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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 1969)
PAGE 2 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1969 Moratorium: a very splendid success Words are Inadequate and altogether Insuffi cient to express the feeling and concern so apparent during Wednesday's moratorium. The day was, without a doubt, the greatest peace outpouring and mass display of thoughtful reflection in the history of Lincoln and the University. The group of nearly 4,000 students, profesors, administrators and community leaders who assembled on the Capitol steps in a steady rain was remarkable. The size of the crowd Darallefs the turnout of Nebraskans who heard President Eisenhower deliver a speech on the steps in the early 1950's. What was even more impressive was the quiet, peaceful and orderly way the march was carried out. These facts should help convince the people who have felt the moratorium would be poor because It was based on emotion, was tainted with trouble or had limited support. On the whole, events of the entire day including class discussions, films and speeches in the Union and elsewhere although less dramatic than the march, further epitomize the concern of so many people. What is most important is that nearly everyone In the University community, city and state are thinking, talking and are concerned, whether pro or con, about the war. The increase in interest of this most vital issue is in itself a victory for the moratorium supporters, those who vocalized the cause and put forth the effort. Where do we go from here seems to be the next question. It would take a blind man completely out of contact with reality not to see the writing on the wall the majority of the American people want this country out of Vietnam now. President Nixon has promised a Vietnam speech on Nov. 3. If national policy doesn' -' 'innge, a red"'ibl ed effort will be needed on Nov. 15. Grape action needed It appears for some unknown reason that at least one University group, IDA, is dragging its feet this year on passing a resolution urging of ficials not to use table grapes in University of Nebraska housing. IDA passed such a resolution , last year. The bdycott is part of a national effort to put pressure on ranchers in California. Many of the ranchers employ migrant farm workers. These workers are exploited by many of the ranchers given poor wages, work and live under wretched conditions and are treated in an inhumane way. The workers, needing the job, are dependent and powerless to do anything. Hopefully, the boycott will hurt the growers where it counts in the pocketbook and this may mean improved condi tions for the workers. IDA should follow ASUN, which has passed such a resolution a couple of weeks ago, and do Its part to help improve the life of these workers. Nebraskan editorial page 1 PROSPECTUS " o. The urinals of the University of Chicago are out to get me. I know this may strike some of you as paranoiac, but it's true. How would you feel if you walked up to a urinal and, without doing anything to it, the thing flushed? And it's happened to me more than once! People try to . tell me that the urinals flush automatically at . set intervals, but I know better. That's what hap pens when you get to the big city you can't trust anybody or anything. In addition to the Great Urinal Conspiracy, much (has happened here in the Second City since I arrived three weeks ago the trial of the Chicago Eight, demonstrations Involving the policies of the building trades unions, racial violence In high schools but you've seen all that on Walter Cronklte. I'm more interested in what the big C misses. For instance, one of the seven counterfeit Mark Itudds roaming the country appeared for a 10 minule harangue at the University of Chicago a week ago. He's a Weatherman, and his forecast i blood according to him, it may be necessary fur 100 million Americans to die in order to '"liberate" the rest. Is this an Abbie Hoffman put on? I don't think so; this Rudd is willing to disap pear a lot of people from the human race. When I hear raving like his, I can't believe that those who talk of using whatever , means necessary to gain their ends would be much more humane toward "dissenters" from their conception of the just society than those now in power. Of course their conception is right. Obviously. Cer tainly. But "pigs" and "honkies" are people with reasons (however irrational) for their actions. And the U.S. is not Vietnam or Cuba or China. As Ronald Steel writes in the Sept. 11, 1969 New York Review, "If there is going to be a revolution in this country, it will have to happen first in peoples' heads. What takes place in the streets of a society like this one has another name. It is called repression." Now that I've made my sermon (mostly inap plicable to Nebraskans, for whom, perhaps fortunately, revolutionary action is discussing the Ills of society at Casey's) I must liven things up a bit. For instance, did you know that girls without bras are admitted free on Sundays to the Electric Circus in New York? That's uplifting news.- A real scream is President Nixon's outcry against those who want to "bug out" of Our Favorite War. Yes sir, having practiced escalatio (in the Tom Lehrer's phrase) on the Vietnamese, we sure as hell aren't going to commit coitus Interruplus. Sock it to 'em, Dick. Keep pumping away, and you'll make it yet. That's it for this time, folks. I'll be back soon with more wit and wisdom. Until them, remember Barry Goldwater's im mortal words: "As a father and grandfather, I know, by golly, what is obscene and what isn't." Barry appeared last week at Northwestern and called for the bombing of Haiphong. Of course, consistence is the bugaboo of small minds. !ii OVR NEW 8TfY Rofc Ya gotta have a gimmick Kelley Baker Thinking that the Cooper Theatre had finally broken out of The Sound of Music South Pacific syndrome, last weekend I went to see Butch Cassldy and the Sundance Kid and stepped into an old west version of I Spy. During the filming, Paul Newman (Butch Cassidy) said, "... it's a legend, really, and In the course of becoming a legend, the subject of the legend is remembered for great one-liners but he loses the measure of reality." Unfortunately the show requires the audience to lose Its own r. ensure of reality and I was unable to achieve the suspension of disbelief necessary to become Involved in the quick slick gags and funny lines. The first scene between Robert Redford as Sundunce and Katherine Ross as Etta Pluce (a scene In which Ross speaks one of her right or nine lines) sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Redford appears to be the forcible seducer of schoolmarm Etta and pressure builds as he forces quaking Etta to undress at gunpoint she finally breaks the almost unbearable tension with the line, "I wish for once you'd get here on time" and you realize that the whole scene was a gim mick. The reversal was not functional in terms of the plot but was merely a trick way out of the situation There it plenty of magic in the movies (1) Sundance never mlssci with his pistol (oddly, it doesn't reload Itself) and Butch seldom mlssci with his quips; (t) there Is a never-tiring horse which hauls both Butch and Sundance up and down Moratorium effect on President shows 'high irony by Frank Manklcwlci and Tom Braden Washington "We expect it," the President laid, referring to the activity on campuses and elsewhere which peaked on Vietnam Moratorium Day. "However," he said, "under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it." In this curious world of the antlhero, that state ment guaranteed not the success but the overwhelming success of the moratorium. Not only colleges and universities, but high schools and even whole cities signed on. Even Republican National Chairman Rogers Morton, In an expansive spirit of "If you-cnn't-beat-'envjoln-'em," endorsed It. Out in South Dakota, where Sen. Karl Mundt found a campus some months ago on which Mr. Nixon could seak without fear of antl-Vlctnam disturbances, students at that campus, General Beadle State College, enlisted a moratorium speaker end planned to plant a "tree of peace" at high noon. And the high Irony Is that Mr. Nixon's gauntlet, thrown down so publicly and so bravely that the iwdce groups had no choice but to fight, was almost Immediately withdrawn. Before the sun had set the Administration had begun "to be affected." First, U.S. casualties declined precipitously. The weekly connt of American dead went from 143 to 133 to M to H as result of a slowdown by the U.S. command and a change of orders to turn offensive operations over to the South Viet namese. Lest the point be lost on prospective protesters, lories were leaked that top U.S. bran vu sent to Vietnam to make sure the new policy was carried out, and Gen. Earle Wheeler in Saigon made it official (though he felt compelled to make the ritual prediction of a forthcoming Viet Cong of tensive). Next Secretary of Defense Mel v in Laird took the occasion of a well-exploited press conference to explain our success In "Vietnamization" and even offered a fascinating hint that we might "Koreanize" the effort in South Korea. Hence: "lze," suffix: To make a country defend Itself; to turn something over to its proper owners. E. G. "The Pentagon is being industrialized." The murky charges against the Green Berets were dropped, denying the moratorium at least the background of an ugly murder trial and sordid Interagency mayhem. Even the Joint Chiefs began to talk about further troop withdrawals, perhaps before the end of the year. Gen. Wheeler dangled this carrot in Saigon while Laird in Washington indicated we DAILY NEBRASKAN trna) pottct pels' et I lutein. Net. T,iwwwi loiter 41 IM. Newt 4fl lwf. iHneM 471 UH. tvtiatriptiei) relet ere M per eemeiier er M per yer. PeMlinee Monday. Weaneaday, Thwraeey an PrMty eHnf fat ethoel yer eattet tier vetaitena and eem periee at M Nt kretM Unit Lintel Nek. Memaer ef totewlleviele Preee, Nttlenel rJeexlNenel MverUiint tervfee. The Deity Nekreeten kj thHeiit evfciltelten, rmimertewl t Nat UMvertity e) Netrtektl Mmtnta tret ten. teevny cob ttmlMt mine lie) nliiet Manafer fa tteneatei Let at M Maneter i. L. tthmltfti Nenenel A Manetyer Mrart Aim Or wit eekkeeeer Me) oriin tu,lnia tecretery ena) Sitbttrlptlen Mnr Janet eetmit Cirtmeti Meer Jamee metieri Cleatllleej M IWaneeer Jen Wlaeenert Aaverrlclnt HntttnlHini J L. fctnmMt, Mereeret Am J Oara. Jee Wilaaeu LtnM would no longer look to a slacking off by Hanoi as a reason for withdrawal, concentrating Instead on Vietnamlzatlon and progress in Paris, matters more under our informational control. A peace flurry came and went on schedule. Sen. Hugh Scott dropped a few hints about a cease fire: Vice President Splro Agnew, from his strategic vantage point, said he thought something was In the wind; and Secretary of State William Rogers told a reporter there might be cease-fire newt soon. Negotiator Henry Cabot Lodge was called home: Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker dropped by; Gen. Thleu was heard to speak about "negotiating a cease-fire"; and Mr. Nixon spoke movingly of peace as he awarded four Vietnam veterans the Medal of Honor reminding President-watchers of his predecessor's bellicose use of similar ceremonies. Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey was called in to furnish bipartisanship. He responded loyally, as usual. He said the President is on the right track and that he personally would not observe the moratorium, thus becoming almost the last Johnson man to stay down with the ship. And In final offering to the ravening peace wolves, Gen. Lewis Hershey was thrown off the end of the sleigh just four days before the peace activity was scheduled to begin. The orchestration, designed to frustrate the organizational efforts of a few young men in their twenties, is Johnsonian, but much more skillful. Mr. Nixon'i bold press conference words to the contrary, he has been "affected" by the moratorium more than by anything since be took effiet. mountains for days without working up a iweati and (3) the two heroes rave a happy-go-lucky debonair charm that you know will protect them against all but silver bullets. The trio is chased out of the United States by a group of relentless lawmen (with a magic Indian tracker) and a sound overlay of galloping horses that almost drove me out of the theatre. They flee to Bolivia where thfy have a great time robbin' all them little brown folk and bouncing around the countryside to Swingle Singers background music instead of Flatt and Scruggs "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." Butch and Sundance's deaths are foreshadowed in the scene when they decide to leave the U.S. and Etta tells them (In her fourth or fifth line) that she'll mend their socks and stitch their wounds "but I won't watch you die" uppity talk for a 26-year-old unmarried school teacher. In Bolivia, after some shootln' and stealln', she declares one evening that maybe she'll return to the U.S. before Butch and Sundance. No problem ... a shot of Cassidy hanging his head (to show that he has more feelings than Sundance who's fallen asleep), a little prestidigitation and poof I No more Katherine Ross after that. She leaves them to contend eventually with half the Bolivian army, who incidentally, are armed with silver bullets. What I object to in the film Is just what made it appcullng to most of the audience the glib humor that dictates every scene you don't get Involved in this show, you slide across it. Conversation between Butch and Sundance never rises above the level of George Gobel quips and it Is this facile tone which leads to the main difficulty of the movie how to reconcile their deaths and the questions that are raised by their deaths with the easy attitude of most of the film. Butch and Sundance have been so cute and clever for an hour and a half that their dying can hardly be taken seriously, If Indeed you've been able to involve yourself at all. The fact that the movie so seldom penetrates the surface of anything serious makes it almost Impossible to deal with the serious matters of violence when they are broached. Comparisons with Bonnie and Clyde are In evitable and Justified. Where Bonnie and Clyde begins with still shots of old photos, Sundunce runs an old film and freezes certain frames. Sundance doesn't end with the slow motion death scene of Bonnie and Clyde, but it uses the same technique earlier In the film to show Butch'i horror at killing some bandits (it is notable that the first time Butch and Sundanc kill anyone is when they've gone straight for a while and are working as payroll guards.) Both, films have light-hearted chase scenes around the countryside and an element of support from the common folk. There is a parallel between Butch and Bonnie as the thinkers both of whom have considered going straight and Clyde and Sundown, the non thinking complements. Both movies raise the ques tion of the justifiability of killing, but Bonnie and Clyde succeeds in involving the viewer with the characters and integrating the humor with the serious moral Issues. The same moral issues exist in Sundance but, because of the humor, they never grow beyond the embryonic stage. There is so much humor in Sundance that the serious points (lew and very far between) act as dramatic relief.