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Show (Jk jsalt Take aribunr Tuesday Morning Section May 7, 1985 A Reagans False Start Concludes With Dignity, Sincerity President Reagan's journey to Germany has reiterated a simple ti uth World War II and the Holocaust are inseparable. It was a truth that Mr. Reagan, his staff and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl all tried to ignore. Fortunately a lot of people, including Americas Jewish community, U.S. veterans groups and the United States Congress, didnt permit it to happen. For unfathomable reasons Mr. Reagan, in response to urgings by Mr. Kohl that the U.S. president during his trip to the economic summit meeting in Bonn include the wreath laying at the Bitburg cemetery as a gesture of reconciliation between the two World War II enemies, gave no consideration, initially, to the inseparable status of the war and the Holocaust. At least he did not until the furor over his omission became After first declining to visit a concentration camp site, he altered his agenda so that Sunday he visited the cemetery as well as the death camp at full-blow- Bergen-Belse- n. n. Sundays agenda is the way the presidents trip should have been laid out from the start. It would not necessarily have quieted all opposition and derision over the visit to the Bitburg cemetery where 49 of the nearly 2,000 graves contain the remains of SS soldiers. But a two-sit- e agenda, from the outset, would have been adamant recognition of the intertwining of the Holocaust and World War II, as well as the welcome and productive reconci-latioof foes during the past four decades. As such it would have worked to mute much of the initial hostility generated by White House ineptness. Having lamented, again, this lack of historical perspective it is noteworthy that Mr. Reagan, once he got his n act together, has probably overcome, with gravity and dignity, one of the most embarrassing and difficult episodes of his presidency. At Bergen-Belsehe underscored the fundamental theme of his journey redemption and reconciliation when he noted, "Were here because humanity refuses to accept that freedom of the spirit of man can ever be extinguished. Were here to commemorate that life triumphed over tragedy and the death of the Holocaust overcame the suffering, the sickness, the testing, and yes, the gassings. It was, however, at the U.S. air base at Bitburg that Mr. Reagan spoke what may go down as his most quoted paragraph of the day: Twenty-tw- o years ago, President John F. Kennedy went to the Berlin Wall and proclaimed that he, too, was a Berliner. n Well, today freedom-lovin- g people around the world must say, I am a Berliner, I am a Jew in a world I still threatened by am an Afghan, and I am a prisoner of the Gulag, I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam, I am a Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism. anti-Semitis- What had started under a series of blatant miscues, a seemingly callous lack of understanding and an incredible lack of a sense of history ended, it appears, with a sincere and sympathetic appreciation of the horrors of another era. tion as a whole. Black men, for example, face one chance in 21 of being knocked off by a fellow human. But even within this category there must be wide variations. Not all black men face such relatively short odds. Although the bureau's study is of interest to the ordinary layman and may be of greater value to scholars, it has almost no practical application for the more than 226 million Americans it is supposed to enlighten. Even assuming that the statistics are of pinpoint accuracy and that every citizen does in fact face a one in 133 chance of being murdered, what can potential victims do to lengthen their private odds Not much that anybody of average intelligence isnt doing already But. as noted the one m 133 odds do not apply for ewrvone That is what Mr. Reagan wanted to do in the first place. In light of his effective recovery this past weekend, its an even greater shame that he started off on the wrong foot. Reasonably well behaved residents of Utah, for example, surely have better numbers going for them than do members of a Mafia family in Chicago or ordinary residents of that citys Southside. While murder crosses all social, racial and economic lines, it has to be more common among those of limited educational and economic opportunities than among the middle and upper crusts. For what its worth, an informal poll of several members of our Editorial Board revealed that none of them could recall having known, personally, the victim of a murder. Acquaintance with at least some victims of rape, robbery and assault was commonplace. (well-ripene- All of this is by way of advising readers of the Bureau of Justice Statistics survey or news reports thereof, not to panic at the one in 133 odds on being bumped off or in some other manner being sent on their way. Despite the research-buttresseofficial overall odds, the survival chances of anyone who had time or this to read the survey findings are almost certainly dissertation much better. post-mort- al climbed it. For the affable Mr Bas.s. t elopowner of Snowbird Kesort m and er Little Cottonwood Canyon, his belated conquest of Everest was a multiple triumph, both personal and official Asia's Everest had eluded him for years, although he had scaled the highest peaks on all the other continents. On three other attempts, Everest rebuffed him. Later, Nepalese officialdom presented obstacles that delayed a fourth try. The days slipped by and Mr. Bass age became an in creasingly worrisome factor. New York Times News Service NEW YORK David Stockman, the boy genius of the Reagan administration, threw a tantrum the other day before a Senate subcommittee. If senators did not have "the courage, the foresight. the comprehen- sion" to "pull the plug on what he called an irredeemable Amtrak rail passenger system, he saw little hope for deficit reduction or for avoiding a whopping tax increase." There, there, little man. It won t be as bad as ail that, if Amtrak survives. Take Elizabeth Dole's word for it. As secretary of transportation, she affirmed last September that she shared the view of Federal Railroad Administrator John H. Riley that Amtrak had made great instrides toward "modern, running in tercity rail passenger service 1985 "more route miles than it did in 1981 at approximately 28 percent lower funding. Dole, far from sharing young David's hysteria about what he cutely called a mobile money-burninmachine," had asked for a $765 million Amtrak subsidy for fiscal 1986. But that was before the youthful budget director began to drum his heels. He and President Reagan squawk fresubsidy that quently about a each Amtrak passenger supposedly receives. This prestidigitation requires adding the Amtrak subsidy to the amount that Amtrak business travelers can deduct from their income taxes, and dividing by 20 million passengers, presto! $35 a head Young David is so distraught that he apparently forgets some of the other numbers surely so brilliant a budget director knows them - he might be expected to crunch. For example: Sixty-fiv- e percent of airline revenues are for business travel; so for each airline passenger, business travel deductions alone provide a subsidy of $33. In 1984, moreover, control cost the federal government $2 1 billion, or $9 for each of 221 million air passengers, so by young David's irrelevant arithmetic, the federal subsidy per air passenger was $42 which pay From its ticket revenues and subsidy, Am60 percent of its costs trak is required to spend $116 million annually to maintain the Northeast Corridor over which also move the freight trains of Conrail (which earned $500 million in 1984) and every rail commuter service from Boston to Washington. If, as young David urges, Congress pulls a House subcommitthe plug on Amtrak tee voted Thursday to continue the rail system in operation - the government will have to pay $2 1 billion in labor termination costs over the next six years, an obligation inherited from the private railroads, $3 billion in modern locomotives, equipment, specialized shops and Northeast Corridor plant will be scrappel, with little market for salvage; and about 150.000 jobs in affected business sectors will be jeopardized (25.000 railroad employees will be thrown out of jobs). But the young genius told the senators that few programs ranked lower than Am cost-efficie- Last week, as one of 17 members Norwegian expedition to reach the summit. Dick Bass became the oldest man to stand on the wind-swesummit and the first to have climbed the highest mountains on all the conti- of a pt nents Most laymen dont realize the immense amount of preparation, financial support and precise coordination required to mount a major mountain assault and go all the way With modern equipment, the actual climb is somewhat less challenging today than it once was but it still demands great mountaineering skill, physical and mental fortitude, and, in Mr. Bass case, extreme patience and optimism. In a joyful way, Dick Bass victory over the mountains is a little sad. There are other peaks to climb, some them perhaps technically more difficult than the highest he has scaled on each continent. But his lifes dream has been realized and hes only 55. of air-traff- - right-of-wa- trak in terms of the good they do, the purpose they serve and the national need. Boyish overstatement again Amtrak carried 20 million passengers last year, while receiving a smaller federal subsidy (in current dollars) than in 1978; and in the Northeast Corridor 160,000 commuters on various sery vices rode over every day. The Empire State Passengers Association points out that at least 1,200 people board a train daily in Albany, N.Y., alone, and asks, pertinently, who if Amtrak goes will pay to operate Penn Station for the great tide of commuters from Long Island and New Jersey into and out of New York City? Killing Amtrak also would nullify the two bond issues New Yorkers have voted for rail service, with $109 million al- Amtrak-maintaine- high-spee- d right-of-wa- ready invested. Aside from New York and the Northeast (never high concerns for Reaganites), Amtrak serves 25 American communities (and surrounding regions) that have no air or bus service, 52 more that have no bus service and 94 that have no air service Almost a million passengers got on or off trains at places without bus service in fiscal 1984. So young David shouldn't get so wrought up about Amtrak; and returning White House colleagues might calm him with news that the West German government, planning its infrastructure investments for the next decade, has decided to put 34 billion marks into its railroads and only 28 billion into its highway network. Now that's a grown-u- p d Carl T. Rowan Halls Jungle Blacks Thesis A Symbol of White House? News America Syndicate A lot of people in this WASHINGTON town, and m Congress, are angry over Presi- dent Reagans giving a year sinecure to a woman who edited or was somehow involved in producing a $70,000-a-yea- r, seven-- book that reeks with racist bilge. They are de- manding the ouster of Marianne Mele Hall as chairman of the Copyright Royalty Tribunal because of her involvement in an essay portraying black Americans as animals who insist on preserving their jungle freedoms, their women, their avoidance of personal responsibility and their abhorrence of the work ethic " The question serious people are asking is whether Hall got her job through a personnel foul-uor whether she is there because her "jungle blacks mentality matches that of the Reagan White House. I shall simply cite a bit of history, a few facts, and let you readers make up your own minds. 1965 Reagan is positioning himself to run for governor of California. He calls on black Republican Edward W. Brooke, attorney general of Massachusetts and later to become senator from that state. In mentionnations of Africa, ing the Reagan was quoted as joking- When they have a man for lunch, they really have him for lunch." Autumn 1965 Reagan says, "I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it must be enforced at gunpoint, if necessary. Reagan refers to Eight months later the law that ended Jim Crow in hotels, restaurants, theaters as a bad piece of legislation" and says I would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 newly-independe- 1967 Reagan declares opposition to a fair housing law (passed by Congress in 1968), arguing against "telling the people what they can or can't do with their proper- ty. Aug. 3, 1980 Reagan outrages many blacks and Jews by going to Philadelphia, Miss., to deliver a speech endorsing states' rights He chose to woo the South in the town where racists murdered two Jewish and one black civil rights workers in 1964. After Reagan disavowed Sept. 2, 1980 the Klans endorsement, Grand Wizard Don Black said it didnt matter, because the Klan found Reagan the best of the three candidates. FIRST TERM Reagan pushes through Congress cuts in food, welfare and other programs that cause drastic drops in the incomes of black middle-clas- s families and plunge more blacks into poverty, Reagan tries to cut the Voting Rights Act. but is foiled by the Senate in an vote; Reastatus to Bob gan tries to give Jones University, the Goldsboro Christian Schools and other institutions practicing racial discrimination, but is halted by Congress and the courts. SECOND TERM Reagan personally praises Clarence Pendleton, chairman of the U.S. Civil who is Rights Commission, scorned even by black Republicans as an embarrassment. Reagan infuriates Republican Mayor Richard Hudnut of Indianapolis, and the leaders of some 50 other cities by sending the Justice Department into court to try to undo affirmative action programs through which cities have taken politics and racism out of their personnel policies. That is just part of a long and consistent record of Ronald Reagan's relationship to black Americans Perhaps it will let you decide whether Marianne Mele Hall is some kind of aberration, or whether she and that thesis about jungle'' blacks is a faithful symbol of what this While House is all about. 8 Jim Bradv Dick Bass Does II Every person who sots out to climb a mountain has a special motive. Sometimes, it's as simple as wanting to see whats on top Rut the reasons become more complex as the mountains go higher and the climbing more difficult. At 29,023 let t. M: Everest on the Nepal-Tibe- t horde:. s the of then1 all And. Dick Hass, at highest the ripe old age ol 53 has finally Stockman Errs in Railing at Amtrak g Making Book on Murder Americans generally have one chance in 133 of being murdered in an entire lifetime," according to a new study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The word to keep in mind is generally. The bureaus findings confirm that not every person in the United States is under the same odds as the popula- Tom Wicker Despair, Loathing at Yankee Stadium King Features Syndicate Do you have any conception of what it's like to be a Yankee fan these days when you have faithfullv been following the team since DiMaggio, Henneh and Keller patrolled the outer garden and now you wake up in the morning hoping that they lost last night again I feel like Benedict Arnold Or Vidkun Quisling Or Philip Nolan Like the "man am a man without a without a country 1 team For all these years I've suffered the slings and arrows of Yankee haters around the contry and thrived Yankee fans were like that, arrogant, self assured, confident of eventual victory, if not in this realm then certainly in the next If baseball is played in heaven, the Yankee fan always knew it was played up then in pinstripes Now. suddenly, calamity Its not that the team is losing We are mature individuals, we Yankee fans, and we realize you can t win 'em all But even when the Bronx Bombers lost, in the past, it was with dignity, with style, with class Like the gallant spy facing a firing squad, refusing the blindfold and puffing placidly on a final cigarette, Yankee fans always knew how to accept defeat with a jest, a smile, an unblinking eve. In victory, of course, we were always magnanimous, controlled, serene. You don't trash cars and overturn buses and fight cops in New York when the Yankees win a World Series, the way they do in lesser burgs It was in our destiny to win, why burn down the town when the inevitable occurs? All this has changed Der Steinbrenner changed it when he sacked Yogi and hired back again, for his fourth term as manager, little ferret Martin. Basethat beady-eveball fans understand managers are hired to be fired They do not understand irrational bahavior Yankee fans I've spoken wim are of two minds, got a committee of citizens together to buy the team from Steinbrenner and send him back to Cleveland wher he belongs, or, boycott home games and turn Yankee Stadi urn into a hollow and empty place that makes Bitburg cemetery seem cheerful and beckoning The latter. I realize, is unfair to such great men as Guidry and Mattingly and Baylor and Winfield The foi mer is probably impractical Thus our dilemma One can hardly become a Mets fan There are limits beyond which decency and honor do not permit us to go As for me, I am trying to muddle through by taking ironic pleasure in my own pain. A form of baseball masochism When Martin issues his first set of rules and they involve wearing shirts and ties on airplanes, and a few hours later the Yankees lose a ballgame because a homerun becomes an out due to a base running blunder, derive a certain joy. I know it's sick. I can't help it. 1 The summer stretches endlessly, hopelessly ahead Another 140 or 145 games to go. I am turning again to religion, lighting candles and inquiring as to the schedule of nove-na- s Ierhaps, one of these nights, in Kansas City or Detroit or somewhere, a marshmallow salesman will enter a bar where Martin drinks, and salvation will again be at hand I f |
