The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, April 13, 1983, Page 4, Image 4
4 Wednesday, April 13, P Pn 0 P ! ) ' v ' ; ( I I . I i i - n n Yes indeed, the snow lias melted off of BroyhiU Fountain, clearing tlie way for tlus season's evangelists. They take lo their perch on 1 he fountain wall and the opposiiion gathers, crowding its way up to the feet of the ornery old Bible banger. The question is why? livery semester there is at least one person obnoxious and depraved enough to take a stab at ridiculing everyone in sight in the name of God. That would not be a problem if there weren't so many people waiting to defend themselves from lus or her pokes. livery semester there are angry editorials and letters published that condemn the evangelists and their self righteous claptrap. So what? Listen to them for only a few minutes, and it is not difficult to dismiss their ranting as babble. But somehow that doesn't prevent them from drawing big crowds. Everyone loves a scandal. The efforts of brave individuals to reason with the fanatics are equally misplaced. This semester's Bio Cope and last semester's Sister Pat are obviously beyond reason, yet so many people waste their time arguing with them. Everyone loves a good fight. True, it is difficult to ignore someone who yells at you about your penis while you're on your way home from class. But is lhat any more difficult than debating with an amateur Jerry FalwelJ? If only the effort put into violent self-defense were used simply to walk on by. Then Bro Cope and company would have no audience, and their noise would soon fade in the spring breeze. By listening to them, we give them an authority they do not deserve. But walking on by would be too easy. Instead, we prefer to challenge the evangelists, which is something like n n n BHQlllOgDC fighting with a puppy over an old sock. The puppy has no reason for holding on to the sock except for the fact that we want to take it from him. If we let go, the puppy will drag his sock off into a corner. But we'd rather play tug-of-war with Bro Cope and the like, so we hang around defending ourselves from his vain ravings. "The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity," Fnedrich Nietzsche wrote. People like Bro Cope cannot be denied the right to speak their mind. I recall an old Doonesbury comic strip in which Zonker's begonia said, "You're entitled to your insane opinions, of course. Writer Lance Morrow did a iccent essay on the number of speakers who have been having trouble speaking at universities lately. Speeches on conservative topics have been booed into submission by angry, heckling students who believe that disagreement is reason enough for inhibiting free speech. Here at IJNL we have a free-for-all between distorted zealots and furious listeners who feel they are justified in screaming obscenities at the feisty little evangelists. "He started it first," is the playground reasoning used in the situation. Chaos reigns on both sides. No cheeks are turned, among neJievers or non-oenevers. iney tranic in a publicity of anger, not in ideas," Morrow wrote. In the past few semesters we have seen John Anderson, Andrew Young, Ralph Nader and many other speakers who do traffic in ideas stop by our campus. If only our students would engage them in spirited discussion and leave the nonsense of the Bro Copes of the world alone. "Where there's smoke there's usually strawberry Jell-O, seldom fire," J. D. Salinger wrote. If . Broy hill Fountain is perhaps a perch, but not a pulpit. There is no fire of reason burning there. And if we w alk on by rather than stopping to listen, the Jell-0 will melt in the sun. David Thompson - - - "3: " - - mck m mi to track? rrr ac&i loy a Anneracaim Newton has no audience There is a story, certified and true, that when a friend of mine got married, her mother looked into hiring a rock band and was told by the booking agent that they were, in the lingo, "heavy." To this, she turned up her nose more in consternation than in revulsion and said, "I don't care how much they weigh, what do they sound Richard Cohen like?" It is in the spirit of that woman's ignor ance, so innocent and so delightful, that Interior Secretary James Watt is forgiven for thinking that the Beach Boys represent hard rock. The man knows so little about so many things, he should not be expected to know anything at all about rock music. But it is a far different matter to ban the Beach Boys, a group of excruciating wholesomeness, from performing the Fourth of July concert on the Mall in Washington and substitute instead Wayne Newton on the spacious grounds that he is more typically American than they. If Wayne Newton is typically American, we are all - Jim Watt included - doomed. It is true, of course, that someone has to decide who is to perform on the Mall dur ing the Fourth of July festivities. It is prob ably true, also, that there would be more arrests following a Beach Boys concert than after, say, a Kate Smith concert. And it is also true, as Secretary Watt says, that the Beach Boys draw a younger crowd than Wayne Newton would ... or does ... or will - presuming he draws any crowd at all if people are not allowed to show up on the Mall dressed loudly, holding highballs, squeezing women they have rented for the occasion and yelling, "Bring momma a seven." And despite Secretary Watt's assur ances that Newton will draw a family crowd, it is a fact that youngsters are as unknown in Vegas as Newton is to them. It lias been years since he's had a hit. It is Wayne Newton, not the Beach Boys, who can find an audience only in gambling casinos, Newton has tried to sing elsewhere, but outside of watering places with wagering crowds, he is a bust. He could not fill the 10.000-seat Marriwcather Post Pavilion here last summer. No matter. In Vegas alone he makes several million all American dollars, singing before people who have come to participate in the ail American pastime of gambling, losing enough so that Newton can be paid his all American salary. Wayne Newton is also a major owner of Arabian horses. This is an all-American hobby, indulged in by lots of all-American folks, many of whom live in mobile homes or who are, at the moment, out of work. But I disagree. The real point the secretary is trying to make is political, not musical. To him here is an "American" kind of music - a "wholesome" music "for the family and for solid, clean American lives." And there is also a sort of age and lifestyle that is more American than other ages and other lifestyles. To Watt, you are more American if you are middle-aged, middle-classed and middle-browed than if you are anything else. Tire trouble is that these are judgments made on appearance and the sound of things. But if Watt thinks long hair and a fondness for loud music is synonymous with radicalism, he ought to talk to these kids. Many of them are downright reaction ary. And if he thinkds that Bermuda shorts and grey hair is synonymous with con servatism, he ought to talk to the Grey Panthers. Of course Watt can say who can sing on the Mall and who can not, but he can not say what is and what is not American. Watt has never understood that some things are above politics. Music is one. The wilderness is another, (c) 1983, The Washington Post Company Newton 'fine right element', ' Seadi Soys moral deprivators Interior Secretary James Watt was right, for once. When he said he wanted more wholesome, American and patriotic enter tainment at the Independence Day festivit ies in the mall in Washington, he was right in thinking that Wayne Newton would bring in the right element. 1 mean, I was there in 1977, and it was disgusting watch- ! r-v k a I Dave mho Mumgaard ing all those semi-clad people splash about in the reflecting pools playing Frisbee. A Wayne Newton concert will undoubtedly attract the true patriots, like the high rollers of Las Vegas, the desert developers and Sen. Paul Laxalt's office staff. The Beach Boys, past players on the Fourth in the Mall, are but one example of the moral deprivation that comes hand in hand with rock music. Rock V roll har a history of being spiritually, intellectually and morally vacant, and a quick perusal of its past will show how rock is able to, as Bob Larson said in "The Day the Music Died," cause "contagious hyteria and all embracing orgiastic experience." Listening to rock, you know, causes the pituitary gland to secrete sex and adrenaline hor mones that change the blood sugar level, cuasing moral inhibitations to drop. This is a danger Western civilization cannofabide, since our morals are low enough as it is. I congratulate Jim Watt for standing up for Western civilization. Rock music, and its later, perhaps more vile derivatives (such as punk), essentially rose up from two highly un-American sources: Appalachian country music and the crudely described "blues" music. American music, as we should all know very well, sings of the bountifulness of the Motherland, glorifies the beauty of war and condemns pre-marital sex. Songs such as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" leap immediately to mind. To be "un-American" is what rock is all about: For instance, Appalachian country music was used primarily at social events. The hillbillies would get together, dance a few Celtic jigs and in the meantime have all sorts of musical double-entrendres tossed their way, premeated with sexual suggestion. Hillbillies, as we all know, are notoriously lewd and licentious. As for the "blues," well, this opens a can of worms. Frank Garlock in "The Big Beat" traced the rock V roll beat and rhythm to ceremonies in Africa and South America that accompany voodoo ritual, orgies, human sacrifice and devil worship. This stuff is really un-American. The blacks in the South supposedly developed their "blues" music as a way of relieving the agony of their oppressed lives. But, if you listen closely, the "blues are full of lyrics critical of good American values like hard work for menial pay and, yes, I've heard it, praises of such things as "gettin' down and gettin' dirty." Besides, "blue." music sounds flat half the time. All I can say is: we were really in trouble when "blues" musicians adopted the electric guitar. Rock was then but one step down the road. Now, I'm not advocating record-burning, as some have suggested in the past and others have actually done. Fm also not sug gesting wliat every record has back-tracking which advocates flippant fornicating. What I am concerned about are rock concerts, in which young teenagers are subjected to this historically proved debasing medium. Jim Watt, despite being over-ruled by that well meaning President Reagan, was totally correct in wanting Wayne Newton to appear instead of the Beach Boys. Wayne's an American; he'd slam down a couple of double martinis and then sing the praises of this Great Union. All the Beach Boys would do is sing some pitiful little tunes about "rock V roll music, any ol time you choose it," while subliminally influencing Washingtonians to go out and find them selves a surfboard. 1