letters to the edl tor
Women's rights offers no excuse for rude, unsportsmanlike conduct
To the editor:
I applaud the efforts of the Equal
Rights Amendment (ERA) forces
working within the N.C. system. Never
have I been so put down or put off as this
past Sunday afternoon in Woollen
Gym. A team of which I was a member
had waited for over an hour to take the
winners in a five-on-five full court game
when we were kicked off the court by
two, not five or ten, girls who wanted to
practice shots and do some calisthenics
to prepare for an upcoming intramural
game. Showing utmost courtesy and
sportsman-like conduct, the girls
co mm
Capitalism
worth preserving
The Ford Foundation is without a Ford in the garage.
Henry Ford II resigned from the foundation's Board of Directors last
week with harsh words for the liberal-minded agency.
Capitalism has provided the cash the foundation dispenses each year,
Ford said, and, "it is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the
foundation does. It is even more difficult to fmd an understanding of this in
many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the
beneficiaries of the foundation's programs.
The Ford Foundation, established as an independent nonprofit group in
1936 by Henry and Edsel Ford, has given away over $4 billion since 1950 to
various projects ranging from economic and social equality studies to
modern dance and opera productions.
A significant portion of the money the foundation awards each year
benefits the academic community, and Ford is concerned that this money, in
particular, is undermining the business world that is his livlihood.
While it may be true that the foundation has not spent large sums of
money to further the capitalist system, the agency has dedicated itself to its
professed goal to "enhance the public well-being."
For example, at the University of North Carolina the Ford Foundation
has spent over $5 million. since 1969 on studies of minority leadership and
professional training, international family planning, United States abortion
policy, city planning and, one study Ford may have overlooked, monetary
integration and payments.
"I'm not playing the role of the hardheaded tycoon who thinks all
philanthropoids are Socialists and all university professors are
Communists," Ford wrote in his letter of resignation. "I'm just suggesting to
the trustees and the staff that the system that makes the foundation possible
very probably is worth preserving." Ford went on to suggest that the
foundation should consider its obligations to the nation's economic system
and act to strengthen that system.
The Ford Foundation, as an independent group, will continue its work
with or without Ford Ford was never in a position to direct the
foundation's policies. The question Ford has raised by his symbolic
resignation, however, deserves attention. Should the foundation be
expected to promote the capitalistic system to which it owes its existence?
While it is true that capitalism has meant prosperity for many, it is also
true that capitalism has created a kind of economic Darwinism those who
have the survival equipment of a supportive family background, an
education and an aggressive business sense can excel in the system.
Those unfortunates who are ill-prepared for economic combat do not
fare so well.
It is fortunate that capitalism, a system concerned with economic well
being, has enabled the creation of organizations, such as the Ford
Foundation, which further human well-being.
hp SatUj
84th Year of Editorial Freedom
Alan Murray
Editor
Joni Peters
Managing Editor
Dan Fesperman
News Editor
Thomas Ward
Features and Freelance
Merrill Rose
Arts and Entertainment
Grant Vosburgh
Sports Editor
Charles Hardy
Photography Editor
Rob Rosiello
Wire Editor
Campus Calendar: Tenley Ayers
Business: Verna Taylor, business manager. Lisa Bradley, Steve Crowell, Debbie Rogers.
Nancy Sylvia. Subscription managers: Dan Smigrod, David Rights.
Advertising: Philip Atkins, manager. Dan Collins, sales manager, Carol Bedsole. Ann Clarke.
Julie Coston, Anne Sherrill and Melanie Stokes.
Composition Editor: Reid Tuvim. Circulation Managers: Tim Bryan and Pat Dixon.
DTH Composing Room Managed by UNC
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bieve uuaKenoush.
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uunng me regular acaaemic year.
walked onto the court in the middle of
our game and yelled something about
priority superceding ensuing play.
Seeing the farciality in 10 on one-half
court and two on the other, I politely
suggested that these two girls practice
with the other two girls occupying the
half-court adjacent to us. They curtly
retorted that the other girls were from a
different team, as if two different teams
on the same court was an oddity. I look
forward to the upcoming passage of the
ERA amendment and further such
equality, though I do feel that if the
behavior and attitude of these girls are a
sign of things to come, there probably is
Page 6
January 28, 1977
G.N.
i
Star 14M
Gregory Nye
Associate Editor
News: Keith Hollar, assistant editor; Jeff Cohen, Marshall
Evans, Chris Fuller, Mary Gardner, Russell Gardner, Toni
Gilbert, Jack Greenspan, Tony Gunn, Nancy Hartis. Charlene
Havnaer. Jaci Hughes, Will Jones, Mark Lazenby. Pete
Masterman, Vernon Mays, Karen Millers. Linda Morris, Chip
Pearsall. Elliott Potter. Mary Anne Rhyne, Laura Seism, Leslie
Seism. David Stacks, Elizabeth Swaringen, Patti Tush, Merton
Vance, Mike Wade and Tom Watkins.
News Desk: Ben Cornelius, assistant managing editor. Copy
editors: Richard Barron, Beth Blake, Vicki Daniels, Robert Feke.
Chip Highsmith, Jay Jennings, Frank Moore, Jeanne Newsom,
Katherine Oakley. Karen Oates, Evelyn Sahr, Karen Southern,
Melinda Stovall, Merri Beth Tice. Larry TuDler and Ken
Williamson.
Sports: Gene Upchurch, assistant editor; Kevin Barris, Dede
J3iles. Skip Foreman, Tod Hughes, David Kirk, Pete Mitchell, Joe
Morgan. Lee Pace, Ken Roberts, David Squires. Will Wilson and
Isabel Worthy.
Arts and Entertainment: Betsy Brown, assistant editor; Bob
Brueckner, Chip Ensslin, Marianne Hansen, Jeff Hoffman, Kim
Jenkins, Bill Kruck, Libby Lewis, Larry Shore and PhredVultee.
Graphic Arts: Cartoonists: Allen Edwards, Cliff Marley and Lee
Poole. Photographers: Bruce Clarke, Allen Jernigan and Rouse
Wilson.
Kaleidoscope: Melissa Swicegood
Printing Mary Ellen Seate. supervisor. Jeffrey
layout: Jack Greenspan. Composition: Mike
N.C. the Daily Tar Heel publishes weekdays
a less controversial way to cultivate such
aggressive bitches.
David Ascher
220 Finley Road
WCHL not at fault
To the editor:
Re: 56 Granville residents protesting
WCHL's "blatant incompetence' for
broadcasting the cancellation of classes
on Jan. 25. Granted, the operator on at
midnight made a wrong decision; he
had, however, no guidelines to follow in
such a case as this. What did they want
WCHL to do, wake up Chancellor
Taylor? All media must deal with false
reports from time to time. All this aside,
why didn't the 56 residents criticize the
person who called in the fake
announcement? The fault lies there, not
with WCHL.
Mike Hyman
1224 Granville West
Paul Matthews
304 Morrison
Odious comparison
To the editor:
I was impressed by your balanced
coverage of the Patti Smith Group
concert. Reviewers Vultee and Lock
effectively utilized the two typical
approaches to a musical phenomenon
the technical critique and the emotional
gut-reaction. 1 usually find greater value
in the former, because that type of
review attempts to answer the question,
uIs it art?" Unfortunately, art is rarely
defined, and we are then left with the
particular reviewer's attitude toward the
art in question, rather than an objective,
contextual evaluation.
Phabulous Phred Vultee did little to
change this tradition. Some points were
quite valid: "Saturday Night" was a bit
weird, her lyrics are indeed bizarre, and
the band does rely heavily on a few pet
chords. But Vultee based his criticism
ultimately on comparisons with
superstars such as Cream, Hendrix and
Amin (?!), rather than making
judgments relative to the so-called
"punk-rock" genre. Most creative
individuals who claim the title "artist"
suffer similarly from critics; Picasso's
works still look like acid casualties to
many. Again, Vultee failed to establish
what art is, except for a reference to
"...accurate view of life..." Real
profundity, right?
Ethan Lock, on the other hand,
simply presented his immediate
reactions in an honest way. He realized
that he was "into something"; he was
swept away by her emotionally-charged
performance and didn't worry about
technical perfection and profundity.
Maybe he should have attempted the art
question; maybe not, in light of Vultee's
ejaculations.
Patti Smith makes contact with the
audience, she's talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation,
and 1 love for what she gave
us. Punk rock may be doomed to
obscurity, or it may be the next big
thing. But Patti will endure and
transcend, in some form at least,
because she is the personification of
popular art. Art is the creative
expression of any individual's thought
processes within a tangible medium, so
who can really say something is not art?
Ain't it strange?
Phred Mills
Rt. 3, Box 493
Smith to become waitress?
To the editor:
Re: Patti Smith and the Ethan Lock
concert review and subsequent letter.
Every once in a while, a talent comes
along that is so strong, so vibrant and so
alive that everything around it looks
pale and worthless by comparison.
Music produced by such persons is that
wonderful stuff that we call creative. Of
course, 1 am not talking about Patti
Smith heaven forbid. Maybe the
Beatles, maybe Fleetwood Mac,
definitely the Kinks, but never the kind
of mindless groaning and howling
presented as music by the oversold
Smith.
Rock music is one medium in which
there is an unlimited opportunity for the
credulous and the gullible to be fleeced
by slick productions of worthless
nobodies. Smith is an outstanding
example of this trend find someone
who can be molded and by careful
design of the "package," you might have
something that could fool most of the
people, most of the time. Some of us
prefer talent in songwritirig and the
ability to sing hopefully better than your
everyday Brahma bull. There are a
number of others like her Bachman
Turner Overdrive, Blue Oyster Cult, etc.
If one wishes to find garbage, one does
not have to go looking it's ail around
and hard to avoid falling over.
KT&lffiAMIH) NATIONS? WHW, THAT'S TRE H PlKAg
MfWANT SEAT IN THE HAC 0' TH0 M, ANPY . r"51
If Smith manages to survive in the
rock world, an unlikely event indeed
(and certainly not one I am hoping for),
she will probably be like the much
admired Dylan produce 3 or 4
worthless albums, than sell out to the
forces of crass, grotesque capitalism.
More likely, in 10 years, Patti Smith will
be a waitress in Hoboken, N.J., wiping
tables and listening to the latest album
by Tom T. Hall.
The Daily Tar Heel would be well
advised to get itself another
concert music critic one who
understands that the use of language is
to communicate, not to show how
pyrotechnic prose really can be. The
"far-out" (to use a technical term)
journalism of Lock is no credit to the
paper, much less the English language.
Reviews are supposed to be at least
mildly objective. Lock's effort is a nice
try, but it made as much sense as if it
were written in Eskimo.
Paul Thompson
1 17A Barclay
(mmt
fill
5 If f
Patti Smith
Hendrix is dead
To the editor.
I was rather disgusted by the two
reviews and the sloppy pictures of the
Patti Smith concert that appeared in the
DTH Monday.
To begin with, your staff writer Phred
Vultee, who dismissed Smith as "a
raving, pretentious gobbler," keeps
wishing he could write a Jimi Hendrix
review. He drags in Hendrix three times,
and by the end of the review we know
more about Hendrix than we do about
Patti Smith. Hendrix is this and this and
this, and Hendrix is an artist. When
Vultee condescends to mention Patti
Smith (whom he calls "Patti," as if he
knows her), he finds that she is not like
Hendrix, and therefore, by his
reasoning, she isn't an artist. It's obvious
by now that he isn't interested in writing
about Smith at all, and my suggestion is
that the DTH only trot out Phred Vultee
to coo over any future Hendrix re
releases. He'll enjoy that, and he'll be
harmless.
By the way, anyone who would give
himself a pen name like Phred Vultee (I
presume that isn't his real name) is a fine
one to talk about pretension. His
narrow view of art and his
condescending attitude toward rock in
general show a more dangerous form of
snobbishness than his choice of an artsy
fartsy name. He believes, like many
others, that you can be an artist (or
Artist) or you can have a good time, but
you can't do both together. If Patti
Smith and her band have a good time,
Vultee thinks they belong in a bar. If the
band plays loud and simple, it can't be
art (or Art). If Smith recaptures teenage
V
III
.V.V.- ".XCtiPOt
V, ,'v .
J
I
emotions and expressions in her songs
and poetry, she isn't acting her age; she
should grow up and "express a fairly
accurate view of life." Actually, I'm
amazed. I thought the first thing
everybody learned about art was that it
was a celebration, and that simplicities
in art are harder to pull off than
complexities. To finish off Vultee's
pseudointellectual case against Smith,
I'll quote from a favorite poet of hers,
Arthur Rimbaud: "Genius is the ability
to recapture childhood at will."
The actual review of the concert, after
wading through V's thoughts on
Hendrix and Art, is paltry. He tears a
piece of Smith's poem out of its context
and quotes it as an example of
incoherence in her work, justifying his
act by saying that, since the poem is
incoherent, it doesn't matter. I believe
that he is using a fallacy in logic here
called "Arguing in a Circle." (But I'm a
freshman; I'm probably wrong.) Then
he takes one sentence out of the middle
of one of her between-song "raps"
("raps"? people still say "rap"?),
claiming it came at the beginning, and
uses it as an example of how silly her
conversation was. Actually the
sentence, "Fuck the critics, man," makes
a lot of sense after reading this review.
What he didn't add was that Smith also
drew the crowd's attention to an address
in her latest album and suggested that
we write and tell her our opinions about
her show, her music, or the state of rock
in general. She said, "We're still
growing." She also said, "I feel good
tonight," which must've seemed like
blasphemy to Vultee.
The negativew review by Phred
Vultee was an insult to the reader's
intelligence. The positive review by
Ethan Lock was too. This was a piece of
pseudocool hyperbole which makes the
reader think that Vultee was telling the
truth. Lock also seems to have trouble
keeping his mind on the subject, Patti
Smith, and instead wants to tell stories
about Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead,
acid trips. . . .
These reviewers are both living in a
world that just doesn't exist anymore.
It's 1977; Jimi Hendrix is dead; I don't
care about him; I'm 19; I care about
Patti Smith, her poetry and her rock and
roll. I went to see her show, and I saw the
rebirth of rock and roll in the audience
and on the stage. It was wonderful. I
suggest that you at the Daily Tar Heel
quit moaning about the good old days
and work with us for Radio Ethiopia by
1977.
Page Davis
107 Aycock
Similar education an asset
To the editor:
I just read Jerry Foster's letter in
Thursday's DTH. 1 agree with
everything he says, but I was curious
about one part. He said that seven of the
14 full professors received one degree or
another from UNC. As far as being
educated alike is concerned, I think this
has no relevance in his article. Being full
professors, this group probably
attended UNC when it was, indeed, one
of the top two or three Romance schools
in the country. Therefore, 1 think it is a
valuable asset in their favor that they did
receive some degree from UNC.
Robert Allen
Graduate Student in Slavic Languages
Upper Quad awaits next snow
To the editor:
All right, now. Time Out. Enough's
enough. That . anyone with even a
modicum of intelligence could claim
that the Lower Quad ever defeated the
Upper Quad in anything is silly in its
own right, but the letter in the DTH of
Jan. 26 is much too much.
Point One: Upper Quad forces
captured fully one-half of the Lower
Quad. We then realized exactly what we
captured, i.e., an area with the climate
and warmth of Antarctica, populated by
people with an average I.Q. well below
that of a moronic eel.
Point Two: After returning to the
pleasurable confines of our Quad, we
were attacked by an overwhelming force
of "people" from the Lower Quad,
thrown back (with the help of Old East)
much like the Romans fought off the
barbarian hordes.
Point Three: Aycock's girls are our
spoils of war, and we'll be over to get
them soon, the four Lower Quad
"men's" dorms obviously unsure what
to do with females.
We'll be waiting next snow. Anyone,
anytime. We challenge the whole
ramniis Re Then Alnha
Upper Quad Defense Command
D.P. Kadunce
G.H. Reddin
J.M. Sykes
f Ambrose fhibes, CSA
Expel treasonous Grahamites
To the editor.
Re: Greg Chocklett's letter of Jan. 26
concerning "The Snowball War of
Upper Quad Aggression."
A few of Mr. Chocklett's points need
clarifying somewhat.
1) While there may well have been 12
representatives from Graham Dorm in
the aforementioned snowball fight, the
women in attendance observed very few
of them to be men and even fewer to be
gallant, whereas there were twice as
many participants from the more
upstanding dorms in the Quad Stacy,
Everett, Lewis, and Aycock.
2) Excepting a broken window
suffered by Room 116 Aycock, which
was no doubt the result of a Graham
misfire, and a physical attack on one
infrantrywoman by Mr. Chocklett
himself, whom we previously
considered our ally, Aycock Dorm held
its own quite admirably, considering its
position on the line of battle.
3) The battle was ended not by the
annihilation of Upper Quad as Mr.
Chocklett would wish us to believe but
at the order of assistant to the
Secretariat General Charles Miller, Mr.
Spa Boner whose orders seemingly gave
the faltering Graham-Hams an excuse
to retreat until next winter, as evidenced
by their immediate disappearance
following Mr. Boner's "request" when
the Aycock battalion was at the height
of its power.
4) We were never captured by Upper
Quad forces (although we may have
been better off in their POW camps than
living next door to Graham), and if we
had been, we gave Graham no power to
decide our fate.
5) After an extensive survey of the
Lower Quad's outstanding citizens
(among whom are no Grahamites,
incidentally) a coalition has been
formed to rid our once honorable Quad
of the treasonous Grahamites either by
request or force in favor of the survival
of the most virtuous Aycock women.
Aycock First Infantry
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