Our man hoppe
Government censors
on wrong bleeping track
if: -&Slii
J'accuse!
by ARTHUR HOPPE
Mr. Nicholas Johnson, our
outspoken Federal Com
munications Commissioner is
furious. He got censored on
television for attacking sexy
commercials.
What initially angered him
was one for a hair spray. Its
message to the ladies, he said,
was that the product "makes
them look so sexy that they'll
get (bleeped)."
It seems to me that Mr.
Johnson is way out of line here.
The question of whether a
particular hair spray gets a
lady bleeped is not up to the
Federal Communications
Commission, which controls
television broadcasting.
It's up to the Federal Trade
Commission, which controls
truth in advertising.
THE FTC, of course, is the
fighting agency which got the
marbles out of Campbell's
vegetable soup and is now
trying to get Scott Carpenter
out of the F-310 bag. It's done
wonders for those who don't
want marbles in their soup or a
bag full of dirty exhaust
fumes.
But what has the FTC done
for the millions of Americans
who yearn to get bleped.
THAT MILLIONS of
Americans yearn to get bleeped
.is obvious to anyone who
watches television com
mercials., A minimum 37.5 per
cent are aimed at this vast
market. But without FTC
guidelines, the consumer re
mains ia a high state of con
fusion. "Will I," she mutters dazed
ly, "get bleeped more by
smoking an L&M, which is just
for the two of us, or will I find
more love this fall with Lush
Lip Lovesticks by Love
"Do Clairol blondes really
have more fun. How much
more fun? How often? Should I
go from almost bare to almost
anywhere with Coty? Or should
I settle for a Super-Sheer Love
Pat with Revlon?"
NOR IS IT any easier on the
males. "If I shave with Nox
zema, exactly how many
beautiful women will demand
that I take it off, take it all off?
How often? I don't know
karate. Maybe I better put a
tiger in my tank.
It's obvious, then, that the
lack of Federal standards in
this field is driving millions of
Americans up the walk
Establishing such standards,,
however, poses a problem.
AN ATTEMPT by an in
dependent research laboratory
in Horubrook, NJ. failed
dismally. Three young ladies
who yearned to be bleeped
were placed in a room one
wearing Arpege, one wearing
Intimate and one who had done
her hair with Frost & Tip
"the only hairdressing that lets
you do just what you want. Any
way you want to do it." Three
young men with similar desires
were introduced to the scene.
"As to the comparative ef
fectiveness of the products,""
said the report gloomily, "the
results were inconclusive."
BUT WITH WIDER sampl
ings, perhaps the FTC could set
adequate standards ranging
from "Mildly Aphrodisiac" to
"Caution: This product may be
hazardous to your chastity."
On the other hand, I know a
b uck-toothed, bandy-legged,
bespectacled young lady of 214
pounds who fe considering
suing six perfume manufac
turers, four cosmeticians and a
girdle maker for fraud.
Let us hope her case is
atypical. If the FTC after ex
haustive testing is forced to sue
half the nation's corporations
for false and misleading
advertising, ft would dash the
dreams of millions of yearning
Americans.
It would also of course,
destroy the whole Weeping
economy.
Nixon's Chotiner back in buisines
by FRANK MANKIEWICZ
and TOM BRAD EN
Whatever there Is in the political past
of Richard Nixon of which he may be
ashamed can be traced directly to Mur
ray Chotiner. Chotiner's troubles with a
congressional committee being now
largely forgotten, he has been restored to
his old post as political engineer, with
consequences which are now becoming
clear.
It was Chotiner who engineered the
early Nixon campaigns, in which first
Jerry Voorhees and then Helen Gahagan
Douglas were portrayed as sympathetic
to communism. It is Chotiner today who
is calling the shots in the nationwide at
tempt to portray incumbent Democrats
as sympathetic to drugs, pornography,
student violence and Hanoi.
THERE ARE SEVERAL Chotiner-di-rccted
campaigns now taking place in the
country, but the most interesting is here in
the 5th District of Long Island where a
drive of unparalleled ferocity is being
waged against incumbent Democratic
Congressman AUard Lowenstein.
Lowenstein was the principal leader in
1968 of the campaign to dump President
Johnson. Having been turned down by
Robert Kennedy, he was finally suc
, cessful in persuading Sen. Eugene
McCarthy to enter the race with results
which made history.
IT WAS LOWENSTEIN, too, who led the
unsuccessful fight at the Chicago con
vention for a Vietnam plank somewhat
less "soft on Hanoi" than that which
Prcsidnnt Nixon has now adopted as his
own.
But Lowenstein's chief role on the na
tional scene, as Theodore White pointed
out in his "Making of the President," has
been as advocate for the thesis that the
young could effect change by working
within the system.
OLDER D E M 0 C R ATIC politicians
viewed him as a youth leader and were
therefore suspicious, but within the youth
movement the left wing regarded him as
an Establishment finnk, fighting against
the youth revolutionaries and their desire
for violence and confrontation. "The big
gest threat to the movement" was what
the president of the National Student
Assn. called him in a recent statement
which gave blanket endorsement to both
violence and Lenin.
Against this background, Lowenstein is
now being portrayed in the Chotiner
directed computerized mail campaign of
his opponent as an advocate of campus
violence.
"PRO-VIOLENCE" is the major theme
of the marvelously vintage Chotlner
engineered election. Youth is unpopular
here, but so is the memory of Adam
Clayton Powell, the one-time absentee
congressman. Powell's name Is now
being evoked against Lowenstein in the
same fashion that the Communist con
gressman, Vito Maicantonio, was once
used to bludgeon Mrs. Douglas.
The comparison between Lowenstein
and Powell is a little thin: Powell took
trips abroad at government expense
during congressional sessions; Lowens
tein visited several countries at his own
expense while Congress was not in
session. But Chotiner was never one to let
intricate fact get in the way of his famous
prescription for politics: "Never defend;
FORCED BUSING is unpopular here as
elsewhere, and the Chotiner-inspired
mailings may be a foretaste of what
Democratic congressmen throughout thf
country who voted against the Whitten
amendment may expect. The Whitten
amendment is, of course, the annual at
tempt by the congressman from
Mississippi to repeal the Civil Rights Act
of 1964.
Chotiner manages to mae a vote
against it appear as a vote in favor of
forced busing. It is an argument which
must be used, so to speak, "selectively,"
because the entire Republican leadership,
including House Minority Leader Gerald
Ford, also voted against it.
WHAT EMERGES HERE as one
watches Lowenstein desperately fending
off Chotinerisms is a campaign strategy
for local races guided from a White
House office and presumably, therefore,
guided with presidential permission.
It is a fair guess that the President will
not use Chotiner in his own re-election
effort two years hence. A Chotiner cam
paign would never stand up to the bright
glare of a presidential race.
But local politicians can be warned.
There may be a new Nixon in the White
House, but the same old Chotiner is down
the hall.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1970
THE NEBRASKAN
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