OPINION

Page'4

Tuesday, December 1, 1981

The Michigan Daily@

A really secret

Rolling Stones concert

"The Stones are at Second Chance."
That's how it all started. At 10 p.m. Sunday
night, a breathless friend called me with the
news. He had just heard it from another friend
\ passing him on the Diag, running home to get
more friends. I promptly called a few friends.
It was a very friendly rumor.

Howard
Witt

least: It was a fine lesson in the psychology of
rumors and self-delusion.
To start with, we were all primed for it-for
months we've been wanting to believe the
Stones would make a surprise appearance in
Ann Arbor. After all, they showed up at small
clubs before a few other major concerts, and as
far back as September talk was spreading that
the rock supergroup had targeted Second
Chance.
Logic was in our favor. They were between
concerts on Sunday night, they hadn't staged a
surprise show lately, and what better place to
pop up than in a college town-Ann Arbor.
It all added up. They just had. to be here.
As my friend and I walked down Maynard
Street toward Liberty, a man nearby suddenly
slammed his car door and bolted toward the
bar. A good sign.
WE WENT INSIDE and asked the bouncer at
the door what he knew. "You never know," he
smiled coyly. "They might show up." Onstage
was Mariner, a deafening Detroit heavy-metal
band.
Looks good, looks good, we told ourselves.
Some no-name local band to throw people off
the track.
We decided to scour the premises for a while,

searching- for more clues. Nothing out back by
the stage door. But of course not-that would be
too obvious. Those Stones sure were smart.
Ah ha-across the street, parked in the
bank's lot, was a huge luxury bus. The kind
rock groups use. "The Thrasher Brothers," the
sign on it read.
"It's them, it's gotta be them," I gasped, cir-
cling the darkened bus. They put out some fake
name to fool people. "The Thrasher
Brothers"-what a great fake name. Those
Stones sure were smart.
SUDDENLY, OVER BY the entrance to the
bar, someone yelled, "They're here!" We
raced over, paid the cover charge, and rushed
in to find ... nothing.
Mariner had embarked on a lengthy break;
canned music was blaring from the speakers
stacked about 10 feet high on the floor.
Another good sign. The Stones were just
waiting for the bar to really fill up. Then they'd
bound onto the stage in a blaze of lights and
glory.
Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Forty
minutes. The bar sure was.filling up. Wall-to-
wall people, all ohwowing. The Stones. They're
really here.
Then the lights dimmed. The whole room

took a breath-this was it. In just a few secon-
ds we would be looking at the greatest rock
stars the world has ever known. We would be
standing a mere 15 feet from godhead. . . from
ecstasy. . . from ...
Mariner. Six hirsute Ted Nugent dropouts.
BUT IT WAS a good sign. They were smiling
coyly. Like they knew something.
A half-hour of ear-splitting noise. Then it was
off for another break. Well, now it was inevit-
able. Nearly 1 a.m.-the Stones always come
out late, somebody said.
The facts were flying fast and furious now.
"They're here, they're backstage," said a guy
who looked like he should know.
"I saw an ad in the Free Press that said
they'd be here," a reliable source reported.
"They're staying over at the Bell Tower
Hotel. They're walking over here right now,"
screamed an acknowledged authority.
Good signs, good signs. A stagehand started
fiddling with the drums-adjusting them for
CharlieWatts, of course. Here they come. Just
think of all those suckers paying a fortune to sit
a half-mile from the stage at the Silverdome.
We were so close Mick's precious sweat would
rain down on our upturned faces.
AGAIN THE LIGHTS dimmed. Again we

took a deep breath.
Again Mariner appeared onstage, still
smiling coyly. Four more cochlea-punishers.
So what were the Stones waiting for? Didn't
they hear the bartenders yelling "Last call"?
Maybe Mick had chapped lips. Maybe they got
lost on the way over from the Bell Tower.
No, no-at 2 a.m. it finally dawned on us. The
Stones weren't going to show up.
Of course, it had dawned on Mariner a long
time before that. They had been smiling all
along because the bar was packed. They made
a mint.
And it dawned on the Second Chance
management, too. They probably arranged'it
especially so the Thrasher Brothers would park
their bus outside-the country group had per-
formed at the Michigan Theater earlier in the
evening, I learned yesterday.

The Rolling Stones never did show up at the
Liberty Street bar. But nearly 1,000 gullible
fans were there anyway, swizzling watered-
down beer at $1 a plastic cup, waiting for them.
At 2 a.m., when the loudspeakers very uncor-
dially asked us to drink up and leave, we still
half expected Mick Jagger to leap onto the
stage.
Hah. Tattoo me. "Sucker."
THE EVENING WAS good for one thing, at

But hey-I haven't lost all hope yet. The
Stones will be in the Detroit area for a few more
days. And I hear they might show up at the
Graduate Library later tonight .
Witt's column appears every Tuesday.

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Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
420 Maynard St.
Vol. XCII, No.f67 Ann Arbor, M1 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
The worsening economy.

Wasserman

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FT HENUMBERS came out yesterday-
and they were not good.
The Commerce Department
released its Index of Leading
Economic Indicators, and the results
were far from encouraging. The index,
wh1ich -is a key measure of future
e nomic strength, tumbled 1.8 per-
cent for October. October was the third
straight month in which the index has
declined.
The administration reaction? "The.
recession is for real and it's con-
tinuing," said Commerce Department
economist Robert Ortner, with that
Reaganesque penchant for stating the
obvious. He said the economy would
continue to be "pretty weak" at least
through the first quarter of next year.
It was a rather depressing
assessment from one of Reagan's own,
but, after all, what else was he to say?
The fact is, the recession is for real and
it is continuing, and there is in fact
very little hope for real improvement
in the future.

The individual indicators them-
selves are not at all encouraging. In
October there was a substantial wor-
sening in key areas such as the number
of layoffs, factory orders for manufac-
tured goods, and building permits for
new construction.
Further, the one item of slightly
cheery news released yesterday-that
the gross national product for Septem-
ber increased-seems in fact to be
illusory. The increase was almost en-
tirely due to a buildup in inventories,
which is itself a recessionary trend
that indicates producers and manufac-
turers were having trouble selling
their goods.
In all, as Ortner seems to realize, the
economic outlook is far from good. But
what Ortner and the rest of the ad-
ministration don't seem to realize-
and what is really the worst aspect of
all the bad news on the economy-is
that the Reagan economic program
which has induced the recession must
be changed.

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LETTERS TO THE DAILY:

ERA passage a matter of justice


To the Daily:
1 The week of November 30 to
December 5 has been proclaimed
National ERA Awareness Week.
During this week, we must begin
to sort out the issues which
surround ratification of the Equal

Rights Amendment.
The best way to separate fact
from fiction is to look at the
amendment itself.
Two out of three Americans
want the Equal Rights Amen-
dment, as all the polls are telling

Israel is democratic

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To the Daily:
I am writing in response to the
Daily editorial of November 11,
entitled "A Denial of freedoms."
It maintains that Israel is a
''supposed defender of
democracy in the Middle East"
that doesn't even display "some
rudimentary traits of
democracy." The editorial asser-
ts this is because the Israeli
government "jailed three in-
fluential Palestinians and con-
fined several others to their
towns in order to abate a planned
strike by the town's merchants,"
and also jailed several other
protesters.
But Israel, like the United
States, is in fact a democracy,
since the country is ruled by elec-
tive officials who may be upheld
or removed by the people.
No government ceases being a
democracy merely because we
don't like some of its policies. For
example, during World War II,
the United States placed

Japanese-Americans from the
West Coast into detention cam-
ps because of their alleged
security risk. This action was
upheld by the U.S. Supreme
Court, and even today -con-
stitutional law provides that a
U.S. citizen may be forcibly tran-
sported to and kept in a detention
camp, at least until his/her
loyalty to the U.S. has been
established. (Kelly & Harbison,
The American Constitution). This
action clearly denied many
people of their freedoms. Does,
this mean that our government
wasn't or now isn't a
democracy?
The main problem of the
editorial is exposed by a
statement of Albert Einstein:
"Everything should be made as
simple as possible, but not sim-
pler." The editorial writers lost
their objectivity when they tried
to make everything too simple.
-Nat Pernick
November 18

us. Even more interesting is the
fact that when Americans are
shown the exact words of the
ERA, support goes from 65 per-
cent to 80 percent.
Yet many Americans have not
taken the time to read the ERA.
Some think it is book length,
when actually it is only 52 words
long. It takes 20 seconds to read
the complete Equal Rights
Amendment. Here is your chan-
ce:
Equal Rights Amendment
Section 1. Equality of rights under
the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or any State on
account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have
the power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this Ar-
ticle.
Section 3. This Amendment shall-
take effect two years after the date of
ratification.
The Equal Rights Amendment,
the proposed 27th Amendment to
the United States Constitution, is
a statement of principle that
would require the laws of the land
to be applied to each citizen as an
individual. It would acknowledge
that, since our individual
capacities and limitations are not

determined by our having been
born male or female, neither can
our rights be fairly based on gen-
der.
Our Constitution, with its
amendments, does not presently
provide equal protection under
the law for women. Reality does
not support the claim that women,
are included in Constitutional
references to "citizens" and,
"persons." Because the Con-
stitution nowhere specificallyr
forbids discrimination on the
basis of sex, women have beep
granted only uneven and uncer-
tain protections against sex bias.
That confusion needs to be
clarified once and for all.
It is the fairness of the wordsof
the Equal Rights Amendmenf
that wins approval from a large
majority of Americans all over
the country. They want women to
get fair wages, fair benefits, and
fair treatment under the law.
Women are in fact equal, and
the basic law of our land must
reflect that reality. It is a matter
of simple justice that is long
overdue.
-James Soos
Amy Gibans
November 25 -

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Illogical nuke coverage

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Editorial irresponsible

To the Daily:
We are writing in response to
your editorial of Nov. 22 endor-
sing Margaret Talmers for
President of LSA Student Gover-
nment.
Rarely have we read such an
irresponsible and misleading
piece in the Daily. We have no
quarrel with the candidate en-
dorsed, rather we object to the
manner in which the endor-
sement was made.
Rather than base the editorial
on the merits of each candidate,
the author chose to use this en-

group on campus-organizing the
It's Our University group to com-
bat and discuss University
redirection policies, demanding
and receiving student par-
ticipation in the Geography
discontinuance proceedings,
establishing an annual award to
recognize outstanding teaching,
initiating plans for a college-wide
teaching assistant training
program to name but a few ac-
tivities.
From the content of the
editorial the author had never
heard of such activities-or if he

To the Daily:
As a German exchange student
at the University of Michigan, I
am probably more concerned by
the discussion about nuclear ar-
ms reduction in Western Europe
than most American citizens.
This may explain why I am par-
ticularly critical of any article
written about this theme.
Your article "350,000 Dutch
protest nuclear arms race''
(Daily, Nov. 22) for instance, at-
tracted my attention. I found
especially one paragraph
remarkable, where it was said:
"But the huge turnout in Amster-
dam suggested that Reagan's
speech last Wednesday had little
immediate impact on the anti-
war sentiment in Europe."

ficient to calm those people..in
Europe who are afraid of more
and more nuclear arms produc,
tion? I think that Reagan's peace
plan is too unrealistic to be a
good basis for the Geneva talks.
The following two quotations
show that I am not alone with my
opinion. The Detroit Free Press
(Nov. 23) says: "There are
serious doubts about whether
Reagan s missile reduction plan
will ever be adopted. Almost none
of the experts in the government
here thinks it will." The same
day, a similar statement concer-
ning the German chancellor ap-
peared in The Ann Arbor News:
"Schmidt was said to doubt the
Soviets would accept it without
compromise.
When we now take into account

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