The Cavalier daily :: Tuesday, April 28, 1970 :: University of Virginia Library

The television generation would
never have elected Nixon dogcatcher.
He's the miserable asshole
with sinus congestion and stale
sandwiches and zits and hemorrhoids
and thirty seven per cent worse
breath and all that. His wife makes
lousy coffee, and has yellow laundry,
floors, and teeth. What a
down. Having him in your living
room, even if only on the tube, is a
disgrace.

Walter Cronkite is a different
story. Cronkite we'd elect tomorrow,
to anything. You HAVE to
love Cronkite. If you don't like
Cronkite you probably have dreams
about balling your mother.

It doesn't matter that Cronkite
is a corrupt, condescending, upper-class
establishment, capitalist, corporate
liberal (all of which he is).
Those facts remain mere words,
powerless against the Cronkite that
I see for a half hour nightly who is
pure Truth, Wisdom, Understanding,
Hint of Melancholy, and
Papa.

Chicago Episode

Besides, Cronkite once radicalized
more people in a few
moments than anybody else has
before or since. At Chicago, in '68,
at the Hilton.

"Chicago is a Police State!" The
pictures did the rest, which was
plenty.

And you SAW it. And you
KNOW it's true.

Raised on pictures, we may be
the first generation of verbal cynics.
Soap commercials have taught us all
we need to know about bullshit. We
chuckle, in our sophistication, at
those whose revolutionary dedication
eclipses rhetorical consciousness.
This has to do with believing
intensely in their rhetoric and
generally makes them one hundred
per cent useless as revolutionary
organizers. There was an interestingly
extreme example of this when
the Patriot Party came to town a
few months back.

* * * * * * * *

A bunch of people are sitting
around passing a joint in a more or
less well-frequented quasi-revolutionary
hangout (in a small back
room). In walks a big blond chick
with "Free Huey" buttons on. She
towers over the group silently for a
moment, almost unnoticed.

Drops Number

"POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!"
she yells at everyone, very suddenly.
The walls shake. The joint is
dropped. Every body looks at her,
dazed. She does nothing. Stands
there waiting. "Hi," says someone,
finally.

"RIGHT ON!!!" With this she
gives some kind of salute, whirls
and matches out. A moment of
silence follows, people are open mouthed
and staring.

"Wooooow. What was that?"

"She's from the Patriot Party.
Yells slogans."

"Can she talk?"

"Nobody knows..."

There is a long silence. The joint
goes full circle. Everyone is waiting
for the stranger to return and say
that she was just fucking around.
She doesn't. Someone starts
giggling, very softly.

"...But how come?" giggling
picks up "...you know, that
chick..." everyone is giggling.
Nobody can believe it. "...that was
REALLY weird!" the speaker
barely gets out the words before
collapsing in hysterics with every
one else.

* * * * * * * *

A fairly large number of people,
upon coming in contact with this
person, were given the same
treatment. They tended to react the
same way. Upon leaving the
University she was heard to mutter,
"You people just aren't on our
level."

She's right. Nobody appreciates
a good slogan these days.

We read begrudgingly. Words
that attempt to stand by
themselves, 'imperialist, fascist,
exploitation, oppression,
imperialism, et al. don't get read.
Revolutions that depend on words
don't get started.

This is not to say that words are
intrinsically useless. Only that the
competition is tough. If you have
something to say. It had better be
said interestingly.

Reading is a hassle and we've
been betrayed by too many words.

Democracy, Justice, Peace. (I'm
going to win America's PEACE in
Viet Nam.) The whole scene is very
Orwellian. Nothing means shit once
the Patriot Party, runs it into the
ground or the professional liars in
Washington invert it.

Rivals 'Zap'

Jerry Rubin, to get back to our
commercial, knows this. His book,
'Do It' is harder to put down than
Zap Comix. His style aims to
please. It hasn't had time to
become anyone's rhetoric. Rubin
makes a much needed assault on
ideological intolerance and offers a
benevolent anarchy as his vision of
the future. Islands of love.

He is for real, which makes a
difference. He has always forced
politics to deal with him on his own
terms. That put him, politically,
miles ahead of the competition. He
has never forgotten that politics for
its own sake it after bullshit. He has
no program. Says a Yippie has no
use for somebody else's program,
somebody else's ass in your face.

Yippies, Rubin says, are leaders
without followers.

We are a different culture than
our parents. Seven year olds will
have a different culture than we do.
The Revolution is cultural. Politics
is part of a dying culture, along
with slogans, jingles, ideology and
planned obsolescence. That makes
Rubin more than the vanguard of
the Revolution. He represents the
Revolution's only hope.