University of Virginia Library

Gregory: 'Col. Sanders Can End The War'

By ROB PRITCHARD

If things were so simple,
much of what is wrong in this
country would be made
obvious by a comparison
between two of the
University's more memorable
guest speakers-Dick Gregory
and Attorney
General-in-waiting, Richard
Kleindienst.

It's an unfair contest,
granted, in fact it's no contest
at all. The inept Kleindienst
(dare we add mindless) as
some of you will remember,
proved himself to be totally
incapable of abstract thought,
of grasping the whole and
relating it to a different
situation, of adapting to
changing circumstances.

Much like Don Quixote, he
spent the entire night running
around attacking windmills; in
this case they happened to be
just another group of college
students trying to find our
about "our man in the Justice
Department."

And if Kleindienst is any
indication of what that
Department is about, and
judging from the mass
incarcerations of the May Day
demonstrations he is, then
there is some truth to the
rumor that there's no justice in
the Justice Department, to say
nothing of minds.

And in this corner, wearing
gray trunks, we have Mister
Dick Gregory, weighing in at a
crisp 99 pounds, currently on a
diet of fruit, fruit juices and
One-A-Day Brand Multiple
Vitamins.

Speaking to a nearly filled
and extremely receptive Cabell
Hall Auditorium audience
Wednesday night, Gregory
demonstrated conclusively the
failures of our present

government. Although in doing
so he too succumbed to the
same rhetorical devices of
over-statement and symbolism
used so convincingly by
government officials in place of
logic, his duty was not to prove
or justify policy, but rather to
impress upon us the
shortcomings of our system.
And this he did.

If at times Gregory's praise
and optimism of youth,
coupled with an almost
universal contempt for the
older generation, seemed a bit
unrealistic, his general
positivism was such that it
could move people, make
them believe that, yes, we can
do it.

"You young people have a
big job. And you haven't got
too much time. You have an
important job; the very fate
and destiny of America
depends on you young folks."

If it is true that great men
are born twice-once marking
their entrance into the physical
world, and again when they
enter the real world-then
Gregory would be but ten
years old. He was born in late
1962 in Jackson, Miss. during a
voter registration drive where,
witnessing the imprisonment of
a 78-year-old black man whose
wife later died while he was
still in jail, Gregory began to
wonder if he "really had made
it."

A strong believer in
nonviolence, "if you carry a
pile of human waste around in
your pocket all day just
waiting for someone to throw
it on, it's your pocket that's
going to stink, not his,"
Gregory proposes instead a
unified, youth effort directed
at the weakest link in the
chain-big industry.

"If you young people would
just join together and give up
eating chicken and turkey until
the Vietnam War is over, don't
you know that the entire
poultry industry, lead by
Colonel Sanders himself, would
join the Peace Movement the
very next day?"

"And if you stopped buying
General Motors products, don't
you know that the President of
General Motors would jump in
his big jet airplane, fly to
Washington D.C. ...break
through Nixon's bedroom
door, kick poor old Pat out of
the bed, and shake Nixon by
his pajama tops until he ended
that war?"

On the domestic front,
while sharply criticizing the
CIA ("The sickest organization
in the history of man") and the
FBI, Gregory suggests that if
Nixon would only visit the
problem areas of this country,
the big city ghettos, the Indian
Reservations, and the poverty
belt of Appalachia, with the
same television coverage he
took to China, the entire
nation would be so outraged
that within a few days these
problems would be well on
their way to being solved.

Instead, "Nixon spends
his spare time watching
football games." Obviously,
Nixon is not one of Gregory's
favorite people, but then
neither are the "war freaks"
who reside in the Pentagon,
and who are responsible for
continuing the Vietnam War.

Among the many topics
covered by Gregory, the logic
and meaningfulness of his
racial position was inescapable.
The direct approach and total
honesty with which this most
touchy of subject was handled
proved beyond a doubt
Gregory's concern for all
Americans.

Pointing out such
taken-for-granted symbols as
the white baby pictured on
most baby foods, and Uncle
Ben, Gregory said that much of
the racial problem was that it is
"unconscious...people are not
even aware of it." But again,
Gregory's optimism referred
this pressing problem to the
solution of "you young folks."

It is unfortunate, and
probably the most dangerous
problem we have in this
country today, that the
distance between a Kleindienst
and a Gregory is so great. That
Gregory in the eyes of many,
especially those in the FBI, is a
national threat, an "upity
nigger." That long hair and
beards, whether worn by
blacks or whites, automatically
tags them with two strikes.
That wit, especially the art of
viewing national problems in a
humorous, but nonetheless a
serious light, is nowhere to be
found in the vast bureaucratic
quagmire of the United States
government.

Could it be that people are
afraid to laugh at themselves?