"*'--- Qale 3fr ictan Dait Eighty-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 IS Sunday, April 17, 1977 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan 'Red Squad' bill rates OK ifli&N FC"~s cxrLI )O0 LP 1TT yc-0 71H81~ KSNOW' 1 I IF T '9,'l T 0~EtAiEve (K) cL-X6D6 AUO 'TFf6 COUJRTS tTw iV-~f £01.P PO-r7w BELIEVE &? 1 H6Y 20 TO MJG ATrEIJYrkx TOTHA ES 7 Eis0 K'V 130A)HY C4Yt(C rHfYL" CCURTS eIE'vel Is UT, N ,t COIJ~S$lz1 tOA&T? I MICHIGAN Attorney General Frank Kelley ought to make it unani- mous and permit the subjects of sur- veilance by the State Police's "Red Squad" to examine their own files. Kelley is the only state official who still resists disclosure. While there is no specific legis- lation, state or federal, which requir- es such disclosure in the case of il- legally gathered records amassed by a secret governmental agency in the course of an unconstitutional investi- gation, allowing people to see their own records would certainly conform to the spirit of legislation and court rulings in similar situations. And there is no convincing rea- son for preventing access to the files before they are destroyed. Since they were collected by an agency which is now defunct, publication couldn't pos- sibly damage or endanger the opera- tions of that organization. Confiden- tiality is not an issue in this instance. Documents were "secret" only from the public, most of the legislature and the squad's victims: other agen- cies and private corporations got "leaks" if the squad decided they were entitled to the information. Full public disclosure of all the material is unnecessary: those citizens whose rights were violated once should not be exposed to further scrutiny and possible embarrasment, or recriminations, or harrassment. But it is only sensible that they should know, if they choose, what their lives looked like to covert ob- servers who not only watched and listened, but made records for pos- terity as well. A l F"/" ~11 w,$ I . ~#m,. ki-7 oIvr. MOw g~o WWKAN Iike~ AOW M~71 Why I can 't What will Carter name his new master plan? YOU KNOW, of course, that he must be getting ready to spring it on us. Jimmy Carter is too masterful a symbolist, too wise a political tactic- Ian, to let the opportunity slip through his Georgian hands. Carter is about to unleash some of his big programs this week. He's going to get a lot of flack for them, and he's going to be making as hard a pitch to the people back home as he can muster. If Congress knows the voters stand behind him, he thinks, it'll ease up on him. And for that, he needs some dra- ma. He needs (dramatic pause) A Slogan. He needs a label for his ad- ministration. Teddy Roosevelt's was the Square Deal. FDR grabbed the biggie - the New Deal. Eisenhower encouraged a New Look; Kennedy trudged into the New Frontier. Lyndon Johnson asked for a Great Society. And they all sprung the slogans in major speeches. So what can we expect from Jim- my? The Great Frontier? The New Peanut? Perhaps the Square Peanut? In any event, it will be history before our eyes. By CHRISTOPHER POTTER I wish I could like Robert Altman. To loathe him seems the cinematic equivalent of a consumer advo- cate disowning Ralph Nader. The comparison is more than casual; like his idealistic compatriot, Altman. bucks the corporate monoliths (in his case the Holly- wood studio moguls), does his own idiosyncratic thing, and comes up smiling. He's been doing it for almost a decade now, escaping unscathed again and again, bankrolled once more for his next film. In this nimble process he has become-despite his disclaimers-a calumet of individualism glimmering bravely through the dark turmoil of an art form which with little prior warning seems lately and tragically hurtling toward creative suicide. The American Film Renaissance has gone sour, a decline made doubly ghastly by the fact that it hit just at a time our native cinema seemed on the verge of realizing the almost limitless potential which had lain patiently, whating to be tapped. It had been hard coming: Following Hollywood's initial burst of versa- tility with its new-found toy, depression-era sternness dictated that The Dream Factory serve up puritan- enforced pablum in which the good guys won, the bad guys lost and sex didn't exist. The straightjacketed audiences of the time either accepted the spoon-feed- ing, or, if they yearned for a genuine view of society, curled up with a good book. There were, of course, ex- ceptions to the rule (else the movies would have died long ago), Rooney and Garland, Inc. remained the essential film lexicon for almost three decades. Suddenly, the 60's were upon us, and just as sud- denly there appeared a film named Bonnie & Clyde destined to blast the Sound of Music ethos to bits and open -up the possibility of turning business into art. Suddenly anything seemed possible in cinema. But such was not to be. Just at the moment the corner seemed turned toward a lasting film liberation, the sudden hammerblow combination of adverse court decisions and economic uncertainties have recently sent the film industry-never disinclined toward timorous- ness in the first place - scurrying tail between its legs to the closest aesthetic bastion of conformity of the moment-currently the intertwined disasterland-con- spiracy genre. The sociological implications of the presumed nar- cotic audience lure of mass apocalyptic bloodletting weighs little if at all upon the minds of the moneymen; they doubtless also fail to note such irony as the post- 1969 blacklisting of director Haskell Wexler, whose then-radical film, Medium Cool, looks positively bovine by today's all-powerful "they" paranoid flicks. (When even Stanley Kramer (The Domino Principle) jumps aboard the subversive bandwagon, one realizes con- spiracy has truly become apple pie). Such contradictory factors don't matter to the mo- guls: "Times are tight; we've got to make out invest- ment back; it's time to consolidate, not experiment. Cut out the damn foolishness!" And thus trumps the endless, brutal parade of same- ness; whether wretchedly made (Two Minute Warn- ing) or adroitly crafted (Black Sunday), these opii all project humanity ground into a fly-paper dimension, played upon audiences molded into Pavlovian cynicism. It's a game' of contempt wwith the viewer as a pawn both commercially courted and aesthetically scorned. It's the is-it-a-business-or-an-art paradox, and it's going to get worse folks, a lot worse. Placed against this backdrop of formula numbness, it's no wonder Altman looks heroic. He makes (almost) whatever he feels like, he uses small budgets, he dis- dains the star system, he glories in rep company im- provisation. To hear screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury (Nashville) describe the flow of ideas and freedom of interchange amidst the Altman troupe left me feeling almost duty-bound to champion this noncomformist against theOrwellian money machines bent on squeez- ing the life out of an art many of us cherish. But I can't do it. For all his free-flungness, I find the core of all (save one) of Altman's films infected by a moral torpidity in its own way as desolate and ominous as the moguls' assembly-line grist that at first glance seems the very antithisis of his own work. I could attempt to take Altman to task technologic- ally, pointing out that his films rarely exhibit any sense whatsoever of pace and timing, that many of his "innovations" are less than original and often sim- ply sloppy to the point of amateurism; but I could. live with these functional faults if I could still sense that despite all the pitfalls Altman was getting at something, some cauldron of truth or whatever pseu- donym one chooses to give the word. Something to AlItman make the turmoil within our own skulls a little less desperate. Obviously, such was never Altman's pur- pose; he worships the maelstrom of chaos, and behind it a pittiless void. Altman is fond of saying that he just "watches things unfold" in his films. casting no moral judge- ment upon his characters. This is, of course, aesthetic humbug; any artist makes presumptions about his creations, no matter how obtuse or personalized. And Altman, far from withholding judgement over his sub- jects, has issued a consistent and ringing pronounce- ment of the amorality of his players - not a shades- of-gray moralitynbutsspecifically amorality, ominous in its android blitheness. Assuming this, one might be naturally inclined to categorize Altman as a cinematic pessimist, but he really isn't. And that, ironically, is what I find so dis- turbing. Ingmar Bergman's characters wrestle with tortured posing of God's existence and individual iden- tity, reflecting their master's passionate gloom; Alt- man's hollow men and women don't appear to ponder anything at all. They simply react, often nastily and never with genuine affection, a fact that, rather than disturbing their director, often seems to delight him. Altman's emotional sterility has been present from the onset of his film career: the troupe of limp, youth- ful zombies infesting That Cold Day in the Park cer- tainly captured Altman's sympathies far more than the 30-ish spinster (Sandy Dennis) they piteously tor- ment into insanity. (Must one be punished for the crime of being alone and unwanted?) The icy brutleness cer- tainly extended to the Army doctors of M*A*S*H, whose exercises in elitist sadim continue to make this much-loved "comedy" one of the most unlovable movie experiences I've ever had to squirm through. (Is it really the Olympus o fhumor to see a human being hounded so unmercifully that he ends Vp carted off in a straightjacket?) Overt sadism is less apparent in Brewster McCloud (Altman's favorite film, rumor has it), but its pres- ence is hardly necessary to insure the insufferability of this most blatant exercise in zombie chic. True ab- surdist works tell their tale while always holding fast to a gogent, forceful meaning beneath the surface; Brewster McCloud has no meaning beneath, above or See WHY, Page 5 Contact your reps Sen. Donald Riegle (Dem.), 1205 Dlrksen Bldg., Washing- ton, D.C. 20510 Sen. Robert Griffin (Rep.), 353 Russell Bldg., Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. 20515. Rep. Carl Pursell (Rep.), 1709 Longworth House Office Bldg., Washington, D.C. 20515. Sen. Gilbert Bursley (Rep.), Senate, State Capitol Bldg., Lansing, MI 48933. Rep. Perry Bullard (Dem.), House of Representatives, State Capitol Bldg., Lansing, MI 48933. W M M . "M". L~To A'-Cr i c I4.Q? 1 A LIT~4N Fim~s, i Ci e i all Co. ti Y P Q' .v ' r .,,,y. i i / y" ry V. _, affirmative action To The Daily: For several days I have hesi- tated to respond to Prof. Carl Cohen's eloquent remarks on what he views as "deadly poi- son": namely, Affirmative Ac- tion programs for racial minori- ties (Daily, April 10). Like many other blacks, I am weary of this peripheral yet crucial as- pect of our struggle, the at- tendant shouting and pain, and I realize sadly that Cohen is neither the first nor the last whose devotion to abstract con- cepts of "fairness" outweighs his concern for a 'non-assimila- ted (and, in 1977, unfashionable) group of people to which he does not belong. But until the day when we can defuse such mini- issues as bussing and racial quotas, someone must address them, hoping eventually to re- focus attention on the dirty linen of racism that underlies reac- tionary rhetoric, the feeble ra- tionalizations of an insecure white male society no longer in a benevolent mood. Cohen reiterates the familiar argument that any preference or attention given to race in the deliberations of college ad- missions boards is unfair, "in- trinsically odious, always invidi- ous, and morally impermissable, no matter how laudable the goals in view." He also reminds us frequently of the Constitu- tion, a document which as orig- inally conceived by the Found- ing Fathers specifically defined Negroes as fractional human be- inmqN+t wirr P ni fi nnQ- Letters of minorities enrolled in Ameri- can colleges would fall substan- tially with the repeal of Af- firmative Action because many are less "qualified" than their white male peers, is to ignore the fact that these "qualifica- tions" are arbitrary, patently racist-sexist, and designed ex- actly to bring about the exclu- sivity in higher education which existed unchallenged until the Sixties. Moreover, Cohen writes as if in a vacuum about the racial discrimination that "was," the damage that "has been," as if these negative factors are now purely historical and that mi- norities are welcomed into white academic society in any more- than-superficial sense. In the real world, which bears no re- lation to the philosophic-legalist- ic detachment of Cohen, Affirm- ative Action has served at best to counter the indelible factors that militate against the admis- sion and survival of minorities in white-oriented schools, though never eliminating such forces. If his ridiculous statement were true that "all sides agree that vigorous action, affirmative steps must be taken," then sure- liy a time of racial equality would be within our grasp. Un- fortunately, Cohen's primal fear that Affirmative Action "will not integrate the races but will dis- integrate them, forcing atten- tion to race, creating anxiety and agitation ... exciting envy, ill-will and widespread resent- ment...," would be more ac- curately directed toward pres- to th e contention of a non-admitted white student, Mr. Bakke, that "had his skin been of a darker color he would certainly have been admitted." At this junc- ture,' I would refer Mr. Bakke (and others who share his mis- conception) to the absurdist best- seller, Black Like Me, lest they tempt the Fates so frivolously for the- sake of admission to col- lege. More seriously, I would point out that had his skin been of a darker color, Bakke's chance of having received a sub- standard, non-"qualifying" high school education becomes like- ly, his chance of death before the age of twenty due to urban homicide or inadequate health care increases at least five-fold, and, most critically, his chance of having been so turned off, physically and emotionally, by a society committed to his fail- ure as a man, that he could nev- er even have reached the stage of application to professional school, becomes a tragic near- certainty. Affirmative Action as it exists today is wildly imperfect; Prof. Cohen is wise to suggest that such programs must be altered so that "some majority appli- cants deserving compensatory preference will benefit also..." But may I caution that the com- plete repeal of Affirmative Ac- tion by the Nixon Court, per- hans imminent and inevitable, will be pyrrhic victory for any- one who hopes to see the day when compensation for racial injustice truly is not needed. Time is short. We modern-day Dalily students to help them pass the time. It is not our policy to print the entire letters, but we will print the names and addresses of each prisoner. If you are in- terested in corresponding with a prisoner, you can write to: Jim Edwards Box 81248 Lincoln, Nebraska 68501 Otis Johsen 139-291 -Box 57 MCI Marion, Ohio 43302 Jack W. Lyon Jr. 136-731 Box 69 London, Ohio 43140 Tony F. Sisbarro 39868-133 Box 1000 Leavenworth, Kansas 66048 Richard Tracy 147-128 Box 511 Columbus, Ohio 43216 Alphonso Hayes Box 51 Comstock, New York 12821 GEO To The Daily: A cartoon in The Daily Fri- day, April 15 shows a lonesome, abandoned GEO picket left con- fronting the smiling condescend- ing dude of an administrator, but it doesn't tell the whole story. It doesn't say why all the other pickets have fled. You see that administrator has a certain foul odor about him. In fact he reeks so foul that the rest of us have fled to get gas masks. Such is his smell that they had to build this huge jewel of a building with think nn ,.miq wlmsnd , have just run back to get bet- ter equipment: then we'll be back." Olivia Baldwin protest To The Daily: The Black Law Students Alli- ance of the University of Michi- gan Law School announces its full and complete support of the Black student protest pre- sently being waged at the Wayne State Law School in Detroit. B.L.S.A./U.M. recognizes the just and honorable nature of the struggle at Wayne, and stands solidly behind the Two- Point Proposal of the Wayne Law School students. The protest is a response to the intolerable racial discrim- ination embodied in the flunk- out quota policy at Wayne. Last year more than 60 per cent of the first year Black and other minority law students were eith- er flunked out or put on proba- tion. The Wayne faculty has summarily rejected all propos- als which would have had a di- rect and meaningful impact on the Black and minority attri- tion rate. The Two-Point Proposal: 1). Details a more equitable aca- demic probation framework; 2). Calls for the reinstatement of a more equitable grading poli- cy. We urge the administration of Wayne Law School to give care- ful consideration to the just .p .ow.. WY - ~ " s \ qU . }qi. /\ y!