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Show The Public Forum Tribune Readers' Opinions Basie Service Rev G H Lower (Forum, March 27) would have you believe the entire United Presbyterian Church is against the MX The United Presbyterian Church in USA's General Assembly is not necessarily representative, less than half the General Assembly's membership are laymen I too am In favor of . . bold, imaginative initiatives for peace . But I feel we must have a strong defense Russia would rather not have to contemplate war in expanding their influence over the USA. they would prefer the USA surrender without war If, on the other hand, we intend to negotiate a peace with Russia, we can negotiate only from a position of overwhelming strength. Russia is like the neighborhood bully; he will respect you only if he thinks you are superior to him in battle. The USA has lost or is rapidly . Fomin Rulest Public Forum letters must be submitted exclusively to The Tribune and bear writers full name, signature and address. Names must be printed on political letters but may be withheld for good reasons on others. Writers are limited to one letter every 10 days. Preference will be given to short, typewritten (double spaced) letters permitting use of the writer's true name. All letters are subject to condensation. Mail to the Public Forum, The Salt Lake Tribune, Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84110. losing its military superiority over the Rus- sians. There is not the strength from which to negotiate. I am opposed to the MX because it is too expensive for the protection it affords. It would be cheaper to forget the racetrack and put a real missile in every silo. This would even provide a better position for negotiating peace. '.j As for providing humane services, the very basic service the USA can provide the world is freedom from war. Without freedom people cannot even provide for their basic needs. WAYNE D. WARD London, England Ji the new building puts et another bank frontage on Main Street, a use uhich is inaetie after 3pm and is not conducive to pedestrian and shopping activity, creating another dead the space in the downtown business area, uses ret3il corsider to refused develo;ers front lrg on Main Street Thus. Landmarks' denial of demolition was desire to throw up based, not on a roadblocks, but on the opinion that the developers tat had not seriously investigated of the retaining the histone buildings as part development, and (b the historic buildings aside, the developers had not proposed a plan which solved its site and community impact problems If significant buildings are to lx- removed from our community, Landmarks could not, in good conscience, sanction their removal for a project that was not of equal or better quality than the building it replaced last-ditc- h STEPHANIE D CHURCHILL Chairman Ilistoncal Landmarks Committee Wliy a Committee? Does the athletic program take priority over other programs in our Salt Lake City schools The article in last weeks Tribune announcing . . . Coach Dick Milne of East High will retire after 22 years service . . ..followed by ; "a committee of patrons and teachers from the East community will select a new This may be a district policy, but coach . . my objection is why is a committee necessary to do what we taxpayers already pay district the personnel department. employees to do Are history, math, science or language teachers selected by a committee? Certainly not. What is so special about the coaching position that he be selected by a special committee? Do we have to have a coach with a track record of wins to the degree that it requires a special committee? This is probably why so many people feel we place too great an emphasis on sports in our schools. I concur completely. Lets put every subject in proper perspective. Patrick J. Buchanan Cooke Hurts Posts Credibility R. CANNADAY a Not Better Plan " In regard to your editorial, Preservation 'Overkill, of April 14, perhaps there might be a better understanding of the Landmarks Committee and of the reasons for its decision to deny demolition of the Scott and Boyd-Par- k buildings. " In many ways, this is the same situation that preceded the demolition of the Constitution Building: handsome structures, deliberately allowed by their owners to deteriorate, appearing to be eyesores ready for demolition. .Other investors could see potential in the buildings and, in each case, did structural and 'economic feasibility studies determining that it Would be possible and profitable to renovate the buildings. In fact, a developer had an option to purchase the Scott and Boyd-Par- k buildings mnd had specific plans prepared to bring new, .vigorous life and comeliness to the structures, to make them a practical, profitable work place. (The owner ultimately did not allow the option to be exercised.) . Consequently, Landmarks knew, in specific figures, that it was economically feasible to tenovate these buildings. Landmarks is also aware of examples in other cities where caring developers have successfully combined older buildings and new construction. The Landmarks Committee is not antidevelopment. It has approved several plans for demolition and new construction. Some people ven consider Landmarks too pro- development. However, when considering replacing valu-- r able older buildings. Landmarks feels that the new buildings should be of a quality equal to or better than what they replace, making a positive contribution to the community. The renovation question aside, the majority of the Landmarks Committee felt that the Walker Bank proposal did not answer the replacement and design questions adequately: the question of the orientation of the building, in a city oriented to the compass points, is a matter of opinion, but remains a question; parking in this proposing above-groun- d valuable downtown location, whether or not underground parking would save the historic buildings, is questionable; the developers refused to consider alternative funding possibilities for parking; The Way It Was Here are the briefs from The Salt Lake Tribune from 100, 50 and 25 years ago: April 19, 1881 The very fashionable crowd gathered at the Theatre last night, the occasion being the grand ball given by Prof. Sheldon, the last of the season. The company was late in arriving, and it was half past nine before the dancing began. As the fine music started up the floor was soon filled with the merry dancers. At the hour of 12 oclock a vote was taken for the most popular young lady and gentleman. The audience held their breath while the result was announced which selected Miss Aggie Forsyth as the most popular young lady, and Mr. Fred Walker as the most popular gentleman, the gentlemen voting for the ladies and the ladies for the gentlemen. April 19, 1931 Police are investigating a reported shooting at 520 Second Avenue Saturday night. Credence to the report, received at 10 05 p m. by Detective Captain John B. Burbidge, was given when police invaded the residence and found evidence of a terrific fight and blood stains. The place was deserted when they arrived, however. Broken dishes and bottles, including a gallon jug which police reported had contained y whisky, littered the mam floor of the well furnished residence which was in darkness when detectives Lester F. Wire, Fred C. Anderson and M.D. McGinness arrived. man-hour- . two-stor- April 19, 1956 A group of high school girls with Sirens, want to put them to good use. cars, the They hope to aid Salt Lake civic and charity organizations needing automobiles with drivers in their work, Penny Griffiths, 17, daughter of Mrs. Alice M. Griffiths, announced Wednesday. Eight members at present have four cars available to serve. PJB Enterprises WASHINGTON The story was titled Jimmys World The central, sympathetic addict named Jimmy, figure, an hooked on heroin smee he was 5. This week, the story won the Pulitzer Prize for Janet Cooke of The Washington Post. And, from beginning to end, it was a phony, a fraud, a hoax, a pack of lies all the direct quotations too, from and about Jimmy being total fabrications, as Jimmy himself was a fabrication, a concoction of journalist Janet Cooke. While Jimmys World was an elaborate lie, it exposes a few truths about Benjys World, the chummy, dubby, familial world of Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee and sidekick Bob Woodward of Watergate fame, who conducted the great investigation which, after a tenacious attempt by Cooke to persist in her mendacity and keep the award she won by cheatmg, resulted in her confession and resignation. When Jimmy's World blossomed on page one last September, Mayor Marion Barry and his chief of police made a frantic, good-fait- h effort, costing thousands of city dollars in lost to locate the boy. They begged the Post to help save the life of little Jimmy. Breach of Confidentiality The Post refused. To lead the city to the boy would entail, they said, a breach of the confidentiality promised to Cookes sources. When some of us protested that, surely, the childs right to life superseded the Posts right to protect the confidentiality of the people killing him, we were given the old wet mitten; You just dont understand the First Amendment. When Mayor Barry's exhaustive efforts to find the boy failed, he speculated that maybe Jimmy was a fabrication. The Post laid out the standard line. We stand by our story. Well, now we know. The First Amendment can be used not only to protect sources, real or manufactured; it is the unbreachable defense for protecting liars within the prestige press. The Washington Post has announced, with apologies, that a thorough investigation will be conducted. Not by outsiders, but by an insider on the Post payroll, an ombudsman named William Green. We may soon expect the full story in the Green Report. (Rhymes with Dean Report.) Well, excuse me, Ben, but is this really adequate? Would the Post settle for a congressional ombudsman investigating the peculations of one of his peers? Or would the Post be press by investigative howling for a reporters? Are we not entitled to an outside investigation of the Post, now that the . s, full-cou- rt credibility of an institution which exists on credibility has been cnppled Other Cooked Up Stories? Question No. 1: How many other stones by Cooke were cooked up to advance the political objectives of the people for whom she worked As Hugh Sidey of Time quipped, ever smee Ronald Reagan began carving up the social budget, beloved of the Post, the paper seems to have moved the editorial page to the front page." Question No. 2: Why did not the Post undertake an investigation of Cookes phony story when challenged by the mayor? (Notes and tapes the Post editor looked at this week point directly to fabrication. Asked simply to show a fellow editor Jimmys house, Cooke couldnt find it.) Why was her word taken and everybody elses questions dismissed? Why are Post reporters automatically entitled to belief their challengers almost never? Question No. 3: To win a Pulitzer takes enormous backup support. Among reporters at the Post, there have long been suspicions Jimmy was a hoax. Who at the Post endorsed, lobbied for and pressed the Pulitzer Committee to give the coveted, career-makm- g prize to Janet Cooke? When the carbuncle burst Wednesday (April 15), Osborn Elliott of the Columbia School of Journalism (a former peer of Bradlee s at the I feel Washington Post Co) commiserated; very sad that the talented young womans promising career has been damaged so 'founds by word-of-jnout- h because Ive had several people call and --ask me if I know whether its true. p The theory originates with Dick Gregory, the -- former comedian who now writes occasional "books and lectures at colleges. It was during a recent talk in Los Angeles that Gregory unveiled his theory. It goes this Way: An amazing cure for cancer has been discovered. It cures even the most severe bases. However, it is tremendously expensive to produce and it requires a very special substance: The blood of black youths. As Gregory tells it, the key to the cure is that black people have something called sickle cells in their blood, and the sickle cells are what serum effective. 'ifoake the He says nature provided black people with the sickle cells because they ward off malaria. Thus, blacks survived in Africa. Now Gregorys plot thickens. The federal government wants to produce this miraculous serum. (Gregory didnt say :who would be cured of cancer, but the implication is that nch, important white people "would benefit.) anti-canc- i But to make the serum it needs the blood of black youths. So the government decided to kidnap black youths and take their blood. And that, he says, is what has been happening to the Atlanta youths. They have been snatched by the federal government and their blood drained. Why Atlanta, and not Chicago or Detroit or New York or other cities with large black populations? Gregory has an answer: The federal governments Center for Disease Control is in Atlanta. But what about the remains of all those murdered youths who have been found? Gregory has an answer for that, too. He says those bodies are not really the bodies of the missing, murdered black youths. They are bodies of people who died in the mass suicide-murde- r at Jonestown. The government has had them stashed so it could substitute them for the bodies of the missing black youths. So that, in a nutshell, is how it has happened, says Gregory. Uncle Sam is no longer Uncle Sam. He is Uncle Dracula. Heres Another One I dont know how many people believe Gregory, but Im sure many do. Americans, black and white, love hidden conspiracy theories. (Did you know that President Reagan wasnt shot. The bullets missed him, see, but the scare gave him a heart attack, and thats why he was rushed to the hospital. The White House is covering up the heart attack by claiming there was a bullet wound. Ive heard that one a dozen times in the last week.) People have sent me copies of Gregorys theory with notes saying things like: Why is this being covered up? and Why hasnt this been printed in your newspaper?" They obviously buy it. Its sad that people swallow something this bizarre. Its personally sad to me that this theory should come from someone like Dick Gregory. Ive known Gregory for a long time. We used to be friends. I met him more than 20 years ago when I was a night-shireporter and heard about a young black man who worked in a car wash while trying to make it as a stand-u- p comedian, which was unusual then. We had a liver and onions breakfast one Saturday and he whipped off some of the funniest, socially penetrating satirical lines Id ever heard. I went back and wrote a feature story about his brilliant wit. Within a couple of years, he was one of the most popular comedians social satirist in the country. would be a better description Then something happened. He became a civil rights activist, which was fine, but he also drifted into his own strange world. And thats where he is now sending out strange messages about the government stealing blood in Atlanta. Im always hearing crackpot theories on almost any subject you can think of. But they usually come from the kind of pople who carry shopping bags filled with old newspapers and talk wildly to themselves on the street. The problem with Gregory is that he was once famous, and many people still take him seriously. He is invited to colleges to lecture and his words are printed in black newspapers. So he will be believed Just as other widely known blacks have been believed. And its only a short jump from their theories to Gregorys. Jesse Jackson, for example. It wasnt long ago that he and others from Operation PUSH were stating flatly that there was some kind of white, racist conspiracy behind the Atlanta murders. And that Atlanta might be only part of a nationwide plot to murder blacks. ft i Somehow, I dont recall the same compassion for even the innocent members of Richard or for young Ron Ziegler Nixons entourage who had simply repeated falsehoods told him, which he took on faith. Somehow, I recall a Post editorial ruthless, exultant, vindictive about driving out of public life, forever, anyone associated with Nixon. The End of the Jimmy Story," declared the editorial headline in the Post, not 24 hours after the scandal broke. Well, if this is the end of the Jimmy Story, it will tell Americans what not without reason many of them already believe. That the mighty adversary press is adversary only to its enemies. When one of its friends, or one of its own, is caught in scandal, then the operative game is: Circle the wagons. And the operative password, unspoken, is. Stonewall. (Copyright) Are Americans As Goofy As the Media Thinks? Chicago Tribune Are we all goofy, or do newspapers and television and People magazine just think we are? Two months ago Gov. Hugh Carey of New York had gray hair and was about as famous anywhere west of Hoboken, N. J., as whoever is playing second base for the Chicago Cubs this week. Then last Saturday, his hair now dyed the color of chestnuts, Carey married a Greek zillionaire from Chicago who has had three other husbands and suddenly were all hearing are on and reading about how he and she their way to the White House in 1984. WASHINGTON I wish the newlyweds all the best, of course. But, really, it must take more than a big wedding, even one where Peter Duchin plays the piano, to turn someone into a presidential contender. Dick Gregory Way Off Base on Atlanta Murders Theory Sun-Tim- es needlessly, and I hope not irrevocably." Why not irrevocably, Mr Elliott Would you likewise hope for a rapid return to grace and political prosperity of some young congressman who lied outright, and repeatedly, to advance his career? We feel enormous sorrow for the burden this young woman created for herself and deeply hope that she will find her way out of trouble, said the Post. Nice touch of compassion, sympathy, understanding there, for an errant member of the family. Raymond Coffey Mike Royko Chicago .. Thousands of black people have recently been exposed to a new theory about the Atlanta jmurders. The theory has been 'printed by small papers in black communities and has been mimeographed and stuffed in thousands of mailboxes. Tts also making the ' 'jf TV Jackson has not explained how the white, racist conspirators persuaded the black mayor of Atlanta and the black police chief of Atlanta to go along with the campaign. Jackson seldom explains finer points of his ideas. Babbling comes much easier to him. So its little wonder that so many blacks have lall-a-bla- tried to turn the Atlanta deaths into a great social issue, trying somehow to connect it to civil rights and racial discrimination; holding protest marches and prayer vigils, and asking the president to intervene. What they cant seem to accept are that these are local murders murders of the same kind that happen to blacks and whites every week, year in and year out, in places like Chicago and Detroit and New York and you name it. If you went into any city and started adding up similar murders, you could claim to see terrible patterns everywhere. In all likelihood, the same person hasn't committed all the Atlanta murders. There are probably several killers. Not all the victims are children, either. Some are men. Not Deterred by Slogans If the killers are caught, theyll probably all be black. You have to have an imagination as strong as Gregorys to suggest that some white person has been dashing unobserved into Atlantas black area to carry off that many black youths. Theyll also find that the killers are sick, probably insane. Which means all the prayer vigils and protest marches and rallies and ribbons on lapels mean nothing. Demented killers are not deterred by civil nghts slogans. So I hope we dont hear any more Uncle Dracula theories from Gregory. And lets hope somebody finds a serum to cure whatever is ailing him. (Copyright) This hand. business is getting out of celebrity Hugh Carey, who is 62 and was a widower with 12 children, used to be a Brooklyn Irishman. He is also, despite a sometimes dark and brooding personality, a pretty fair politician and he has been a solid governor. He played a strong role, for example, in rescuing New York City from bankruptcy. But performance as governor never seemed to get him any serious attention as a possible future White House tenant. Moved Uptown Then the Brooklyn Irishman moved uptown, as they say Squiring an auto heiress around town, dining at 21,. hanging out at Elaines, watering hole for Manhattans biggest phonies. He became a celebrity fit right in with the kind of people who think Andy Warhol is more than a commercial artist and that Gay Talese is a great writer, who made a career out of inventing trends. Columnist Jimmy Breslin, who knows more than a bit about the New York Irish and how they react to one of their own going uptown, started calling him Society Carey and a lot of people figured he was in deep political next year. trouble should he run for Then he got married, to a lady who, according to the New York Times, spent her wedding morning with her hairdresser, Monsieur Marc, (he doesn't have a last name) and her makeup man, Manzoni (he doesnt have a first name). Ambitious Bride And suddenly Hugh Carey became a presidential possibility. We were told how ambitious is his bride, whose family business empire is under congressional investigation. And several of Mr. Careys confidants told the New York Times that the brides long-terplans may include an interest in becoming first lady at a higher level. I think the marriage will be a Dig plus for him, personally and politically," said David Garth. You remember David Garth. He is the political operator, almost invariably described as a media whiz, who last year helped invent John B. Anderson. You remember John B. Anderson. He was the presidential candidate who was also very and almost big with the crowd at Elaines enough people voted for him to fill the backroom at Elaines. The new Hugh Carey already has taken up jogging Now if the newlyweds will just squeeze themselves into her Calvm Klein jeans, acquire a hot tub and take up roller skating, I suppose People magazine will make him the early favorite to sweep the Iowa caucuses in .ii JiJft'JiJ iqoi his-an- d (Copyugat) r(li , . ' , |
