Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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GLENDA MILLR NTERIM EDITOR WX WGART FRANK T%ERIM MNG. ED" AD RANAGEJ' "ED ITORIALS Monorail for USC Parking problems on the USC campus increase each semester more and more as students have automobiles. One parking garage cannot and does not solve this problem, especially in long range terms. What this University needs is a monorailisystem. USC, with its students, professors, administrators and staff is a small city within itself. Therefore, like any other city, it must cope with, and find solutions to its traffic and parking problems. A monorail is one answer to this problem. Of course, the monorail would cobt money, but perhaps the University could talk to some big corporations who are experimentally working with monorails, to see if they would like to try their product on campus. Then Westington House or General Electric, for example, could use the USC campus to test their monorail. All students, faculty, administrators and staff would park their cars in a large, patrolled lot, perhaps the fair grounds would be a good site, off campus, and catch the monorail to campus locations. The monorail would stop at Russell House, the Coliseum and new law school, Capstone and the new business ad ministration school, the Horseshoe area and other points on campus as needed. The monorail would be enclosed and commuters would not get wet in inclement weather except when going to the monorail from the * parking lot and to the different buildings. The monorail is a idea of the future and one with great potential. Perhaps, it is not too early to think and plan around such an idea. With the monorail, campus traffic problems would be solved and Green Street could be closed. Students would no longer hqve to feed meters and pay spending money for parking tickets. It seems everyone would be happier. Until USC's monorail becomes reality instead of a dream, perhaps the University would be willing to try using the fair grounds or some other suitable location as a huge parking lot for students, faculty, administrators and staff to park and provide bus service to campus locations. Of course, the bus schedule would have to function better than the present one. Students would have to be able to catch a bus which does not leave the parking lot at the hour when their class is supposed to begin. think this can be solved and I think something must be done to alleviate what has ceased to become a parking problem on this campus and which is developing into a parking crisis. Let's take action before a crisis develops and not wait as we have done in the past. R.R. policy doomed I nie new Russell House hours policy seems doomed before it can get a good start. Last Friday night at 1:30 a.m. (half an hour before closing time) six people were in the building, and five of them worked there. After Carson, what does the Russell House haye to. offer.? The longer hours were designed to pacify those who wanted the women's dorms opened longer. Now the failure of the longer hours in the Russell house will be used to justify not opening the dorms. The lengthening of the hours in women's residence hails is questionable at the best. It's lke the cartoonist Al Capp said, 'f you're not in bed by 12 qua n.kmng l to.i.tT.Y9rseIt and go home." MToa revisited. A societ BY JOHN GASH Associate Editor We live in a society of euphemisms, as it is, but President Nixon has offered the American people an extreme case of "euphemismitis." He wants to raise the "full employment" standard from four per cent to five per cent unemployed. Four or five per cent unemployment is not full employment by any means regardless of the excuses; it is a euphemism. American people have learned to live with both governmentally and socially perpetrated eupemisms. Why not add some more? Here's a few of my suggestions: How about the war in Indochina? The weekly death rates could be raised from zero for no casualties to ten for "no casualties" because over 45,000 have died and ten is relatively insignificant. We could work out a graduating scale: 0 40,000, zero would be "no casualties"; 40,001-80,000, ten The watermark The AmE BY BOB CRAFT Feature Editor Dashiell Hammett wrote probably the best American detectives stories of all time. That statement, of course, is open for argument from all you Nero Wolfe fans. However, those who read "Red Harvest," "The Dain Curse," "The Thin Man" or "The Maltese Falcon" seldom forget them or the detectives. The most famous being 1he easy-going Greek Nick Charles and the tough, eynical Sam Spade. I guess a partial reason for their fame is the fact that very suc cessful motion pictures were made with these characters in them. When one thinks of Sam Spade, one inevitably remembers Humphrey Bogart dealing with Sidney Greenstreet. When one thinks of Nick Charles, one con jures up the suave William Powell with a dog and Myrna Loy, un fortunately, the image has been somewhat blurred by the memory of the Peter Lawford - Phyllis Kirk series of the fifties. Outside of the tough cowboy, the favorite American male image has been that of the tough detective. The embodiment of that image was Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. Detectives remained tough through the thirties and forties. Every American boy lived with some dream of catching "the bad guys" and getting the girl. Then in the fifties, something happened. The detectives became either soft or repulsive. The "soft" type of detective was the kind you found on television. Lawford as Charles, Efrem Zimbalist as Stuart Bailey and Bob Conrad as Tom Lopaka didn't quite measure up. Probably because of the ineptness of script writers and the paranoid censors. The repulsive kind was the type that was tough, but you didn't want to emulate them. Alan Ladd was undeniably tough in that movie about postal inspectors, 'but he projected a starkness that scared you away. Jack Webb as Sgt. Friday was also tough, but the routine that went with his job made it dull. True, there was Mickeyv y of eupE would be "no casualties"; 80,001 and up, 20 would be "no casualties". Boy, could we do wonders for "law and order." Hey, J. Ed. are you listening? We could allow four rapes a month for Columbia and anything over thant would figure in the percentage of Columbia's crime but not less. What about burglaries? Well, since there's so many of them, we could allow about 25 a month before any would figure in crime statistics. Just think, if we initiated this program next year all the crime statistics would drop. And how about the political scene? Since we all know that politicians are corrupt, we could allow them to accept graft under $500, just as long as they're discreet about it - we wouldn't want to offend any of the public's sensibilities. Once they go over the $500 level, however, the law would have to classify it as "actual graft." rican det4 Spillane's Mike Hammer, but who would want to spend all that money cleaning blood and guts off of his clothes? The whole soft detective syn drome came to a head in 1963 with the appearance of Mr. Suave and Debonaire himself, Cary. Grant, playing the part of Treasury agent Brian Cruikshank in "Charade." If ever there was an antithesis to Bogart's Sam Spade it would have to be Grant's Cruikshank. After that, detectives became sort of a mishmash between Spade and Cruikshank. The foremost being, of course, superagent 007, James Bond. He was tough, but he was suave. His thrust in the cinema created a rash of lesser imitators, among them Dean Martin's cute but drunken Matt Helm and Michael Caine's reluctant loner Harry Palmer. They flew out all over the screen, saving the world in just the nick of time again and again. This wave rushed out into the TeeVee with Napoleon Solo and iIllya Kuryakin and Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott and Jim West, etc. Then the movies rediscovered the detective. This was the age of the anti-hero and most of the detectives were of this genre. They were generally out to save their own skin, even if they *had to sacrifice the heroine to do it. They were generally running away from the establishment, the establish ment being symbolized by the police. This led to some pretty lack luster American detectives. The most potent American male sex symbol of our day, Paul Newman proved this in "Harper," a kind of seedy character that even Newman's screen presence couldn't make lovable. Or go on to Sinatra's Tony Rome or even to a certain extent Steve McQueen's Frank Bullitt. With McQueen's "Bullitt," the tough detective started to make a comeback. He was tough, but he was not repulsive, you could almost admire him when the movie ws over. Lemisms Speaking of graft, how about some other functions of the government--like lying? How many lies could we permit the President? The vice president? A measly ,enator? Well, naturally we wold have to give the President the most if for other reason than his office is the highest. This brings us to one other thing: wars. Since we like to maintain one war for at least five years, we could allow our government im munity from public criticism for the first five years of the war. But, after that, we could permit the first antiwar demonstrations and the longer the war lasted the more demonstrations we could have to fulfill our quota. But what happens if we have five years of peace? After that five years, do we allow our first an tipeace demonstrations? I guess we'd have to, after all, we haven't failed often to fill that quota. ctive This new detective wave is going on right now with such movies as "Shaft" and "Dirty Harry" and "The French Connection." "The French Connection" is the story of "Popeye" Doyle and his partner Russo who break up a heroin smuggling operation. It was done by the same man who produced "Bullitt" and if you haven't heard already, it has the most exciting car chase ever caught on film. In this film, one sees the well-dressed pusher against the poorly dressed police. The smuggler confounds the police, but don't cheer him on. You cheer the uncouth Doyle when he finally catches up with him. We cheer Doyle on because we see him trying to fight something that we all think of as evil. Heroin. Once again it is the good guys against the bad guys. This is what has been missing in many detective movies. There has been no real clear-cut distinctior) betwan the good guys and the bad guys, no real reason for the audience to cheer the detective on. So with this new wave, we will probably see a lot of themes dealing with heroin. One, because of its timeliness and, two, because we see it as evil.. It has been a long time since we could get worked up over a black bird. Correction In Monday's Gamecock, printing errors allowed for two incorrect facts in John Gash's column, "Today revisited." The first read, "The biggest change was Look magazine's times." It should have read, "The biggest change was Look magazine's cessation of publication." The second mistake read, "...how long can Time, Inc. withstand an increase which will triple its postage bill from $35 million to $45 million..." It should have read, "...how long can Time, Inc. withstand an increase which will triple its postage from $15 to $45 million.."