Volume 3 - Issue 3

Page 1

Volume three, number three I October 26, 1969

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• There are some men in New York who, tho ugh virtually unknown to the public, wield a great deal of influence. Fat Bernie is o ne of them.

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Comment: Fighting the war, fighting the world, fighting the women and saving a church.

Volume three, number three October 26, 1969 Editors: Herman Hong Paul Goldberger Business Manager: Steve Thomas Art Director:

Nicki Kalish Production Editor: Nancy Vickers Advertising Manager: Robert Kirkman Copy Editors: Richard Caples Stuart Klawans Craig Slutzker Assistant Editors: George Kannar Charles Draper Jeffrey Pollock Circulation Managers: John Callaway Tom Davidson Contributing Editors: Susan Braudy David Freeman Mopsy Strange Kennedy Lawrence Lasker Jonathan Lear Michael Lerner LeoRibuflo Walter Wagoner Staff:

Peter M. C. Choy, Richard Conniff, Jack Friedman, Edward Landler, Joanne Lawless, William Palmer, Manuel Perez, James Rosenzweig, Barbara Rich. THIRD CLASS NON-PROFIT PERMIT: Third Class Non-Profit postage PAID in New Haven, Conn. The New Journal is published by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520, and is printed at The Carl Purington Rollins Printing-Office of the Yale University Press in New Haven. Published bi-weekly during the academic year and distributed by qualified controlled circulation to the Yale Community. For all others, subscriptions are $7.50 per year ($4.50 for students) and newstand copies 50¢.

The New Journal© copyright 1969 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., a non-profit corporation. Call: 776-9989 at any time. Letters welcome. Unsolicited manuscripts should be accompanied by a stamped, selfaddressed envelope. Opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of The New Journal. Credits: John Boak: cover, pages 3, 5. Contents 3 Fat Bernie Returns by David Freeman 6 New Haven's 'journalistic godawful' by James Mann 12 Psychopathology of Seminars by Lloyd Etheredge

Either/Or

Win some, lose some

Fiction died today, or maybe it was yesterday. No, maybe it was October 15. A novel about a nation opposed to a war it is waging and whose President states he will not be swayed by public opinion because it is not in the public interest, wouldn't even make it at Woolworth's. What English professor would pass a short story about a New Haven peace. convocation that opens to the strains the Yale Marching Band's "March, March on Down the Field," followed closely by "Bulldog, Bulldog, Bow wow wow"? "Anyone who doesn't buy a flag ain't a good American." Grey stubble, short, old, worn trench coat, prunified body. OK, he carried flags and even·hawked long yellow and green plastic horns, but at least he had the honesty to admit it was a carnival. "If you're such a good American, why don't you give away the flags for free?" Wants to impress friends. Light-brown cashmere sweater, matching brogues, cries out male chauvinism every time a hairy hand beats her to the Russian dressing. The band strikes up "When the Saints Go Marching In," the speakers' platform begins to fill and ASTOUNDING: everyone on the platform, as if waiting for the 8:50 express, wears the same shade of grey business suit, (except Robert Lifton who dissents with olive green). There are even, count 'em, two Negroes. And then, the anathema of every.hard working bureaucrat, a lapse of planning. Glen DeChabert, a black, forces his way to the podium in a last ditch effort to inject some note of reality. He succeeded, even if we didn't hear his words. Mikes shut off, student apparatchiks, armed with some misguided sense of responsibility, tried to strongarm him off the stage, until some question was raised as to who in fact bad the monopoly on bad taste. If one were to read Catch 22 today, he would see it only as that mythic longing for the golden past.

The Dry Cleaners Association of America held its annual convention in Detroit a couple of years ago and two girls from a local modeling school were hired as hostesses. The dirty old cleaning men tried to pick up the girls during their meetings. Upon receiving the offers one of the girls laughed and the other one got mad. Last summer the one who got mad became Miss America. Miss America's name is Pam Eldred, and members of the Women's Liberation Front, alas, must mourn, for she appears unwilling to lend her prestige (or even her bra) to the noble cause. But fear not, for Pam is not without her beliefs. On the pressing issue of our times, for example: "I've never had any contact with anyone who has taken drugs," says Pam. (Actually the other dry cleaning girl smokes pot, but don't tell.) On her parents: They are "great friends. We sit down and talk about something and if I think they have a better point than I do, I listen to them, and if they think I have a better point they agree with me." And radical students: "I'm a firm believer in authority," says Pam. "Why should I defy my elders just for the sake of defying them?" Ah, yes, the passing scene can often get one down. But should the tale of Miss America prove too much for you, take solace in an item buried way on the inside of the second section of the Times one · Tuesday morning a couple of weeks ago. The headline read: "Champi, Harvard Star Last Season, Gives Up Football." This news came after Harvard lost to BU in an upset. I knew Cham pi had played in the game and figured that he must have gotten hurt. But the headline didn't say anything about an injury; it just said be "gave up." Gave up? What's going on? A good allAmerican-boy type athlete does not just "give up." No fortitude, no guts, no perseverance, a case of unamerican activity pure and simple. But wait-maybe there's another angle, maybe he was failing three of his courses, maybe he has to study real hard for his business school exams or something, maybe it's a case of true love with a Radcliffe honey in the picture with whom Cham pi would rather spend his time, maybe he's going to drop out of Harvard to sign up with the Green Berets. No, it was simpler. Champi asked himself why he was playing football, decided that he did not know and, in a distinctly unsisphus-like existential moment, decided there was no sense trying any more. "I've been thinking about my relation to the game for a long time-several years. I kept asking myself why I was playing. I wasn't doing it for publicity, or for pride, or for the thrill of victory. I wasn't getting those things from it. I can't take the game seriously any more." continued on page 14

The October 15 Moratorium was the largest national effort to date to end the war. The peace convocation on the Green was the largest anti-war rally in New Haven's history. For the first time, the leaders of the effort to end the war were the official leaders of the Yale and New Haven Community. Only two years ago, on the David Susskind Show, Kingman Brewster stated that if he woke up as President of the US at 9:00 tomorrow morning he would not know what to do. Today the New Haven Register has grouped him with other "left wing campus manipulators." Who knows, tomorrow's Register might have his mug shot, along with AI Lowenstein, Richard Lee, Joe Duffy, Ella Grasso, and Stuart Udall, with a banner headline announcing their arrest for conspiracy. For the anti-war effort, the Moratorium was a tremendous success. In terms of the Yale community, the most important moment was when the president of the University took a personal stand against the war, joining his fellow faculty members and students in a common effort to restore the faded sense of the university as a moral conscience of a screwed-up nation. Either/Or. Perhaps a better title would be Neither/Both. Jonathan Lear.


31 The New Journal I October 26, 1969

Fat Bernie: keeping Gotham's gossip grinding by David Freeman

Information about Fat Bernie, the we11kno'!Vn New York gossip plugger (see The New Journal; October 29, 1967) has dried up at Yale since Contributing Editor David Freeman left the Drama School a year ago. We've located Freeman in New York where he's re-established contact with Bernie. The fo11owing is his report. Coppleman called Fat Bernie at 7:45 Friday morning to complain about the Dustin Hoffman item in Earl Wilson's Thursday column: "Gotham's newest rider on a superstar-ship, Dustin (Midnight Cowboy/ The Graduate) Hoffman has refused two major H'wood offers to work in NYC-seems Dusty can't leave his analyst long enough to go to sunland." Fat Bernie placed that item with Wilson a week ago, and when it hadn't appeared by Wednesday, he figured it was dead. The call from Coppleman, the analyst in question, and the early hour caught him off balance. "You will forgive the hour, Mr. Gersten; however, this is my only free time." "It's OK." "I am calling in reference to the column of Mr. Earl Wilson in theNew York Post of yesterday afternoon." "What item?" "Regarding Mr. Dustin Hoffman." "Oh yeah." "Mr. Gersten, I as well as my co11eagues consider it highly unethical, not to mention irresponsible, to make public information of such a highly intimate and confidential nature." "Why you calling me?" "Mr. Wilson tells me you are his agent in such matters. Information about a patient's psychic state is extremeiy confidential, as well as potentially volatile." "You called Wilson?" "Yes-" "This morning already?" "Yes, his anxiety level, Mr. Gersten, is already dangerously high-" Fat Bernie let out a slow whistle and considered Earl Wilson, who never gets up before noon, being awakened at 7:30. "-not to mention an acute distress. I would like to know, Mr. Gersten, how you are privy to such information?" "Was he mad?" "I think a more accurate description might be acutely distressed." "Did he say anything about me?" "I don't believe he is aware you were involved in this matter. I learned of your-" " Wilson?" "No, no. I am referring to Mr. Hoffman. I would not presume to offer a diagnosis of Mr. Wilson's anxiety level without an initial interview at the very least." "Yeah, but when you woke him upWilson-was he mad? Acutely distressed or anything?" "It was difficult to tell. I'm not certain that I did wake him. But more to the point-" "If you called him already this morning you woke him. And he was mad." "Be that as it may, the point is, I need

David Freeman, a former Lawrence Langer Fellow in playwrighting at the Drama School, is a Contributing Editor of The New Journal. His writing has been published in New York magazine, and he is currently at work on a novel.

to know your sources." "You mean about Hoffman?" "Yes." "I don't know. I guess !"heard it around." " Mr. Gersten, I would like to point out to you that the nature of a doctor-patient relationship is extremely confidential, not to mention delicate." "Well, he's gotta learn how to get along with the press if he's gonna be a star." "Bandying about half-truths regarding that relationship is dangerous to both patient and doctor." ''The Press's first obligation is to the truth." "And I suspect its second obligation is to sensationalism. We will, however, overlook the entire incident if you can assure me you'H declare a moratorium on news concerning my patient's psychic state. I hope Mr. Hoffman's attornies will be as forgiving." "Well news is news, but we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, so I guess it wouldn't hurt if I check with you for a medical opinion before we run anything on Hoffman. How's that?" "Excellent. Now if you'll excuse me, my first patient is due." "Who's that?" "I beg your pardon?" ''The first patient?" Fat Bernie reached over to the table next to his bed and groped for his notebook. "I wondered if it was anybody in show business?" "Mr. Gersten, my work is extremely confidential." "Do you have any other stars for clients?" "As a matter of fact several of my patients are from the entertainment world. As you may know, the theatre creates a great many pressures-" "You handle Tennessee Williams?" "My clients, I mean patients, are primarily performers." "What's your first name Doctor?" "Alois, however, I fail-" ''That's A-L-?" ''A-L-0-I-S." "How do you spell your last name?" "C-0-P-P-L-E-M-A-N." "What about Sammy Davis? You handle him? Zero Mostel? Who else besides Hoffman?" ''That's none of your business." "But if I know, then I can check all the time with you, so we don't have this problem again." "Mr. Gersten, I must get back to my work." "How much do you charge?" ''That is confidential information." "More than seventy-five dollars an hour? Just say yes or no." "Yes. No. My first patient is arriving. Good-bye." "Davis or Mostel?" Dr. Coppleman hung up and Fat Bernie sank back into bed, smoothing his red, size fifty-six short, Sulka pajamas and waited for an angry call from Wilson. As he dozed he phrased Coppleman items in his mind: What famous young actor has his analyst begging the Press to lay off? The Doc sez 'It's rough on my boy, so come on fellas, take it easy.'

Or, he might kick it .off with the Doctor: Dr. Alois Coppleman, the seventy-five-dollars an-hour-plus shrink to the stars (Dustin Hoffman etc.) has asked for a let-up on reports of the mental state of one of our town's most famous.


35 Broadway, New Haven, Conn.

The Yale Symphony Orchestra John Mauceri, Director Opening Concert of the 1969-1970 Season · Ravel

Rapsodie Espagnole

Rodrigo Fantasia para un Gentilhombre Gregory Bonenberger, guitar winner 1969 Yale Symphony Concerto Competition Bizet

Carmen: Act IV Susan Wyner soprano; Richard Anderson, tenor Joy Zornig, messo-soprano; Jack Litten, baritone Yale Glee Club, Yale Women's Chorus, Baldwin School Chorus

8:30P.M. Friday, October 24 Admission Free. Woolsey Hall

we knew you were . com1ng, so we baked a cake!

. and roast beef, and turkey and ham. we also have steaks and chops and seafood-all moderately priced

GOGIE~~ breakfast special, lunch, dinner, snacks, fountain corner George and Howe St. open weekends 8 a.m. to midnight telephone 776-2856

At 9:00 Bernie decided Wilson wasn't going to call and chew him out after aJI, which meant Wilson was really angry. When he was upset he would call and yell for a few minutes to get it out of his system. Over the years, Bernie has learned how much contriteness soothes each columnist. For Wilson you sounded scared for a while and then pretty soon everybody is friends again, business as usual. But when he doesn't call to yeJI that's when he's really upset. He just disappears-out when you caJI and busy if you can find him. Bernie, upset from being awakened early by bad news, dawdled over his Danish at Al's Broadway Lunch and brooded about an angry Earl Wilson. Friday mornings Bernie goes to theN ew York Times building on 43rd St. for advance copy of Sunday's theatre section, which is printed Wednesday night. Today, because he'd lingered at Al's, he is behind schedule and didn't get to the Times till after 1 1:00. He mumbles hello to Sid Kone the circulation man who gives him the last advance copy of the paper. On the way out he picks up a copy of the 3 star edition of the Daily News and walks back to Al's for a second breakfast. He sits in the back again with another coffee and Danish, glancing through the News entertainment section. Pushing the News aside, he leafs through the Times, scanning the News of the Rialto and Film Notes, the closest thing to gossip in the · Times: .. After seeing just two pages of an outline, Twentieth Century Fox has snatched the screen rights to Answered Prayers, Truman Capote's novel-in-progress, for a down payment of $350,000. The full prize could go as bjgh as $750,000, depending on sales of the book.... Bernie chews his Danish and stares at the item, turning its phrases around in his mind. "Answered Prayers. More Capote." It was Fat Bernie who first broke the news of the film sale of In Cold Blood. The publicity office at Twentieth still sends him a check for twenty-five dollars every time the title appears in the colum ns. Answered Prayers, however, is news to Bernie, which means the Times has a real exclusive. He reads it again and considers: ''Times won't be on the stands till Saturday night ... Wilson closes his Saturday column at 1:30 this afternoon." Now Fat Bernie prides himself on always getting his own items. He has worked hard over the years building a network of informants: the bar tenders, head waiters and production secretaries who keep him posted on the comings and goings of the stars. Bernie has spent ten years carefully establishing good will with the press agents and columnists who keep him in gossip and in business. His financial success rests on hls reputation-for if Bernie sometimes exaggerates an item or makes one up, he is known in the trade for never double planting, giving the same item to two columnists at once. Feeding the Capote item to Wilson from an advance copy of the Times is unethical, but the chances are it'll never be traced to Bernie anyway, and if the maneuver impresses Wilson enough to smooth over the Hoffman incident, Bernie feels it's worth the chance. With luck, the Times will be frustrated that Wilson beat them to the Capote item, but will never know how it happened. Bernie looks up at the clock: "11 :30,"

gets up quickly and takes Al's por table typewriter from behind the counter, pulls Friday's menu o ut of it and carries it back to his table. He shoves a piece of manila copy paper from his briefcase into the carriage and punches out: EARL'S PEARLS

Dept. of hard work: 20th. Cent. Fox just paid Truman (In Cold Blood) Capote $350,000 for a two-page outline of his next book, Answered Prayers. When the tome is finished, Truman could get as much as $750,000. You heard it here'first.

Fat Bernie tears the papers out of the typewriter so that the news will look as hot as it is. If he can get it to Wilson before 1:30, Wilson can break it before the Times is on the stands and Bernie will be back in Wilson's good graces. First, though, he has to find Wilson. Fat Bernie has studied Earl Wilson's working habits for years. In the afternoons Wilson can usually be found at P. J . Clarke's or Downey's, and after the theatre he'll probably show up at Sardi's. Bernie knows that when Wilson is awakened early as he was by the Coppleman call, be is likely to stop at Downey's for brunch. Bernie fishes a handful of dimes out of the envelope of dimes he keeps in his brief case, and moves into Al's phone booth, taking his coffee and the remnants of a second Danish with him. The afternoon man at Downey's is Tony della Rocca, and he and Bernie have been trad ing favors for years. "Tony?" "Yeah?" "Bernie. Earl Wilson there?" "No, but I got Leslie Caron." "Caron, huh?" Bernie cradles the phone between h is shoulder and the folds of h is size twenty neck and makes a note in his book: "Leslie Caron on a rare Gotham visit, dropped iTJ at Jim Downey's Steak House for an early afternoon refueling . ..."· "Yeah, she just walked in. She's got one of them big hats on, I can't see her face." Tony pauses for a moment, and then almost as an afterthought adds, "she's by herself, too." " .. playing Greta ('I vant to be alone') Garbo in a floppy .... What color's the hat?" "Too dark to tell." " .. gray hat. Thanks Tony." "You comin' over?" "No, I gotta find W ilson." Berrue leaves the phone booth door open while he tries to concentrate on Wilson's irregular morning schedule. His bulk fills the booth and the glass door starts to steam. As Bernie squirms on the stool he feels his huge bottom ooze over the sides of the seat. H e wipes his forehead with his band and mops a pudgy palm across his shiny sh arkskin pants. AI brings him more coffee. Fat Bernie sips, and on the chance that Wilson has been trying to get him, calls his answering service and learns that although Wilson hasn't been beard from, Coppleman has called twice, at 9:55 and again at 10:55. Bernie glances up at the clock: "11 :30'' He stuffs another dime in and calls Coppleman. "Ah, Mr. Gersten, bow are you?" " OK ." "I wanted you to know that I've spoken with M r. H offman's attornies. I've suggested that a lawsuit at this time might complicate things, medically speaking." "OK." "I hope that will make matters a little easier for you."


;

5 1The New Journal I October 26, 1969

"It'll help." "Good." "Did you talk to Wilson again, Doctor?" "No, no I haven't. Do you think he'll still be upset?" "I guess so." "But you'll still be supplying him with news?" "I guess so." "Good." Bernie shifted around in the phone booth again, uncomfortable talking to Coppleman and anxious to resume his search for Wilson. "Dr. Coppleman, is there something else you want to tell me?" "As a matter of fact, now that you ask, there is something... " "What?" "Ahh, well it might be advantageous to me personally to have a little something in the papers about my wife's birthday." · "Mmm." "I rarely read the columns myself of course, but it would mean a Jot to her. You see at the moment our relationship is a bit strained, and this might-" "In Wilson?" "Actually Leonard Lyons is more what I had in mind. Do you think you can arrange it?" "I'll see what I can do." "I'd appreciate that. Her birthday is on the twenty-first. It's Cynthia. Cynthia Coppleman. Thank you." "Sure. Maybe you could do me a favor." "I'll try Mr. Gersten." "You could keep me posted on some of your clients-" "I don't understand-" "It wouldn't have to look like it necessarily came from you." "I couldn't give out any information that might prove damaging-" "No, no. Nothing damaging." · "We11 as long as it wasn't damaging." "No, no. For instance, I beard Hoffman's going to do a film for Sidney Lumet. Is that true?" "It'll never happen." "Lumet make the offer?" "Oh yeah, but he'll turn it down, take my word. He may do a few TV guest shots, but that's all for a while." "What about Mostel?" "I don't handle him, but I hear he's not going to work for a few months." ''Mmm.'' "Anything else?" "Not at the moment." "Thanks." "However, ahh ... well, Mr. Gersten, there is one thing more." "Yeah?" "If you should ever feel the need-that is, I'm sure your work must be very exacting, and if you think it could be of any value, I'd be glad to try to find an hour or two to meet with you each week." "Yeah?" "I'm heavily booked of course, from eight to six daily in fact, but if you feel it would be of value to you, I think I can clear the time." "I dunno, your rates are kinda steep." "I'm certain we could work something out. We are talking of course of therapy, which is far less expensive than analysis-" "Therapy, bub?" "-There are frequently things I would like printed in the papers." "You shrink me and I plug items for you?" "Something like that could be arranged." "I'd have to think about that."

"Good, good." "I'm kinda rushed right now, but I'll let you know." Bernie hangs up, makes a few more jottings about Cynthia Coppleman•s birthday. AI brings him more coffee. "What time is it?" AI points to the Pepsi- · Cola clock above the cash register and wanders back to the counter. "11 :45." Bernie slurps his coffee and stuffs another dime in the phone. On an off chance that they'll know, he calls Wilson•s office. Three rings and no answer which means that the answering service will pick up. Bernie curses Wilson and his answering service, which usually has three day old information. · "Six-three hundred." "I'm looking for Earl." "Who's calling?" "Bernard Gersten. I'm looking for Earl." "Leave your name and number, I'll have him call you." "Do you know where he is?" "May I have a number where he can reach you?" "I'll be out. It's important. Do you-" "Mr. Wilson•s having breakfast." Bernie thinks for a moment. Wilson sometimes stops off for poached eggs at The Stage Delicatessen. "Is he at The Stage Deli-" "I don't know sir-" Bernie cuts her off, presses a fourth dime into the phone and calls Jack Luft, the cash register man at The Stage. "Yeah, he's here. He just got his eggs. Should I tell him to wait?" "No, no. Don't tell him I called. I'm coming over, only Jack, don't let him leave." Bernie gulps the last of his coffee, squeezes out of the phone booth, and slaps a dollar on the register. Outside he grabs a cab and beads crosstown on 54th St. In the back of the cab Bernie stares nervously at the Capote note. He folds it into a small white envelope, and using his brief case for a desk, writes with a green Pen-tel across the front of the envelope: MR. EARL WILSON. Private. As they near The Stage, Bernie notices the driver's clock. "Almost noon ... if Wilson's alone ... it's all OK." At 7th Ave. Bernie gets out and hands the driver a buck. "I'll walk from here."Lugging his briefcase and starting to sweat, Bernie moves quickly toward the deli. He plows through the double glass doors and searches for Wilson. Jack looks up, nods and points toward the back. "Wilson." Fat Bernie stops abruptly and modulates from nervousness into a more casual key. "Take it easy ... smooth like Earl." Wilson is by himself facing the front, mopping up the remains of his poached eggs with a comer of rye toast. He sees Bernie and the trace of a flush appears at his throat. just above his tie. He looks back at his plate as Bernie saunters over. ·!::arl baby, how are you?" Wilson looks up at Bernie, doesn't answer, gives a little shrug, and finishes off a large glass of orange juice. "Guess you got a phone call this morning, huh Earl?" "I guess we both did." "Yeah, well don't worry about it. They can't touch you. That item was one hundred percent true, and I beard from the lawyers-no problem." Wilson signals for more coffee. "It's good I run into you. Earl. Mind if I sit down?" Wilson shrugs again, noncommittally. Bernie pulls out one of the chrome and red leatherette chairs and calls to the counter, "Girnme coffee black

and a Danish." As Bernie sits he casually puts his hand in his jacket pocket as if there were a gun there. "Whatta you got?" Bernie tak~s his time. "Let him get interested." "Look, if you got something for me, just give it to me, and cut the charades. I already had enough tricks for one day." Bernie droops his head and looks contrite. "Nervous . .. look nervous." He shifts his weight on the chair. The waitress delivers his order. Bernie draws the slightly crumpled envelope from his pocket and hands it to Wilson like an olive branch. Wilson accepts and tears it open as Bernie takes a large bite of Danish, up to the prune center. Wilson reads. "Capote again?" "Absolute exclusive." "How long?" ''Through tomorrow, then it breaks big. Real big." "Lyons doesn't have it?" Bernie looks hurt. "Absolute exclusive." Wilson grunts, gets up and beads for the phone. Half way to the booth he stops abruptly and turns back to Bernie about to speak. Before be can say anything, Bernie flips him a dime. Wilson grins and goes to the phone. Bernie watches him dial and takes another bite of Danish, letting the remains of th·e prune squeeze between his teeth and the icing stain the corners of his mouth. With Wilson in the phone booth filing the Capote story, Fat Bernie eases away from the table. He goes by the register, waves to Jack, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger, and smiles back toward the phone booth. Then Fat Bernie wanders back across town to Tlie Luxor Baths where he'll read The Sunday Times, write up the Caron item for Leonard Lyons, and think about Coppleman's offer as he sits and soaks in the steam . •


Get out your American flag and fly it high: the 'journalistic godawful' in New Haven by James Mann

Aa Editorial Tomorrow get out your Amerjcan flag and fly it high. Thex:e is no better way of showing Hanoi - and millions of friends and foes in other countries - that we are not seeking "peace-at-any-price'' but rather yeace with honor in Vietnam. · · \

This is a dirty and ugly war that nobody wanted.

THI: R.EcmTD said so when President Kennedy took the expanded military steps that first bogged us down In Vietnam. We said so when President Johnson failed to control our goals there. We say so now. But a war that nobody wants is not necessarily a war that everyone can abandon. The pages of history are littered with examples of peace-at-any-price attempts which invariably led NOT to peace but to ever disastrous and widespread wari It takes two sides to make a peace pact and the present impasse stems frOID the North Vietnam refUS81 to recognize an AIDeri· can involvement that no responsible American can deny. Tomorrow's ..~ moratorium"-let's face itwas conceh•ed by th8 same left-wing campus manipulators who curiously have shown more respect for Ho Chi Minh and Cba1mian Mao than for the President of the United States. But the goal of peace--;.an honorable peace-;-ts DM the exclusive properly of the young or the establishment-baiters any more than it is exclusive With campus pedagogues and politicians. Jt is the lloilest goal of the overwhelming American majority. As the demonstration apparently widens to attract a broad ranp of American opinion there is hope that it may be lifted out of the nit of just one more protest iDd give us, instead, a ehailce to show ~t ~tmelit and ilebate do not neeessarDy mean 4tsanity or 1U!!ticmal disarray. So fly the flag tomorrow at every home and business. Let every flag that City Han can muster be on c!isplay.

Let every flag Gult Yale can fly t ,. the campus. Let the fla&_~ress Americe Amertean ,.,_...,. bl 1Jaii ,.'DUCe an4 freellllb . IAt 4M A"" Do words can, 8Ur OV6I wbehr

JloDor.

Let's not be Sblr Spta•

fly tbe Star

~n-.nrde4

'R'

They sit right there on the newsstand at Liggett's, beside the New York and Boston papers: in the morning, the JournalCourier, and in the afternoon, the Register. Next to Yale's, their tradition is probably the oldest in New Haven; next to anyone's, their tradition is the most notorious. No one forgets the New Haven newspapers. Their notoriety has four fundamental sources. First and foremost is their anachronistic view of the world. Year after year, through their editorials, headlines and news placement, the New Haven papers proclaim the virtues of frugality, free enterprise and patriotism. Year after year, they attack welfare and government spenqing, student protest and the black movement. At the beginning of this century, when the Jackson family began to publish the Register, it represented the views of the educated upper classes, to which John Day Jackson belonged. But in recent years, while upper-class businessmen have switched at least to the muted and concerned corporate-conservatism of Time and Fortune, the Register and Journal-Courier have held their own, representing the parochial flag-and-motherhood conservatism of the lower middle .classes-from which many of the papers' current editors have risen. At times-such as the Vietnam Moratorium last weekit is difficult to distinguish conservatism from pathos. The Register heralded the Moratorium on the eve of the event with a front-page editorial-a journalistic device most papers use for only the most urgent of crises. Entitled "Fly the Flag for Peace With Honor," the editorial exhorted residents of New Haven to " .. get out your American flag and fly it high .... There is no better way of-showing Hanoi ... that we are not seeking 'peace-at-any-price' but rather peace with honor in Vietnam... : . "Tomorrow's 'peace moratorium'-let's face it-was conceived by the same leftwing campus manipulators who curiously ha~e shown more respect for Ho Chi Minh and Chairman Mao than for the President of the United States.... " Let's not be Star Spangled Suckers. Rather, let's fly the Star Spangled Banner." The Moratorium editorial hardly represented aggressive, pioneering journalism -but then, one major characteristic of the New Haven papers is the absence of even a semblance of aggressive reporting. For who needs it? To a monopoly newspaper organization, investigative and interpretive reporting (and even movie reviews, which the New Haven papers do not run) mean only a possible loss of business or leadership. The management discourages editors from investigative journalism by keeping skeleton news staffs the minimal size required to put together a daily paper. In turn, the editors discourage their reporters. The few instances of aggressive reporting in New Haven, which usually are from the papers' joint Hartford bureau or from the JournalCourier city staff, come at the initiative and persistence of reporters. But these efforts are accomplished against overwhelming pressure to conform to the routines of bland daily articles, and eager young reporters have tended either to

James Mann, H arvard '68, was on the staff of the New Haven Journal-Courier until this past June. Now a reporter for the Washington Post, he has contributed to the Yale Alumni Magazine.

come and go quickly (at the JournalCourier) or to stay and stultify (at the Register). Day after day the New Haven papers produce a ~parse page-or-so of local news without ever attempting to examine or explain specific problems in the city. Reading the Register and the JournalCourier, one would be led to think that the Mafia bypasses New Haven along 1-95 from New York to Bridgeport to Providence. There is nothing in the papers about ghetto problems or housing discrimination; there is nothing of an investigative nature about local politicians. The third trademark of the New Haven papers, in recent years, has been their close ties to the city administration. In discussing national policy, the New Haven papers are conservative-RepubUcan and the city administration is liberal- Democratic. But the men who govern New Haven and those who write and edit its newspapers have often worked hand-inhand in past years for mutual benefit. The city administration and the newspapers have reacted similarly to the new social forces, the blacks, the young and the advocates of the poor-so that, locally, they are more often allied than at odds. Far too much of the local news in the Register and Journal-Courier has come directly from Mayor Richard Lee, development administrator Melvin Adams or antipoverty chief Milton Brown, all of whom are in daily contact with reporters. Far too little news is independently gathered from city hall and city agencies. Lastly, the Register and the JournalC ourier are known for their bias and even outright racism, both in the attitudes of some individuals on the paper and in official news policy. The suburban news and the inner-city news in the papers contrast sharply. In the suburban pages, there is ample space for honors and awards, school plays and graduations, promotions and clubs. For the inner-city, there is only the police blotter. The first-day treatment of the arrest of eight black Panthers in the Register last spring will stand as a classic example of thoughtless, yellow journalism;

Panther Clriel Held In Slaying it compared strangely with the papers' treatment of gangland murders. On May 22 the Register greeted its readers with an eight-column headline that blared, "8 Panthers Held in Murder Plot." Beneath the banner headline were mug shots of the eight accused Panthers. "Eight members of the Black Panther Party here were arrested on murder charges early this morning in connection with the discovery of a mutilated body in Middlefield Wednesday night," the Register proclaimed. It went on to provide its readers with gory details: " ... marks on the body indicated that the victim was tortured before being shot in the head and chest with a large calibre pistol. ... During the course of his trial [the victim] was scalded with boiling water, stabbed with an ice pick and bumed with fire while his hands w~re tie~. with rope and tape, police sa1d....


71 The New Journal I October 26, 1969

the house

2¢ The next day, the Register dutifully recited the gory details again. But there were a few changes. The ice pick became "a small sword," perhaps to add variety to the story. And many of the charges were mentioned without the appended phrase, "police claim." The accusations, in other words, were being described as facts-a classic case of a newspaper offering its own guilty verdict before the case had even come to triaL On the Hill and in D ixwell, New Raven's black commun ity, ministers and m ilitants alike, will say without hesitation that the New Haven papers do not represent their views or interests. And in the combined newsroom of the two papers, one can easily discern a chilly mistrust among editors whenever a black, or any known advocate of the poor, brings in a press release. In the same newsroom, visiting white politicians are welcomed like old friends.

Unity For An Honorable Peace 2

J

Examining my schedule one day last winter, I noticed that a well-known New Haven black leader was scheduled to speak at the Yale School of Public Health the following afternoon. Mentioning the speech to the editor in charge, I asked whether he would want a photographer there. He didn't. As I walked away, the editor called me back. "We don't want a public relations job about this guy," he told me, flagrantly violating the fundamental principle in journalism that reporters go to an event without preconceptions. "I've seen this guy," the editor continued, "and I know who he is." Barely suppressing my fury, I asked who he was. "He's a junkie with a big mouth." After the ghetto disturbances in August, 1967, veteran J ournal..Courier reporter Bill Betsch, who has since left the paper, went out and interviewed scores of people. According to Betsch, their feelings, reactions and explanations filled an entire reporter's notebook. But the newspaper turned aside all suggestions that it might run any probing articles about why the disturbances had occurred-the kind of articles which so many other papers tried to write. Readers of the New Haven papers could find no serious attempts to explain what happened; the material of perhaps the most skiJied interviewer in town was not used. Instead, there was an editorial about the courage of the police force. One afternoon last January, I received word that the Hill Parents' Association would be having a press conference the following morning. Working for the morning Journal-Courier, I was assigned, in such cases, to report the substance of the morning press conference before it occurred-thereby "beating" the afternoon papers which would otherwise carry the news first. I went to see John Barber at HPA and persuaded him to give me a copy of the statement he would read at the morning press conference. That statement, drafted by Barber, called upon black people to desert Dick Lee in the coming mayoral race. It was the first political statement of the year from the black community.

Bringing the statement into the newsroom, I showed it to an editor and went to work. In the course of the evening, I developed what is known as a "new angle" in the story: I called Hank Parker, then chairman of the Black Coalition, and was surprised to hear Parker say that the Black Coalition was thinking of forming its own political organization. Parker also said gingerly that be might resign from the Black Coalition to direct such a group-a statement which broadly hinted at his own eventual candidacy. That night I combined the HP A "dumpLee" statement and Parker's comments into a rather staid, prosaic article of standard length, adding whatever information I could find about the role of blacks in past New Haven elections. After quietly and routinely discussing the articles with an editor at least three times during the evening, I handed in the piece, waited while it was edited, was told there were no problems, and left for the night without sensing any controversy. The next morning, to my amazement, I opened up the Journal-Courier city page to find two banal wire-service stories where my article had been placed. The story about blacks and politics did not appear in the paper. Two editors, I was later told, had suddenly killed the story at one o'clock that morning-it was a most unusual move, never fully explained to me. Those two editors have since been promoted. They are now the city editor and assistant city editor of the JournalCourier.

New Chief Justice A Law And

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These incidents serve as an introduction to the newsroom of the New Haven newspapers, with its frequent rigidity, mistrust, discouragement of initiative and prejudice. There is a myth in New Haven about the Register and Journal-Courier, as there is about many newspapers in this country so obsessed with conspiracy. According to the myth, the ruling Jackson family censors every single page from every reporter's typewriter, adding and deleting as it wishes until the story represents its own interests. In fact, the publishers rarely rewrite copy; they do not have to. The character of the New Haven papers 4s determined by an elaborate social system which the publishers have helped to foster. That social system includes the practices and attitudes of reporters and editors, and the relationships among them. That character is perpetuated by promotions for the favored, and by the discouragement and eventual alienation or departure of those who do not like the paper's character. It sounds complicated, but the result is simple. More or less, without heavyhanded censorship, the paper comes to look as its publishers wish it to look. At the bottom of the news hierarchy

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Nixon Says War Protesters Can't Make Policy In Street take them out of the building to the streets, wher e they observe social conflict firsthand, they tend to be less biased, as a group, than others on the paper. But the reporters are vulnerable to a number of temptations, of which by far the greatest is the pressure to become a crony of the persons or agency one is assigned to write about. New Haven reporters have done well with the Lee administration. At least two current administration or party functionaries, Fred Gross and Byrne Stoddard, left the New Haven papers to work for Lee. On the current Register staff, urban affairs reporter Donald Dallas has almost never challenged CPI (the anti-poverty agency) or the redevelopment agency. C harles Hines has been the best press agent the police department ever had; Marion McDonald has been a close ally of the New Haven school bureaucracy, and Frank Whalen, an excellent reporter, bas in the past year been considered by some observers to be a Lee oracle. In that delicate task of obtaining stories and information without compromising independence, the Register fares very badly. There are a number of attractions and rewards for the reporters who agree to play along with the game. A few of these are rather concrete: any Connecticut political reporter who is not an outright alcoholic can live for weeks on the bottles of liquor which flow in from the politicians each Christmas. But New Haven reporters are seldom bought. The system isn't that simple. Rather, their independence is slowly eroded away in several ways. First, reporters get the psychological rewards of being insiders who vicariously share power through the information they obtaineven if it is given on a useless off-therecord basis. Second, the reporters find it easier to get their stories and information when they are kind in print to their news sources. When the Register was easy and the JourTUll-Courier a bit rough on Lee and Adams last winter, the city began to give most of its important releases to the Register. It was safer that way. And third, in simple human terms, most reporters like to get along with all those people, including city officials, with whom they must converse on a daily basis.

The city ac;fministration has its sanctions, too. It is sometimes willing to tolerate dissent, but only so much. When Journal-Courier city hall reporter Howard Abramson overstepped that line once last winter in a story about the city's dealings with Yale, Lee asked Abramson to lunch at Mory's and told him sweetly, "I don't bear grudges." Perhaps not, but Lee had made his anger known, and Abramson could hardly help but think twice before plunging in next. time. Beyond withholding stories from areporter and warning him, the city administration may on occasion call or write editors about articles which it does not like. When Register urban affairs reporter Don Dallas wrote a rare critical story early this year about a city report on housing-code enforcement, Adams, the development administrator, wrote an angry letter to executive editor Leeney. It seemed to cool Dallas's temporary fever. New Haven police chief James Ahern has had more run-ins with the New Haven editors than the rest of the Lee administration. In part, Ahern's problems are due to the fact that some of the editors do not like his tough advocacy of gun control. For vague reasons or fears best left to the reader's imagination, at least two editors have carried weapons in the newsroom. But Ahern also does not hesitate to pick up the phone and call the editors when stories displease him. In New Haven, there simply is no concept of the right of a reporter to set down his own observations while still retaining freedom of information. A reporter who is critical in one article is made to feel that he owes a kindness next time. A final and overwhelming problem for New Haven reporters is one of time. Because the publishers are not overly anxious to do any investigative reporting or researched feature articles, they maintain their news staffs at just the size necessary to publish a daily paper. No one reporter can find the freedom to take off even one or two days from his daily responsibilities in order to research a nondaily story. "I can't spare you," the city editor says, and in truth be can't: each editor must make do with the staff he is given. Consequently, most reporters put together a series or other extended articles in their spare time while still writing one or two daily pieces.

Here Are Remarks Tlrat Tire Hippies Early last spring, with welfare promising to be a major issue in Hartford, I formally requested permission to research and write a series on welfare in New Haven: on the people, the costs and administrative problems. "I can't spare you from the beat," I was told, and the proposal sat through the end of the legislative session. In the face of these obstacles, most reporters eventually tire of trying to examine anything but the daily events. Investigating is just too much trouble. Reporters soon learn what the New Haven papers will tolerate and what they won't. After a few unsuccessful attempts, one knows it is useless to suggest, say, a broad article about ghetto problems in the winter (it


101 Llnsly-Chlttenden 7:00 and 9:30p.m. (unless otherwise noted)

didn't happen yesterday in a city agency), or about the massive defense and weapons industry in New Haven (that's inappropriate .... ). Some reporters-the married, the middleaged, the New Haven natives, the not-so-disgruntled-remain at the paper, their own interests dulled, continuing to file the same daily articles about the same daily events or pseudo-events. But a considerable number-the young and mobile, the ambitious or the idealistic-leave the New Haven papers. At the Journal-Courier in particular, where reporters tend to be younger and m01;:e independent, the turnover rate for reporters is comparable with the turnover of bus boys in a Times Square hamburger joint.

Archbishop Deplores Nation's Religious Decline 3 People who have never worked on a newspaper have no idea of the importance and influence of editors vis-a-vis reporters. A reporter writes the story, it is true; but an editor decides whether that story will appear on page one or page thirty-six, whether it will have a one-column or an eight-column headline, whether it will be cut to half its original length, or whether it appear in the paper at all. Clark Kent had very little going for him until he started crashing phone boothsit was Perry White who could raise Caesar's ghost. The editors at the New Haven papersall of them white-are not the urbane, tweedy Columbia Journalism School crowd. Many of them, after varying de-¡ grees of high school and college education, began with small-town Connecticut newspapers or with the Register itself in the '40's and early '50's, when $80 a week was a fantastic salary and $40 not unthinkable. They worked their way up, as reporters and copyreaders, and at some point or other decided to make their career in New Haven. If reporters talk about principles, reality or truth, the editors look on these preoccupations as a strange product of the affluent sixties. What concerns the editors themselves is economic security and their position within the Register organization. ' They are harassed, hard-working men, whose salaries sometimes seem inadequate for the early-morning or late-night work requried. There is a trace of anti-intellectualism among the editors. Any change is seen as a personal affront to Register-Courier editors who have come to look on the world as distasteful but immutable. "I don't know what this world is coming to," one editor said without amusement last spring. Along with the general suspicion towards change goes a deep mistrust of college students and black leaders. Students-especially Yale students, because of their presumed social status-are seen as

will

just a little bit crazy, and black leaders are considered far too demanding. What angers the editors most of all is selfrighteousness. The editors have decided that life is a grind of eating, sleeping and daily routine. Continual appeals to principle and morality bother them, and they relish signs of hypocrisy among the moralists. The "newsmakers" whom they seem to admire most are the clever manipulators, Lee and Adams, who-despite their designation as "liberals"-have learned to get along well with the editors in .their joint conception that life is a game and not a morality play. The problem is, of course, that not everyone in New Haven agrees. The news today deals constantly with injustice, inequality and exploitation, and a newspaper is expected to evaluate conflicting claims about poverty, substandard housing, campus problems and discrimination. New Haven editors are not well equipped to cover these subjects. In many ways they are out of contact with the social problems of the day. The editors tend to live in the suburbs, away from the turbulence of inner-city schools, housing, redevelopment, crime, addiction and welfare. The roads which dislocated many people in New Haven are the ones which carry the editors to work from North Haven, Bethany and North Guilford. But an editor's place of residence does not fix his social outlook. Far more serious is the editor's failure to examine social iUs during working hours. The sad truth is that many New Haven editors rarely, if ever, have time to get out of the newsroom for a first-hand look at the city and its problems. Their jobs do not require such trips. They can and often must sit in the newsroom, day after day, editing copy, assigning reporters and writing headlines without ever once going out to look at the

Rock Mu 1 i c, Dope And Nudity Abound At Coast Festival housing, to attend a Yale class or to talk with welfare recipients. In covering the Harvard strike last spring, I was surprised to find Boston editors there on the scene for observation: this never happened in New Haven. On local New Haven issues, too, the editorial writers rarely seemed to examine issues on their own. They simply read the news gathered by reporters and reacted to it. After months of controversy last winter, the editorial page discovered that the city has a housing problem. A group of editors and editorial writers sat down with ghetto leaders this summer for the first time-years after they should have. If the editors have authority, the business department has raw power. There are continual "requests" from the business staff. One former Courier city editor, now with the Washington Post, Leroy Arons, recalls, "The advertising department was in the newsroom every single night, eating away at our space. You got the general feeling that they dominated the newspaper. They were an ever-present entity, and a powerful one." H e remembers being asked to do stories on the news pages about such vital news events as supermarket openings. Arons was a young journalism-school graduate brought to the Courier in the late '50's by a much-admired managing editor,

~~ Thursday, October 23 Edgar Ulmer's HANNIBAL (1960) Friday, October 24 Jean-Luc Godard's WEEKEND (1968) note: shows at 6:00, 8:30, and 11 :00 p.m. Saturday, October 25 Jean Renoir's THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (1946) Tuesday, October 28 Alexander Dovzhenko's ARSENAL (1928) Wednesday, October 29 Douglas Sirk's IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) Thursday, October 30 Lloyd Kaufman's THE GIRL WHO RETURNED (1969) Friday, October 31 Jades Whale's FRANKENSTEIN (1931) Satu rday, November 1 Roger Corman's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964) T uesday, November 4 Jonas Mekas's THE PERSONAL DIARIES OF JONAS MEKAS (1966) Wednesday, November 5 King Vidor's NORTHWEST PASSAGE (1940)

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10 I The New J ournal I October 26, 1969

'Half White' Mrs. P•ullne Price, 46, •

Metro tlomeltlci werker In Lee Afttel•, tends her ,... ,.,... ... thet lldn i ldn

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Gerald Harrington, wh o has since retired from the paper. Arons's successor as city editor, Phil Shandler-another young Harrington recruit-also left for a Washington job after a couple of years as city editor. "Under Shandler, we used to call the paper Ebony," the current city editor of the Courier, Bob Granger, told me once -the implication being that Shandler was too sympathetic to blacks for the paper's liking. But most Courier and Register editors stay with the organization. They have settled down in their homes, their children are in local schools-a change is a far more drastic move for them than for reporters. Instead, they learn to get along with the publishers and the organization. They know not to push too hard or too fastsmall changes will be made if they wait long enough.

4 The editors feel happy with the status quo -just the way, perhaps, that patriarch publisher John Day Jackson would have wanted them to be. Jackson was a good Yalie-<:hairman of the Yale Daily News, in fact. After graduation in 1890, he spent a year in Europe, a year at Harvard Law School, and four years as a newsman in New York and Washington. In 1896, Jackson came back to New Haven as manager of one of the city's many local newspapers, the New Haven Register. It looked like a nice paper, and Jackson wanted to buy it, so he called a well-heeled college buddy, Sam York, and the two of them purchased the paper. John Day took complete control ten years later, and the Register has been owned by the Jackson family ever since. With his New Haven daily, J ackson managed to work his way into the American pantheon of Horatio Algers. Seventy years ago, publishing a newspaper did not involve marketing surveys, timeefficiency studies and smooth corporate chess. The publishers, like other businessmen, were tyrants: ruthlessly competitive, driven and driving, dogmatic, outspoken and penny-pinching. While Adolph Ochs at the New York Times was creating his

Superheated Plans Of SDS' Mark Rudd

legend in pursuit of an unobtainable impartiality, up the road in New Haven John Day J ackson was creating his own legend of unyielding conservatism. He is remembered by many in New Haven today with a mixture of nostalgia (for his individualism and eccentricity) and scorn (for his insensitivity to social problems). "All his life, he worked harder and longer than anyone else in the organization except his secretary," recalls one person who knew him. Jackson purchased one of the city's morning newspapers, the Journal-Courier, in 1925. While other New Haven papers -the Union, the Times. and the Leaderlanguished and perished, the Register and the Journal-Courier survived the Depression. Jackson was anxious to drive out his New Haven competition. According to one story still making the rounds in New

Haven, he would tell advertisers who were in financial trouble "not to worry" about paying him. Later on, the story goes, after the clients were on sound financial footing, Jackson would show them the back bills and threaten to ask for payment unless they confined their advertising to his papers.

Smut:

There MUST Be A Line

Jackson was not fond of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Once, in 1935, be successfully campaigned in Washington to defeat a New Deal measure which would have raised estate and inheritance taxes. He told Henry Morgenthau and others that the tax bill would wipe out large and small family businesses. For his role in defeating the legislation, Jackson was praised by Times columnist Arthur Krock. As the years passed, some New Haven observers began to wonder whether Jackson wanted a family business at all, or whether he would try to take the presses with him. His sons Dick (Yale '34) and Lionel (Yale '37) went right to work for father, and waited and waited. They must have gotten a bit restless. In 1953, Dick (he was then forty-three years old and his father eighty-five) merited the momentous promotion from "assistant to the publisher," his title of the previous fifteen years, to the new position of "assistant publisher." Old man Jackson continued to keep his hand in the business for another long seven years, until at last, bedridden in Grace-New Haven Hospital in late 1960, he finally relinquished control to his sons. Five months later, John Day Jackson died at age ninety-three. His strong opposition to estate and inheritance taxes became understandable when the Jackson estate was valued at $61,207,934. (It must have been a "heavy news" week in New Haven when this figure was made public. The Hartford Times carried the story, but the New Haven papers had not a word.) Those who expected rapid change in the New Haven papers after the death of the elder Jackson did not know the family. The two papers remained antediluvian in politics (they were among the few nonSouthern newspapers to endorse Barry Goldwater in 1964); Victorian in morals (until a couple of years ago, the word "rape" was edited to "assault", and the Yale Drama School production of ''Tis Pity She's A Whore" was once renamed "Tis Pity She's Bad"); and niggardly in business (the news staff remains non-union, salaries are abominable, and morale is low). The two Jackson sons-who are said to feud on occasion-have divided their responsibilities, with Dick concentrating on news and editorials and Lionel on business. Many of the key news and editorial positions are still held by men recruited and trained in the anci~n regime of John Day. Today, while even the New York Daily News rushes along young college and journalism-school graduates, the Register organization changes little. The executive editor of the two papers since 1961 has been Robert J. Leeney. a native New Haven boy who joined the Register as a reporter and drama critic in 1940 and has been writing the Jackson's right-


11 I The New Journal! October 26, 1969

•

wing editorials for more than twenty years. Second-ranking in the news hierarchy is Charles T. "Charlie" McQueeney, who graduated from a New Haven high school in 1927 and has been with the Register ever since. Among Register reporters, McQueeney is known for his policemanfireman mentality. His car contains a police radio, and he sometimes cruises up and down New Haven streets at night, apparently dreaming of action. While Dick and Lionel Jackson have carried their father's ideas and some of his top aides through the 1960's, the future publisher, a third-generation Jackson, bas also begun to learn the game of monopoly. He is Herrick Jackson, a lanky, amiable young man, grandson of John Day Jackson and nephew of the current publishers. Herrick graduated from Yale in 1962, then went on to Columbia Journalism School; he served briefly as city ball reporter for the Journal-Courier, and also apprenticed for two years at the Louisville Courier-Journal, where an editor says he was not overly ambitious and remained a "publisher's relative" employee. Around New Haven, Herrick bas lent the impression that be would like somehow to remove the newspaper's notoriety. He is the only Jackson who has conversed on occasion with several of the disaffected young reporters, or who attends Yale seminars with Tom Wicker and others. Under Herrick, it is said, the paper will at least moderate if not change its editorial

stances: it may make some of the same changes which other newspapers are making in the 1960's. But it will be making them in the 1980's.

5 The opinions and whims of the publishers are the basis for most of the Catch-22 decisions which make the Register and Journal-Courier what they are. But despite the fact that the papers suffer under the same anachronistic administration, they are not quite two peas in a pod. In comparison with one another, the two papers are noticeably different. The JournalCourier traditionally has allowed its reporters a bit more freedom in their writing, and it has often hired the kind of writers who like to develop their own style. Since these reporters come and depart quickly, the small morning paper has an anarchic, unpredictable quality to it: it usually contains the more interesting reporting of the two competing city staffs, and also (when it is forced to use a new young reporter) has a knack for the journalistic godawful. At the death of John Day Jackson, a Journal-Courier obituary noted, almost plaintively, that after the purchase of the morning paper in 1925, "The Register remained his (Jackson's) chief concern." There could be no question of this. Over the years, the Register company devoted so little financial or promotional effort to the Journal-Courier that most observers as-

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sumed the morning paper was being maintained only to ward off potential entrants to the New Haven newspaper market. It may also have served as a tax write-off, too, in early years when the morning paper probably operated at a loss. Today the Register, with a circulation of 107,000, is the paper which goes out to the sprawling Connecticut suburbs, where those who subscribe to the New York Times in the morning pick up a back-page smidgeon of information about New

Marijuana Tams On Dogs Haven before dinner each night. The Journal-Courier, its circulation holding at about 32,000, goes to all those enterprises where newspapers are naturally read in the morning: city agencies, barber shops, the New Haven railroad commuter trains, doctors' and dentists' offices. The Registl!r is supposed to be the paper of record. A couple of reporters each morning are assigned to rewrite articles from that day's Journal-Courier, sometimes changing only the wording, some-

times adding a comment or denial by a city official. The Journal-Courier, which does not rewrite articles from the Register, prides itself on its news scoops, its better writing and layouts. "We always felt like the stepchild," observes former city-editor Arons. And yet through the years, the Courier managed to come up with a few colorful, imaginative stories. Perhaps because the Courier has a much smaller circulation than the Register, the management bas allowed the New Haven reader just a few investigative or interpretive articles over his morning cup of coffee. There are a couple of reasons why the Courier should be a little different. First, its young staff works nights and pictures itself as outside the mainstream of the Regisur bureaucracy. The Courier reporters rarely see the Jacksons, Leeny, or the advertising, business and circulation personnel who work from nine to five. There is a bit of romance to the Courier, and when the paper is running well, its reporters will gather after deadline over midnight beer to dissect the news, the newsmakers and their rivals on the Register. Second, the Courier reporters are forced to work harder than their afternoon rivals in order to come up with their stories. Many people simply release stories to the Register because of its greater circulation. This practice makes things naturally hard, continued on page 14


1 12 I The New J ournall October 26, 1969

The Psychopathology of Seminar Life by Lloyd Etheredge One of the most unhappy experiences is a seminar which never gets off the ground, which is felt to be a burden, a drag, by all of its members. Neither the students nor the professor look forward with excitement or anticipation to its meetings. Outside of the seminar, students freely voice their frustration. Many professors have known the frustration for years and have come to expect it. Yet our "dragging seminars~' continue in their semi-comatose state with students and professor alike half-heartedly playing out their roles to the end. The diagnosis presented by many (e.g. the SDS), that the problem lies only with the structure of educational institutions is, it seems to me, naive. Outside of seminars, students are active and energetic. Yet, as a seminar gets underway, they lapse into a state of nervousness, inhibition and depression. This is motivated behavior, and it is a common occurrence. What is going on? P sychoanalytic theory can, I think, explain these curious symptoms which plague our seminars. To see our seminars as case studies in the "psychopathology of everyday life" is an approach we might wish to avoid. But the truth appears to be, as the psychoanalyst and educator Lawrence Kubie has noted, that "there is an incessant interaction between universal but subtly masked neurotic mechanisms and the educational process, and .. , as a result of this interplay, education is blocked and distorted. The relationship between the two is evidently so close that both must be $01ved if either is to be solved." That the¡ mechanisms about which Kubie speaks are alive in our seminars seems apparent. Part of the painful evidence we all observe-the nervousness, depression and inhibition mentioned . above, for example-suggests that a semmar setting does affect aggressive and erotic drives in ways that temporarily induce neurotic symptoms in students. Since both aggressive and erotic drives are intimately and powerfully involved in learning, it is plausible that the educational process in seminars is also less effective than it might be. The aggressive requirements in learning are clear enough: the challenging of ideas, the rejection of hypotheses, the analysis and breaking down of an argument into its component parts. And much has been written about the importance of sexual curiosity as a basis for attraction to intellectual activity. Abraham Maslow, a psychologist specializing in human motivation, suggests that we consider the process of knowing "at an unconscious level ... as an intrusive penetrating-into, as a kind of masculine sex-role equivalent." Why do the unfortunate inner conflicts which help to create the "dragging seminar" appear? What can we do about the problem? Two starting points for this psychoanalytic investigation suggest th~m­ selves. The first , and probably more bas1c, looks primarily at aggressive conftictsFreud's primal horde model. The second looks at eroticism and seduction. Lloyd Ethuedge is a second year gradUilte student in international relations and a teaching assistant in political science.

Briefly, Freud's primal horde model suggests that an authoritarian "father" leader in a group inhibits both the aggressive and erotic drives of male "sons." The sons resent the authority of the father and also feel he owns the women in the group. They remain inhibited and independent because they are afraid of him. They unconsciously wish his death and wish to devour him. After they have killed and eaten him, they transfer libido to one another, forming a "community" and feeling united by unconscious bonds of guilt for their deed, for they also loved the father. How does behavior in our seminars reflect the dynamics of the primal horde? Aggression is inhibited in the seminar since its prime focus in the here-and-now situation would be the feared authoritarian father (professor). It can be turned back against the self or suppressed, thus yielding depression. It can be expressed in silent protest and hostility by refusing to do "assigned" reading, producing the painful but humorous scene we are all familiar with: Professor (hopefully): "What did you think of the reading?" Students: Oong, nervous silence; students, eyes downcast, each hoping someone has done the reading.) The failure of many students to prepare for seminar discussions, although possibly harmful academically in the tong-run, may be a way of asserting independence against professors (parent surrogates) and actually aid personal growth. Nervous aggression may also be seen in seminars in a disguised form of displaced hostility to authors under discussion, the curious put-downs that sometimes appear (another student serving as "stand-in" for the professor), or the extended and tangential comments of individuals seeki":g to reduce.anxiety. Other defense mechan1sms may be employed: withdrawal ("cutting class") or identification with the professor (e.g. a student who is speaking to the group or even to another student will, when he finishes his point, look nervously or hopefully to the professor instead of toward his fellow students). The deep fear of being "wrong" in a seminar appears as a fear on the part of the student of symbolic castration by the professor. I do not mean to suggest that cutting class, hostility to authors, not doing assigned reading and looking for the professor's reaction are necessarily neurotic symptoms. These can also be rational reactions or expressions of genuine needs. But in the present state of our seminars even these actions are done nervously and often appear to be symptomatic. Not until the problem of authority and its associated fears are worked through, Freud's model suggests, can students be free to be erotically involved in their learning in acquiring the knowledge previously felt to be "owned" by the professor. Nor, until students feel the security of a community, can they relax and feel completely free to express confusions, advance new ideas, and develop their thinking.


13 I The New Journal I October 26, 1969

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The strength of passions from the primal horde which are stirred up in a particular seminar may vary with such factors as the age, rank or personality of the teacher. What logic makes it apply even in groups with relatively accepting, non-authoritarian teachers? The most important answer for psychoanalytic theory is that each new group situation involving authority figures inevitably stirs up ghosts of ancient childhood conflicts with parents. Like the ghosts of the Odyssey who arose and walked the earth when they tasted blood, the ghosts of parents, remembered from childhood, rise up and stand behind the chair of each new authority figure. There are many obvious ways in which professors cause themselves to be seen as authority figures. They act as gatekeepers for their discipline, organizing and rationing knowledge and reading in weekly, prescribed doses. They determine what work is to be done to receive rewards from the university. They hold positions of status in the university and possibly in their field. But, even in more subtle ways, any teacher will often communicate that he is in charge. Often from habit, he takes the role of conferring legitimacy on speakers through acknowledging their raised hands. He dresses more formally than his students. By giving or withholding comments he gives cues to his students about what remarks or behavior will be appropriate. He usually sits at the head of the seminar table or at the front of the room, sometimes a bit removed from other seminar members. In this manner he may subtly create a self-fulfilling prophecy, acting as a father to his students and unconsciously adopting an approach similar to that of his own parents towards himself. ~tudents, however, cannot be seen as unresponsible for perpetuating the problems of the primal horde in the seminar. They often sit so as to maneuver the professor into the chair at the front of the room. They acceed to the professor's gatekeeping functions both as regards the subject matter and in controlling the seminar discussion itself. They think of the seminar as "the professor's" and if he fails to appear for a seminar meeting, they leave. Their ways of dealing with conflicts of power are partly circuitous and indirect: they try to "kill off" the formal and separate authority of the university and incorporate professors and administrators into a "community;" they make evaluative comments on a "professor's" seminar to one another in private rather than faceto-face with the professor while it is dragging along. I have favored these efforts and have been a part of some of them in the past. But we are still avoiding the next step: openly exploring these issues as they continually manifest themselves, and inhibit, everyday life in the seminar. In examining our seminars we need not remain within the confines of the primal horde model. Drawing on the work of more recent analysts, and focusing on the erotic nature of learning and teaching, we might use the analogy of the teacher as a mother to stimulate new insight. The importance of women as authority figures in the home and in the early years of school suggests this train of thought might be a valuable supplement to the primal borde model.

Using this analogy, depression in seminars, as in Melanie Klein's work with children, might be diagnosed as arising from insufficient affection or nourishment, and the solution would be to provide the equivalent-in this case more of the professor's own feelings and exciting ideas ¡ or perspectives, an approach which is often adopted. Lack of student commitment would be partly explained by erratic or insufficient involvement, eroticization and seductiveness by the professor (cf. the mothers in Keniston's The Uncommitted). It would also be partly explained if students are embarrassed to be erotically involved in their subject matter. Since professors are usually male, inhibitions would also result as defenses against homosexual impulses (and associated latent fears of castration) stirred up by the professor's eroticization of the subject matter. The two psychoanalytic approaches to seminar life I have worked with probably are more useful for understanding the reactions of men than those of women. The psychoanalytic theories dealing with women are complex, and it would take another essay of equal or greater length to attempt to apply them. A full treatment would at least include the basic psychoanalytic themes of the Electra complex, of feminine masochism and passivity and of narcissism. Also considered should be such intellectual and cognitive differences between the sexes as women's lesser capacity for abstraction and abstract reasoning and female perceptions of reality which include a lower awareness of conflict. What are the implications? Perhaps one is that women feel they will be better liked by the professor and other males if they remain passive and silent, forming a kind of "ladies auxiliary" and letting the men carry the discussion. My purpose in writing this essay, however, is not to convince other people to see our seminars as primal hordes, (although certainly they have looked like them in the past) or to see teachers as mothers or fathers, or both. My purpose is the opposite, in a very basic sense. The elements which realistically define our association and interactions with each other-voluntary choice, many shared goals and values, rules and procedures derived (more or Jess) by reason and discussion, the interdependencies of teaching and learning-are different from those which define the primal horde or the relations of families. The fact that Freud's model is applicable to how we have often behaved in the past in seminars is comically-and tragically-absurd.

If a psychoanalytic perspective can help us to turn on the lights and dispel some ghosts, then we now have the possibility of seeing each other anew, unencumbered by conflicts from ¡the past. We have the possibility of working together in our seminars to create a new and a better reality. Along this path, of course, lie the risks of greater openness and honesty, the uncertainties of questioning old patterns and habits. A number of realistic problems of emotional perspective must be grappled with by both professors and students. A professor may feel a responsibility to his discipline, to his students or (especially) to himself for organizing his treatment of the subject matter in a particular way. He may feel secure enough in his ability to work with groups, or trusting enough of the possibilities for group development, to allow a seminar to develop which may take on a life of its own and cooperatively set a course which might be different from that which he alone would select. He may not feel comfortable with informality. He may not believe that the "dragging seminar" is a barrier to important learning for his students. A student, too, faces conflicts in developing his approach to learning. He may admire his professor and believe that his greater experience makes dependence on him the recommended state of affairs. He may not know what he really wants or how he learns best. He may feel that other members of the seminar will not support initiatives on his part to examine and to restructure the functioning of the group. Graduate students, in particular, may fear to alienate those members of the faculty whose judgments and recommendations are important for their careers. These problems of emotional perspective are difficult to face and difficult to resolve. While many teachers, removed from their authoritarian and gatekeeper roles in experimental settings, find that their chief previous function bas been to inhibit a rather violent curiosity, many more teachers and students may simply prefer to play out their roles in traditional ways wbich are not, after all, complete failures. But if we can see each other anew, and if we do want something better, then the answer is to affirm our interdependence through action. In the past, students and professors have played out their roles in a mutual conspiracy in silence, either impotent to create an exciting seminar or stumbling onto the right formula almost by chance. The way to a new and a better reality involves a creative act in each of our seminars fed by the exploration and self-aware evaluation of the learning strategies best suited to the needs of group members and to the subject matter. It involves the building and testing of mutual trust and good-will. It involves a flair for adventure. We are in charge here; the quality of seminar life is ours to control. 8


141 The New Journal I October 26, 1969

Journalistic godawful continued from page 11 and getting news becomes even more difficult when Courier reporters write critically of the city administration. In late '68 and early '69, nearly all major statements from Lee and Adams went to the Register, which seemed a bit more controllable. Third and most important, the Courier and the Register had vastly different hiring policies. Development administrator Adams, next to Lee, the city's most experienced media-manipulator, once wryly noted, "The Journal-Courier has a wide range of people and ideas. The Register ranges from cautious to very cautious." Tightly controlled by the Jacksons, Leeny and McQueeny, the Register makes sure its reporters will nor rock the boat. Once promoted to one urban beat, they are left there for years at a time without rotation. Hence, they are very susceptible to the lure of developing compromising friendships with the people and agencies they are supposed to cover. The hiring tradition goes back to the late '50's and early '60's, when managing editor Gerald Harrington hired journalism-school graduates Arons and Shandler and other novices who turned out to be excellent reporters. (One of the reporters who worked under Harrington, Bill Guthrie, is now the Courier sports editor.) In recent years, the aggressive hiring was taken over by city editor Don Sharpe and (managing editor) Wallace. Sharpe, a quick, decisive, talented editor who sometimes shielded his reporters from the Jacksonian whimsy, managed to find or develop some excellent journalists: Bill Betsch, who dropped out of Yale to work full time under Sharpe, became the city's most pervasive questioner (it was Betsch's superb five-part series on Yale's property holdings, in September 1968, which triggered the tax-exemption controversy); Bob Landers and Dyck Andrus, each hired by Sharpe after an Ivy League education and an unhappy stint in Vietnam, became the city's most readable and sardonic journalists. Landers in particular became a modern version of H. L. Mencken, tirelessly pursuing human folly in all corners of New Haven. Sometimes the differences between the two newspapers were embarrassingly noticeable. Last spring, Landers used his sources to write a number of articles about the various candidates who were being considered for the post of school superintendent. Tired of Landers's barbs, the New Haven Board of Education leaked its selection, Gerald Barbariesi, to the Register one afternoon. For the morningafter story, under the headline "SchoolPolitical Carnival," Landers skillfully put together a brilliant account showing how the mayor-who, as Landers phrased it, "shuns overt participation" in educational decisions-had manipulated the selection and the voting. At one point, Landers revealed, Lee had simply failed to appear at a cocktail party at which he was supposed to meet an aspirant flown in from Illinois for the occasion. It was the best article to appear all spring. But the Register education reporter, Marion McDonald, a friend of the education bureaucracy whose saccharine articles and Sunday column more often recall joy of milk and cookies than the problems of inner-city education, was greatly upset by Landers' article. She

felt it was "improper" to report such . information. Unfortunately, however, the Courier was never quite so detached from its big sister as its maverick young reporters wanted to believe. Wages were still low, the staff was still too small to allow any time for work beyond the daily routine, the editorials were still unreal and one or two editors in just the wrong places were absurdly biased. Although hiring young reporters, the Courier lost them to larger newspapers or magazines. As the good-bye parties came ever faster, Sharpe, who had been upset with the long late hours and the constant turnover, last June accepted a position as editor of the Register Sunday magazine. The new city editor, Bob Granger, who bad been for years the suburban editor of the Courier, was regarded as an unimaginative organization mao and a political superhawk. The next few months will probably determine whether the Courier can hold its¡young reporters and its flashes of imaginative writing, or whether it will revert once again to the godawful. Local journalism is dying while local newspapers thrive. The power to report and interpret what happens in this country is being increasingly assumed by an oligopoly of national media: AP and UPI; ¡ the New York Times, the Washington Post and their news services; Time and Newsweek, Life and Look; CBS and NBC. With elaborate expense accounts, their reporters move from airport to airport, nobly and desperately trying to say "what Woodstock means" in time for the sixthirty news, the morning deadline or the weekly cover story. With few exceptions, their styles are as varied as the airports through which they pass. They are fashionably just-liberal, pensive but noncommittal, never too subjective or too passionate for their publications and networks. It is partially by contrast to them that Norman Mailer has seemed such an heroic journalist. NBC News recently said that because of the emerging national media, America had "discovered itself" for the first time in the 1960's. If that is so, the discovery was stunningly superficial. For while Washington committee hearings, Presidential election campaigns, Woodstock, Chicago and the Moratorium are national events to be analyzed by national media, still, much which is important today-the delicate interaction of workers, blacks, suburbanites and students in each town and city-is too complicated and too localized for the national media to understand.in a one- or two-day onslaught. Yet the local newspapers, defying change, discouraging and losing staff, have failed dismally to give perspective within their own bailiwicks. Consequently, to most ordinary people, "the news," meaning the national news, seems oddly distant and unreal, unlike anything which the local papers say is happening nearby. The failure of the New Haven papers is especially unfortunate, because everyone from Robert Dahl to Dick Lee and Ed Logue to AIM has looked on New Haven as the "urban microcosm," the small city which can easily be studied and which ought to be manageable. The Register and the Journal-Courier certainly do not Jack matters to ponder: for example, New Raven's increasing disillusionment with redevelopment and the anti-poverty program; the increasingly different ways of

life of the deserted city and the burgeoning suburbs; the faltering attempts of anational university and its students to define themselves locally. Instead of exploring such problems the papers have confined themselves to the routine and the familiar. Register columnist Frank Whalen wrote despairingly of the glib and facile interpretations of New Haven by the national media after the 1967 disturbances: one might sympathize, had not the Register, by deciding not to ask questions of New Haven, forfeited its own chance. Unlike the local stores and industries which are also swept away in the process of nationalization, the local newspapers will not die out. They remain extremely profitable, because local advertising pours in, and because the television-watchers and the Times-readers will still, for a dime, buy the publication which gives them the movie schedules and the meeting times. They do not look to the local newspaper for understanding, and the local newspaper does not care: to a newspaper which has already monopolized the local market, in-depth reporting and investigating work are at be~t a luxury and at worst a liability which might anger and lose readership. Local papers like the Register and the Journal-Courier have abdicated, and in doing so, they have become, in Cleaver's words, a part of the problem. 8

Win some, lose some continued from page 2 Some reporter asked Champi why he didn't finish the season. Sure, you dropped a game to BU, but so what, everybody has a bad day (and Cham pi had had an extremely good one-or good 42 seconds worth of one-not too long ago). But Chart;J.pi said he would rather quit now than hurt the team by not caring, by "just going through the motions." "I just can't get myself psyched up for football any more," was the clincher. Marvel of marvels, wonder of wonders, ineffable joy of ineffable joys. We had won a small one. And they had lost. Champi, a senior, had caught it, whatever it is that is going around, whatever it is that is stopping people dead in their tracks, whatever it is that is turning them off to all the things they used to care about. And making them start to think about it all instead. So maybe there is a little hope after all. We lose a few-let the inspiring words of Miss America stand as a constant reminder of that-but little by little, here and there, we're winning a couple, too. Melvin Laird's son John participated in the October 15 Moratorium in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And Frank Champi quit football because it didn't make sense any more. It's too early to tell for sure yet, but maybe all we need is a couple more rebuilding years before we're ready to take them on again with more than a wobbly pass and a futile, muttered prayer. George Kannar

Blues For the most part, coeducation bas been good to us all. The boys are happy (or at least less unhappy), and the girls are pretty much on top of the world. That is, from Monday through Friday. But come the weekend .... I passed one small coterie of freshman women the other Friday afternoon at Phelps Gate, where freshman males used

to gather to inspect the weekend's crop of women as they arrived from far and wide. The girls were sitting cross-legged on the grass, suspiciously eyeing weekend arrivals. It was easy to tell the difference: the Yale girls were clad in jeans and workshirts, the new arrivals in suits or dresses and "with paint on their faces," as one Yale miss put it in horrified tones. And it was easy to see bow welcome the new women were. The Yale girls looked each one over with the kind of cold stare a wife reserves for a mistress. Occasionally someone would look at the clean, scrubbed invaders and remind the others that, "Well, at least they won't look like that on Sunday." The other girls would laugh, but it did little to soothe their genuine annoyance at the aliens. They knew that weekends for them were not going to be like weekends for men; for their first time at Yale, they just weren't needed any more. Helen Robinson

Resurrection What happens to old churches when their time has come? Abandoned country railroad stations become antique shops and old banks become white elephants, but churches? God may well be dead, but somehow one hardly thinks about churches themselves dying at all, let alone being reincarnated afterwards. They just seem too eternally ecclesiastical. One church building that, happily, was not too set in its original ways to mind taking on a new identity is the old Calvary Baptist on Chapel Street. That church's congregation is moving, and the old building has become the new home of the Yale Repertory Theatre. It is the Yale Repertory's first exclusive home after years of sharing the University Theatr~ with undergraduates, and the restoration job is so good that it was worth the wait. The building still looks like a church, but the touch of Drama School Dean Robert Brustein-and that of theatre engineer George Izenour who was in charge of the conversion project-is evident. The front doors of the building are bright "Brustein red," and banners hang from the outside walls. Inside, an ample stage fills the former pulpit area, and runways lead into the audience. The superb physical facilities were used to their utmost in the Repertory Theatre's first production of the year, "The Rivals" (a play that would be worth seeing for itself even if it weren't in a theatre that is worth seeing for itself), and the overall effect is one of-well, to be honest, the overall effect is one of a church beautifully redone as a theatre. It would all be perfect save for one thing. The days are already numbered for the Drama School's new pride and joy: the old church is one of several buildings on the block slated for demolition in 1971 prior to construction of the Mellon Gallery of British Art. Opponents of the Gallery have often attacked the plans as destroying a lively and interesting New Haven block. In fact, most of the block is undistinguished and would not be missed. Only now, with the c<>mpletion of this new and imaginative theatre, does the block possess a valuable resource. But it looks as though all-knowing planners will have their way and the church will die anyway, despite its successful new lease on life. Maybe its bricks will go to heaven.


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