University of Virginia Library

Anti-Agnew

Last fall we could laugh at Spiro Agnew;
we had enough confidence in the American
public to think that they could see through
his mindless and malicious maunderings; we
forgot the basic lesson of our American
Government I course which told us that the
electorate was generally misinformed and
susceptible to Agnew's type of demagoguery.

We laughed then; we said, "Right on,
Spiro!" because the man was so ridiculous. We
forgot, unfortunately, that he was no longer a
PTA president in a white suburb. He was the
Vice-President of the United States, and
people respected his office, though he himself
did not. In his insecurity, he was quite willing
to use his official platform to play on the
fears and uncertainty of Middle America with
the goal of boosting the Republican Party
even if he had to create a pastiche of fear and
hatred that could tear the country apart to do
so.

A case in point: over the weekend the Vice
President addressed one of his typical
audiences - white, upper-middle class conservatives.
This time he took off on one of the
prime anxieties of that type of audience - the
fear that public institutions of higher
education might begin to serve all the people,
thus making it harder for their children to
gain admission.

This type of fear makes fine grist for
Agnew's rhetorical mill, as he so amply
demonstrated in his speech. Would they, he
asked, like to be operated on by a doctor who
had been admitted to medical school on a
quota? And the audience, as well as the
millions of fearful people who read the
statement in the papers or saw it on TV felt
that of course they wouldn't want to be
operated on by some inferior black doctor
and it was a good thing there were men like
Ted Agnew around to protect them from it.

Of course, the Vice President failed to
point out a few salient facts, facts which his
audience will probably never hear of. In the
first place, minority admissions standards are
designed to select people who have the
capability to do the work demanded by the
school but whose environmental deficiencies
preclude an ability to demonstrate that
capability in the normal, white-oriented
manner. Moreover, anyone admitted under
such circumstances still must pass his courses,
his internship and demonstrate his ultimate
capability before being allowed to practice
medicine. Even so, the number of medical
schools which allow such admissions is
insignificantly small; by pointing to it, the
Vice President gave the impression that a
menacing horde of black doctors were
entering practice every year. Most important,
the Vice-President failed to point out
(apparently he doesn't give a damn) that black
people have been subjected to inferior medical
care for generations because black students
were forced to go to under financed and
understaffed black medical schools.

The fault for the Vice President's appalling
success in spreading this mishmash of
half-truths among the silent majority lies,
unfortunately, with the news media of the
country. By dint of his fallacious attacks on
the theme, the Vice President has effectively
imposed a kind of censorship on the media,
They are afraid to expose his half-truths for
fear of seeming, to their audiences, just as the
Vice President said they were. They have been
thoroughly cowed, to the point where they
are unwilling to expose all sides of an issue
and let their readers and viewers judge for
themselves.

They have allowed the Vice President to
run amok around the nation sowing his seeds
of fear which he undoubtedly hopes to reap
this November. The man should be impeached
and sent back to his suburban PTA where his
malicious mouthings will do the least harm.