Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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GLENDA MILLER INTERIM EDITOR JIM FARRELL ART FRANK MGN. ED. AD MANAGER EDITORIALS. The drinking bird The University has done it again. The students have been screwed again while the University's list of priorities continue to amaze anyone with any intelligence. . Most of us by now have seen the great white mechanical birds in the humanities reflecting pool. These birds are hideously obscene, oversized and ridiculous. Fur thermore, the cost for this legal defamation was $10,000. Cannot the University think of better ways to utilize funds? Does not the University need books for the libraries, new facilities and academic buildings, more housing, better lighting and many other items more than a couple of stupid looking birds that regurgitate water? How can students be deprived of necessities with irresponsible spending on perpetually drinking birds? Perhaps we should put alcohol in the pool and watch "Albert the Drinking Bird" fall dead from over- in toxication. How much more ridiculous can this University get? This "'Albert the Drinking Bird" as the Gamecock has christened the terrible two, has been called by University official "comparable to a Picasso sculpture." I think Picasso would rather die than sign his name to "Albert the Drinking Bird." This piece of "sculpture" is obviously another of the University's steps toward the future and progress. May it not last too long. A//OW IF'YOc4I- V J' T 6/.A /1Rnr... The Watermark 'The Hos By BOB CRAFT Features Editor There's a movie playing downtown at the Miracle called "The Hospital." It makes fun of our national obsession with medicine. It stars two of my all time favorites, George C. Scott and Diana Rigg. Scott is a cynical, suicidal chief of staff in one of the largest and supposedly best hospitals in the nations. Diana Rigg is the daughter of a patient at the hospital; a patient that has nearly been killed by a series of disastrous snafus on the part of the hospital. The film takes apart the caduceus set in a way probably not done since Moliere's "Imaginary Invalid." Technicians, nurses, administrators and doctors all -ome under fire in the film. "The Hospital," written by Paddy Chayefsky, (Ah, come on you remember him, "Marty"? is an extremely black comedy that has you giggling at people dying in the hospital for no apparent reason. George C. Scott as Dr. Herb Bock is great. He has been nominated for this role for another Academy Award, which he doesn't want. It is doubtful that he will win this year, having won last year for "Patton" (he gave the statue away to a Patton museum somewhere) and for the somewhat less than reverential attitude he has toward the Academy. Bock is a man who is respected in his profession, but a man whose Guest column President (Editor's note; This column originally appeared in the Washington State University Daily Evergreen.) Although Richard Nixon probably wouldn't know what marijuana was even if his wife smoked some before a bridge party, ether presidents haven't been so uninformed, at least ac cording to Dr. Burke, president of the American Historical Reference Society and consultant for the Smithsonian Institute. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce all smoked pot, according to Burke in an article in the Spokane Provincial Press. Pot was common among tobacco growers, for when it was mixed with tobacco, it gave a mild in toxicating effect. "Early letters from our founding fathers often refer to the pleasures of hemp smoking," said' Burke. "There are even references to it in the Congressional Record. Marijuana never became a commercial industry because the plant was too easy to grow." Washington, Madison and Jef ferson all cultivated pot on their plantations. Washington is said to pital' is life, to say the least, is hollow and without purpose. His wife has left him for the eleventh or twelfth time, he has thrown his "shaggy haired Maoist" son out of the house and his seventeen year old daughter has had two abortions in as many years and has been recently busted for dealing. And he is sexually impotent. He thought he could somehow make up for his disastrous personal life by throwing himself into his work. That doesn't work either. He has lost all interest in his work; work that he was once considered almost a genius in. So he sits in his rented room every night, drinking himself to sleep and thinking of ways to kill himself without losing the in surance. He continually broods about his "total impotence", saying its not so much the loss of sex that bothers him as the loss of desiring to work, to fulfill his responsibilities. "For the middle class, responsibility, not love, conquers all," he says. Bock has become so wrapped up in this syndrome of responsibility that he cannot be freed from it even when he is given the chance. Scott is marvelous as Bock. You could simply sit and look at him all night. Diana Rigg plays the part of the girl who can give Scott the simple life, the freedom from respon ssibility that he toys with between thinking suicidal thoughts. She is the daughter of a slightly zapped out Methodist missionary. She is not your average missionary's daughter. She has been an acid s smoked have preferred a good pipeful of "the leaves of hemp" to any alcoholic drink according to the article. Washington and Jefferson often wrote to each other discussing the pleasures of pot and exchanged packages of the weed as friendship gestures. Madison once remarked that if it had not been for hemp, he would not have had the insights he had in the work of creating a new and democratic nation. Monroe brought back the habit of smoking hash and grass from France and continued the use until he reached 73. Pierce, Taylor and Jackson, all military men, smoked pot with their troops and it was twice as popular during the Mexican War as the present war in Southeast Asia. Pierce wrote home to his family that pot was about the only thing good about the war. Although those seven individuals may be among the most famous who have smoked pot, if indeed they did, a famous personality from this century has also been reported as having smoked pot; Nikita Khruschchev. According to syndicated columnist Robin Adams Sloan, one reason the Russian hierarchy was anxious to get rid of Krushhev orth it head, confides to Scott that until she got used to the mission post in Mexico all she did was masturbate a great deal and propositions Scott with amazing quickness. Scott tells her to get the hell out and he prepared to kill himself by mainlining a little potassium. She comes back in as Scott is tightening the belt around his arm. He rages at her, screams for her to leave him alone and then rapes her. (He rapes Mrs. Peel? How singular!) They then go into a somewhat unbelievable scene about loving each other and wanting to run away to the quiet and con templative life the Apache mission in Mexico offers. This sub plot goes on while ) doctors and nurses are dropping like flies and a -riot is going on outside of the hospital over the purchase by the hospital of several ghetto apartments. This film is good although the ending is unsatisfying, leaving too many loose ends and whatnot. "The Hospital" is not a great film, but it certainly takes a few swipes at the revered profession of medicine. If and when you see "The Hospital" just hope you don't have to have surgery done anytime soon or you'll become a basket case. Mad, frightening and funny is "The Hospital." Someone who I know who has worked in a hospital said after he saw the film,"It would have been even funnier if it hadn't been so true." grass was because he had developed a passion for pot smoking. Finally they put him in a place where he could grow his own and enjoy his forced retirement. According to the column by Ms. Sloan which appears regularly in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the pot smoking may account for his periods of jovial elation alter nating with depressing "lows." 0 Letters policy We print all letters we receive. The only thing we ask is that the writer include his name, signature and address (this is in case of verification purposes). Please try to type the letter on a 65-space line. The letter should be double-spaced. To write to the Gamecock: The Gamecock Letters to the editor Drawer "A" USC For those of you who are on) campus, you can put the letter in the "campus mail" slot at the post office. You don't even have to have it stamped.