, the mechanisms for making
coffee are waiting.

Walking into the second floor lobby of
the Student Publications Bldg. you notice
the soft light of the coffee machine come
into view. "Fresh, Hot Coffee. Every cup
individually brewed," says the sign. Us-
ually, even if you notice it, you walk by
not thinking about the machine. But it's
too late; you walk away infected with
subconscious desire. Thoughts of buying
a cup of coffee drift through your mind.
Finally you decide. You think you've made
a choice; you think you're in control. The
machine knows better.
HOW CAN IT BE that a machine, a
jumble of wires and metal, can create de-
sires within us, focus our passions, con-
trol our lives? Do they want to make

button will return your coin. What could
go wrong?
THE TIME for confrontation has ar-
rived. You approach your destiny remem-
bering bruised hands and sore feet - the
casualties of earlier battles. You remem-
ber pounding and kicking the machine
filled with rage that a lot of pieces of
metal could steal your little pieces of
metal. The machine remembers too:
proudly bearing the scuff marks of previous
struggles.
Atgany rate, in go the coins and you
hear the appropriate clinking sounds. The
time to push the "COFFEE with CREAM"
button has arrived. But wait. A new op-
portunity presents itself. Two buttons on
the side offer extra cream and extra sugar.

4

4