European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - October 9, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 12 the stars and stripes nonsense inwsownin1h6e and likeness saturday october 8, 1977 John p. Roche James j. Kilpatrick the Lance aftermath Triumph of mediocrity Back in january a United state senator was talking reflectively to a person who had been nominated for High government office. I think we have got to be extraordinarily careful said the senator in what we ask people to do for government service. You will get a fraction of your former salary your life is never your own and we cannot go overboard in making r uncomfortable for people to hold Public life. Otherwise we will end up with mediocre people making mediocre it is not Likely to Surprise you that the senator was Charles Percy of Illinois and columns comments the nominee was Bert Lance of Georgia. The senator s comment appears at Page 115 of the original Lance hearings eight months ago. Percy was right and it is perhaps More useful to dwell upon the senator s insights then than upon his Hindsight now. If any gain whatever is to be salvaged from this whole unhappy affair it will be plucked from the senator s sound counsel let us not go overboard in making it uncomfortable for people to hold Public life. Sad to say just about everyone went overboard in the Lance affair. The press had abundant leads to the Story Long before Lance came up for confirmation As budget director. The Senate committee had Abun Dant Opportunity to explore these matters in january. But the hounds of the press went baying off on other trails and the Senate committee Lay Down on the Job. A vast Deal of human suffering and Polit ical damage might have been avoided if the system had worked at the time. The malfunction of last Winter was savagely corrected in the connected with the affair slipped into some excess. The president said he was proud of his old Friend. Jody Powell lapsed into Bush league antics. The Senate committee backed and filled and Haru phed and squabble. The committee staff looked awful. A fellow named Bloom looked press took after Lance with a kind of Wood lust for the wounded Bear. At the risk of repeating a View i have voiced before let me say this i tried to read within the limits of time and understanding every significant document in the Lance affair. In my own View for whatever it May be Worth the Story was wildly overblown. Lance s offences against banking practices seem to be mostly trivial and they were entirely harmless they never added up to proof that he was incompetent to serve As budget director and presidential confidant. The affair got completely out of hand. By the morning of the Day Lance resigned truth and judgment having been parked somewhere in the Depths below the new York times was wandering about in the fourth sub basement of hearsay. The times gravely reported that an irs report said that or. Patriarca said that or. Tarleton said that in essence or. Lance had said i just wondered if you could see your Way Clear to lift the agree ment on phooey. Let me come Back to the Point. As a con sequence of his willingness to serve his government a Good and decent Man has been put through hell. His family s cancelled checks have been Hung out like a line of Wash. He has lost a couple of million dollars and finds himself heavily if not desperately in debt. When it is said that he brought All this on himself one has to acknowledge an Ironi Cal truth. Yes he brought his own ruin by agreeing to the sacrifice his president asked of him. Where do we go from Here i had an old journalism professor nearly 40 years ago who Laid this Maxim Down Dull people Lead Dull lives. This is essentially what Percy was saying to Lance in january. Plenty of Dull people mediocre people people of pedestrian minds and narrow vision always will be available for Public Dull records would yield no scrap of excitement for the press to feed on. But after the Lance affair How Many spirited talented bold and imaginative men an women will now risk a like catastrophe How Many successful executives will take a Chance on humiliation Public Ridi Cule and grave financial loss the evils of watergate have spawned contradictory evils of their own. By de manding needlessly lofty standards of purity and virtue presidents and senator Sand sanctimonious editors May believe they have served the Public interest. I Petit to you bluntly they have not. Newspeak is Here and it s not yet 1984 if Heinrich Himmler had survived to die of old age his obituary would doubtless note Herr Himmler was considered Adolf Hitler s top specialist on population control. He pioneered in the then unrecognized area of Zero population growth though his research was criticized for its came to mind when i read the obit of one of Stalin s most dedicated american admirers a Man who would have justified the execution of Karl Marx As a British agent if Stalin could have pulled it off. The obit indicated he had been persecuted on Many occasions for his affiliation with progressive i now await his beatification in a to no sooner was this filed away than . Secretary general Kurt Waldheim turned up in Moscow to discuss International issues with president chairman Leonid one objects to Waldheim visiting around his Parish but then in an inspired moment he presented Brezhnev with . Gold medal of peace in recognition of consistent and fruitful activity to the Benefit of Universal peace and Security of nations try that on your Harp. As a writer and teacher words Are my business and i have Long resisted the gloomy orwellian prognosis that by "1984" we will be dominated by newspeak a language in which peace will mean War Freedom equal slavery and so on. Yet As the ., with Waldheim setting the Pace proceeds to glorify All sorts of infamy As progressive anti Imperial ism one begins to wonder. Will no one take the initiative to prevent this corruption of the world one of the problems in mounting this de sense is you promptly get denounced As a conservative or a Quibbler or both. When for example i suggested Here that american liberalism always stood Lor ordered Liberty not for letting it All hang out civil libertines from far and near accused me of joining the John Birch society. Ironically Given the number of intellectuals on the Loose in High office the purity of our political language has been most doggedly defended by the Trade Union movement. Our proletarian semantic costs led by president George Meany and Secre tary treasurer Lane Krikland of the a pm Cio have been infuriating the intelligent Sia for years by their persistent quibbling. The problem began in the 1930s when Meany then head of the Al s anti fas Cist activities refused to consider Hitler s labor front a Trade that logic was hard to Challenge but the pontiffs recently had a Field Day with the Al Cio s efforts to Block admission to the United states of soviet Trade Union , when sen. George Mcgovern d s.d.,got the Law changed and several rus Sian apparatchiks were admitted the chortling was widespread. The new York times ran a silly editorial hailing our National deliverance from the Small minded veto Power of Meany it observed that whether russians were Trade unionists or opera singers they should be encouraged to drop in. This completely missed the Point there Are operas in Russia and hence opera sing ers. They have regularly been admitted without Al Cio protest on visas which indicate they Are opera in contrast there Are no Trade unions there is a state run organization like the nazi labor front. Thus truth in packaging should make it As impossible for a russian to get a visa As a Trade unionist As for a Plo bomb maker to be admitted As a c King features Syndicate allegiance to
