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Wednesday, April 13,
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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
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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
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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-
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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.
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