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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
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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.
