European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 30, 1968, Darmstadt, Hesse T6� the stars and stripes Page t automation is sidelining old Cowbell clangers _ met by of Chicago it do mock to wiped away a tear and tic party anxious to avoid Otto managed a faint Bellow Auto Deloyis which tied up Tho Republic motion that s what is wiping out con convention in Miami Loach All us old time demonstrators announced there Wilt to no floor of i know what they say but for candidates it s a matter of front office Bud got kid that s sadly he clanged a Cowbell nostalgically in my ear. You mean i said you think both parties will continue to have demonstrations but that the individual demonstrator will be out of a Job Hll yet kid he roared. You la get electronic demonstration on record but they won t come to you live anymore. Why should they pay it prot when on one Lousy record they can get a replay of the Strawberry alarm clock Herb Alpert and the nor Mandy invasion of i Taid i can hardly believe. You la see he boomed con their convention opens. John m. Iai Loy democratic notional commit too dial Man announced Tho abandonment of the Timo Hon Rod Congo Nylon tradition of whooping it up follow ing each nominating new Story. Horace lungs Mcmurty sat in the dugout of the deserted Polit ical Arena his familiar profile with its Long note and open Mouth outlined against the faint glow from the last rays of a set Ling floodlight. Absently he Fin gered a caul flowered Odam s Apple and his Eyet grow moist at he tried to answer the ques Tion a convention sports writer Hod asked. Templ actively. Suddenly he said but it won t be the same. Did you hear me handle that Aster Isk in Hll that goes Way Back kid to when i was demonstrating for the Temperance i be teen you lungs i Taid. Of there were giant in those you can bet your asterisk he said they Don t make demonstrator like they used to in these Crummy Days of the Rabbit Squall the two platoon Horn honk and that Sitty hysteria Hel met. I remember when one Man could play a 60-minute Dewey demonstration one Day and go to a Truman Triumph March the you were never a victim then of Petty partisan politics i asked. He jammed hit megaphone Over my head As a gesture of re Buke. The play s the thing he screamed. Do you think Ham Mer Janet wot interested in poli tics when he did the Swan dive out of the Balcony for Willkie onto the snare drum do you think Murton Memelee Learned to play i like Ike on his cranium with the Teaspoon because of selfish political interest do you think stack tie Mac Wilson did the two hour Tassel dance with Hoover buttons simply be cause she wanted him to win Don t insult us you might say then i said. This is fhe passing of an yep he meditated. No More end runs around the plat form no More Spring training at the Tampa boiler works no More of the spine tingling sounds of the crack of a Pine no More exuberant shouts of those Tram pled in the Stampede no More speaking up for destiny through a tin Horn gone gone. The elec tronic demonstration Mark my words will take How will thit work of he screamed thought fully All demonstration to will merely be on tape cartridges. Perhaps whole record albums the Norman Luboff choir saying rhubarb rhubarb the Jamaica steel band playing remember the Agnew Mccarthy read ing poetry to a background of fhe French revolution and wait lungs i said. Won t this take More time than live demonstrations if it comes about there la be time he wept bitterly. That s the irony. By 1972, there la be plenty of time. All the candidates will simply stay Home and Send their in sync i at irk. William f. Buckley or 5orryj con f swim1 Humphrey faces dilemma the mood in Chicago it that if something does t happen something should to justify All the commotion involved in bring ing the democratic convention into being. Tho Odds before the convention began were heavily for Humphrey. But troubles arose in connection with unit voting and Southern representation the result of which wat to somehow unsettle the hold Humphrey hat been exercising on events. Funny How a single banana Peel can throw a giant off balance. And then late late saturday night or. Humphrey appeared on a taped interview with Chicago s renowned or. Irving Kupcinet. Or. Kupcinet who is a very Nice Man took pains to remind the listening audience that Tho inter View Hod Boon taped a week before Back before the red army took Over creche Slovakia. I toy or. Kupcinet is a very Nice Man. If he had been even nicer but nobody in Teepee could be expected to be that Niche d have tent the tape Back to or. Humphrey unplayed along with a Little not suggesting that it might be appropriate in 1969, to name or. Kupcinet at ambat Jador to the court of St. James s. Certainly he d have shown him self Well qualified to serve As a Diplomat. Because there was old Humph chatting along a mile a minute about his outstanding qualifications to serve As president of the United states. Why because he it to Well equipped to accept change to see things new and fresh to discard the old jaded sclerotic ideas of the past. For instance said poor taped or. Humphrey three Days after Czechoslovakia was shattered he East european nations Are by now relatively the or. Humphrey went right a. He was qualified in a tense mat Richard Nixon was not qualified to preside Ever the glorious Deli quiescence of conflict Between a United states and Tho soviet Union. You toe Humphrey found a Chicago 36 hours after United states Ambas Sador Ball in the United nations accused the soviet Union of not having changed of being Capa ble of the same monstrous Ness that made Stalin famous of blithely clamping Down on the minor efforts of a poor Small country to be free. You see explained or. Humphrey unlike Nixon i am not one of those eld cold the old cold warriors democrats like Truman republicans like Dulles maintained such Freedom As exists Here and there to defy the soviet Union. Now that the soviet Union hat once again demonstrated that either you make cold War against it or it is free to grind Down any Hope of europeans to be Froe americans Are of course entitled to conclude that if Humphrey it not a cold Warrior will a cold Warrior please stand up it it considered dirty Pool to consult yesterday s Campaign platforms. But it it nevertheless instructive to do so. In 1964, the democratic party platform uproariously approved by All the democrats at Atlantic City a plat form on which the greatest elec toral Victory in history wat won contained among other the Fol lowing sentence to we pledge unflagging Devo Tion to our commitments to free Dom from Berlin to South Viet shall we at least acknowledge that the Devotion is at least flagging and " we pledge to Speed the restoration of Freedom and responsibility in that has been the most unnoticeable speeding within memory. And " we pledge to encourage by All peaceful Means the growing Independence of the captive peo Ples living under communism and hasten the Day that insert 10 countries will achieve full free Dom and what have we done or. Humphrey is a Good Man and a Bright Man. There in t anybody in the world better than he at dissolving the edges of any question so completely As to reconstitute the question into a supporting Case for or. Humphrey s current position. But his dilemma though dramatized in the personal dimension by a Mere week s passage of time be tween the taping of a she and the playing of it is also the democratic party s. Ici Washington Star Syndicate inc. Czech Shadow hovers Over Chicago Max it intr he Telf he Yrtti in the of Fumiwo in United Tomee i Vert us Frt. The Shadow of Czechoslovakia hovers Over Chicago even More than the shadows of Rich Ard Nixon and George Wallace or of the demonstrations and riots. When you have the truly tragic at in Prague today it shrinks the merely ritualistic in politics to its True dimension and pushes aside the contrived drama of staged pre tests. Here we Are Back in the dark Ages it teems to say what Are you going to do about it each leading figure has an swered in his True character. Lyn Don Johnson issued a sober statement asked for a in. Security Council mooting and Hast ily postponed the expected announcement of his coming con Ference with Alexei Kot Gln. Hubert Humphrey took Tho occasion to play the preoccupied states Man and called off his to debate with Eugene Mccarthy. And Mccarthy his contribution was the unlikely Blooper of saying that or. Johnson had Over played the czech crisis that it Needt to be played Down be cause it in t in fact a real world crisis. How strange to have an Antiwar Leader insist that a Critis must be military to be real and that something which reaches so deep to Tho political ethos of soviet communism and the con science of the world it not a Critis. This is politics As usual for the major figures at a time when politics As usual in t the right dish for anyone. As for the new left at Chicago the watchword seems to be fantasy As usual. Itt leaders seem intent on treating the democratic National convention As another Pentagon to be stormed and Chicago at a Sodom to be cleansed of sin. One might argue that the in Vasion of Czechoslovakia is it self so incredible As to be part of the fantasy world. In its cynical and primitive Quality it might have been dreamt up in some theater of the absurd like one of Jean Genet t plays. I have been looking for some thing that might explain Why to few of the Young people of the new left Are moved by it. Their answer is i suppose that americans have enough of a moral Burden of their own in the Viet namese War and cannot there fore bleed morally at the soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Gut i suspect their failure to re act goes deeper. Since they see the whole political world today As an absurd Nightmare they take the czech Nightmare in their stride As More of the same. And be they go on with their plans for turning Chicago into a night Mare for the Humphrey Forcet. The trouble with this vision is that if everything is absurd then nothing is absurd and there is no dividing line Between the absurd and the real. Tell that to the Young czechs who have had to watch the russian tank mov ing in and their own political Leaden seized and spirited away and who have organized a quiet resistance movement against the invaders. The czechs Don t have to in int an enemy. The enemy it All too immediate and present a reality. Nor do they have to see political life As absurd in order to discover in themselves a drive toward action. They have to face the reality and their utmost Cour age and Hardihood Are enlisted in the Caute of the simple Liberal ideas of free speech free press free politics and a free nation Hood. I i la Angie tin4
