Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page. It is also available as plain text as well as XML.

JIM FARRELL EDITOR LUCRETIA JONES DAVE LUNDGREN MANAGING ED AD. MNGR. EDITORIALS Pessimism ; real waste For many years now the population of the United States has been on a move to help purify the environment and to facilitate a living condition favorable to all forms of life. Ecological groups have been formed to help alleviate much of the present pollution and have done much to push legislation in this direction. There has been a move of this type on the USC campus and in recent months there has been much done to recycle materials to help alleviate this pollution problem in the Columbia area. Another move of this group was to protest the sale of seal fur in the area of Greenville, S.C. In the eyes of many this was to be a very important protest and with the proper coverage of the press perhaps support would be gained. This very noble attempt fell short of all hoped success because of a lack of participation. The coverage was thus, minimal, and the results perhaps those feelings of the many pessimists who refuse to support this movement because they feel that in our society there is no way to control the monster of consumption. Unfortunately, these pessimists fail to see what is really the end results of such apathy. Monsters have been created, but they have also been destroyed by those who make them. Those that started the trends of this society toward the ever present urge to consume on a major scale are now gone. The power of those in this society now living, or perhaps slowly dying, is greater than most perceive it to be. But these people will continue to sit back and say the whole idea of ecology is wasted while in actuality they are that which is the real waste. Nothing could be more wasted than someone saying that there was nothing to be done because no one else was doing anything. Why isn't anyone doing it? The answer is self evident and If anyone really needs to be answered why don't they look at themselves deep down and not just the pretty exterior. If every one would get off their fat ones and do something for this cause it could at least be said this era tried to save something worth saving. * -E..,.t , . . F .*T DEAntN , /GL/a R TA * .. .. . .. . . . Guest column Cas traI (Editor's note: This column originally appeared in the Erskine Mirror. It was written by William Steele, editor.) - It has been customary for the recent prophets of women's liberation to maliciously decry all males. In "The Female Eunuch," Germaine Greer approaches exploitation of women as en slavement of men as well. Indeed, she states that "it is not a sign of revolution when the oppressed adopt the manners of the op pressors and practice oppression on their own behalf." Far from promoting asexuality, Miss Greer contends that the key to equality is a more aggressive role by the female and destruction of the male domination myth. "Sex must be reserved from the -traffic between powerful and powerless, masterful and mastered, sexual and neutral, to become a form of communication between potent, gentle, tender people, which cannot be ac complished by denial of heterosexual contact," she declares. Miss Greer's wrath is primarily directed toward the socialization process, whereby males and Our times Loss of By SMITH HEMPSTONE Columnist Well, Rep. kichard Harding Poff isn't going to the Supreme Court, at least at this time, and that's too bad. The 10-term Republican congressman from the hill country of Southwestern Virginia last weekend asked that his name be dropped from consideration to avoid "a long and divisive con firmation battle" in the Senate. A fight loomed because Poff, who had the support of such top Democrats and staunch civil rights advocates as Rep. Emanuel Celler of New York and former Gov. Pat Brown of California, was opposed by* leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, organized labor and the harpies of the feminist movement. On the basis of narrow partisan considerations, one can hardly fault Poff's opponents for seeking to bar him from the high court. The Radford attorney, who will be 48 later this month, had a long and consistent record of opposition to the legislative aims, of both the civil rights bosses and the barons of organized labor; he got the ladies' dander up by voting to weaken the proposed "equal rights for women" amendment to the Constitution. All of which is to say that Dick Poff voted exactly the way the folks back home wanted him to, that he served as their "representative" in fact as well as in name. Which is precisely why they elected him to Congress as a downy-c heeked youngster only four years out of law school and have been returning him ever since. And that is another way of saying that no representative of Virginia's Sixth District is fit to sit on the Supreme Court. With all deference to the NAACP's Clarence Mitchell, to George Meany and to the National Organization nf Women, this ob ing the tv females adopt sex roles, the male becoming the aggressive force, and the female becoming the passive force. The center of this socialization is what Greer calls the "middle-class myth of love and marriage." She calls for the abolition of marriage, which would free the wife-slave. To Miss Greer, any type of eternal love is purely mythical. The adolescent girl is inculcated with the idea that she must depend on the male for security. Through her parents and pulp magazines the adolescent girl is taught that she must marry, and that here marriage must embody everlasting love. In turn, this role causes the girl to inhibit many of her natural propinquities. The male also is taught a role and because of his role, he accepts the woman as a plaything instead of a thinking person. The male eventually develops a hate for women, which eventually leads to disgust at sexual intercourse. All of these myths. are per petuated by such quixotic ideals as altruism and romance. The woman is deluded into believing she must sacrifice something for her husband. This supposed sacrifice Poff unfi server must demur. Freed of the constraints imposed by representing his Virginia con stituency, there is no telling how Poff might have voted--or how his legal stature might have grown had he made it to the Supreme Court. The late Hugo L. Black, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan as a U.S. senator from Alabama, who became the court's great libertarian, was proof of that pudding. What the Poff case does illustrate, aside from the almost sectarian bigotry of the lobbies which opposed him, is the dif ficulty of vaulting from the House of Representatives to the Supreme Court. In all the long history of the United States, only two men have successfully traveled that route, James M. Wayne of Georgia in 1830 and John McKinley of Alabama seven years later. The Senate has proved a better launching pad, with six men nominated from It, three of them in the present cen tury (Black in 1937, James F. Byrnes of South Carolina In 1941 and Harold H. Burton of Ohio in 1945C~ Poff, despite his long and not undistinguished service on the House Judiciary Committee and the strong support of the Ad ministration, must have known that the odds on his making it to the Supreme Court from the lower house were, at least In historical terms, not good, particularly since he lacks experience on the bench and has practiced iaw for only a few years. But It seems unlikely that a man who has been an active candidate for nomination to the Supreme Court at least since 1965 would so suddenly and totally renounce his ambitions. And it may well be that Poff has wisely decided to avoid a scarring Senate battle until he can enter the fray from a stronger bastion than Virginia's Sixth District. Associate - Justice-. William 0. VO sexes causes resentment, which, in turn, may cause the wife to become nagging. Miss Greer seems quite erudite in biological matters. She presents the idea that clothes and unnatural posturing account for many of the structural difference in male and female. She rejects the idea that one must be raised by one's biological mother. Although she expresses ex pertise in biology, Miss Greer almost totally rejects Freudian psychology, which she feels produces conformity to images. She would agree with Freud that the homosexual has failed to adopt a sex role, but she would say this role should not have been imposed in the first place. Therefore, .she feels the homosexual should not be considered a deviate. "The Female Eunuch" will not be remembered so much as a contribution to original thought as a creative collection of prior thought. Although some of Greer's value systems seem absolute (for example, it seems as absurd to abolish marriage as to require it), many of her ideas need to be carefully examined by society. )rtunate Douglas will be 73 next week and has a heart-pacer implanted in his body; Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, 63, has been in poor health recently. Thus, assuming he wins a second term, it is more than possible that President Nixon will have at least one more Supreme Court seat at his disposal within the next five years, in addition to the two now vacant. There are at least a pair of op tions open to Poff. The safest would involve appointment by Mr. Nixon to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Two or three years on the Court of Appeals would both provide Poff with the judicial experience which he lacks and free him from the political imperatives of representing a Virginia con stituency. AlIter na tely , Virginia Republicans have been looking for a strong candidate to take on freshman Democratic Senator William B. Spong Jr., who is up for re-election next year. In a race against Spong, Poff could count on the strong support of Gov. Linwood Holton, a Republican, and at least the benevolent neutrality of Shnator Harry F. Byrd Jr., the son of the late Virginia kingmaker, who bolted the Democratic party last year to win his father's seat as an independent. Appointment from the Senate, as the record 1nd1pates, would be far easier than from the House. Whatever Poff's future plans may be, his action in asking that his name be removed from the list of those now under consideration does not mean that one of Mr. Nixon's two forthcoming ap pointees will not be a Southerner. The two most prominent con tenders now for that "Southern seat" are Federal District Judge Frank M. Johnson, 52, of Alabama, and University of Texas law professor Charles Alan Wrght, 4. Both are strict constructionists, Republicans and Nixon loyalists. COPYRtQIIT 3971 THS WASHINGTON