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Show National Enterprise , April 7, 1976 Page Eleven Grease the Farmers " when m'ee meou6H -- WITH HIM, HE WIU Congress is possibly missing its greatest chance to prove to the world, once and for all, just how effective it can be in busting up American bigness. Taking on divestiture of big oil companies will accomplish only half the job. And Americans, of all people, know if its worth doing at all, its worth doing right. Why stop with the nations fuel supplies? Farmers are big too. Theyre organized. They have a lot of clout. The little farmer has been effectively excluded from competition by the big, organized agriculture groups who can afford to streamline, economize their operations. In short, to make it profitable. Farmers who grow their own feed should be required to divest all other holdings. They should be required to sell only grain to other farmers who only raise cattle, sheep, hogs, chickens, turkeys, etc. Those farmersin turn, should be required to rid themselves of BE effeotivelv- iNEPFesnvrl transportation methods used to haul their products to market. And finally, farmers who grow feed, or raise food, or transport products, should, above, all, not be allowed to market their own products. Surely, someone else can do a much better job. Its time Americans realized the danger in doing anything logically, efficiently, or econSend out the hatchet men. omically. Divestiture of the agriculture industry is what we really need! was once told that before you say or write anything you should ask yourself if it is true - necessary - or kind. What a person says doesnt have to be all three. For example, its all right to be unkind if its true and necessary. There is also nothing wrong with adjusting the truth a bit if its kind to do so. y life But as a general rule, we would do well in our to ask ourselves before we gossip: Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein might well have gone too far. Their new book, The Final Days gives us the inside story of the last days of a bad president. Now I voted for Richard Nixon. Most of us did. With the exception of human rights, I generally find myself more comfortable with conservative politicians. It wasnt hard for me to choose between Mr. Nixon and Mr. McGovern. But he let us down. Ke made us all look bad in a way. So my opinion of Richard Nixon is low. Not as low as my opinion of Mr. Agnew who did it all in the name of personal gain, but still pretty low. So I dont care if you knock Mr. Nixon. You can say he was an awful president. You can say all sorts of things. Im glad he is gone, too. And the truth is that he really is gone. The man is beaten. There will be no come back. The Chinese got him. Richard Nixon is through - finished - discarded and ruined. What else do we want? We have been told that Richard Nixon liked total revenge. Are we any different? Is there any detail of his life that we have failed to drag through the mud? We are told by Woodward and Bernstein that the President toward the end, sobbed, bent over, pounded the floor with his fist and curled up on the carpet like a child. I dont blame him. It would make most of us sick to Jiave to resign from the presidency. I mean that its a pretty damn interesting job and youd hate to have to leave it under any circumstances. If the truth were told, Id bet that all presidents are sick in the stomach when their time to retire comes. So Nixon cried. Well, if you had made that big a mess of something you cared that much about, youd probably cry, too. I have over less. know I would-a- nd And they say he thought of killing himself. By God, I dont I day-to-da- blame him. Id be thinking the same thing. Id be thinking it but in the end I wouldnt do it. But Mr. Nixon didnt do it either. He was given to bouts of gloom and storms of temper. Me Too. In fact, I have a few broken tennis racquets to prove it. It goes on and on. The President drank too much. I confess that Im not thrilled with the idea of a drunk having a finger on the button, but given the same circumstances, I might have one too many myself. Bernstein and Woodward tell us that Pat Nixon wanted to divorce the President after his loosing race for governor of California in 1962. That for the last 14 years they havent been sleeping together. That apparently translates into not even having sex. We are also told that Julie and David Eisenhower have had a strained marriage. I can see why. It would be tough to have all this crap written about you every day. Four hundred fifty-si- x pages of a lot of gossip. But does The Final Days pass the test? Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? Kind it is not. One senses the same opportunistic qualities in the authors that we grew to dislike in cold-blood- The Prince Column by John Prince ed Richard Nixon. True? I hope they were careful. We are told that they interviewed 394 people. We are also told that they required of themselves at least two sources for every statement of fact. In the few cases where only two people took part in a meeting and neither would be interviewed, the authors relied on accounts of others with whom the principals had talked immediately afterward. So it might well be accurate. But I have a gut feeling that the facts have been sensationalized. Only a feeling, and I may be dead wrong. And finally, is the book necessary? I cant answer that. Woodward and Bernstein, no doubt, needed it to keep the public eye. And the public seems to have an insatiable appetite for kicking a man when hes down. Beyond that, it serves no great need. I started this by saying that the authors may have gone too far Prince, Langheinrich. this time. Again Im not sure. For some reason the whole thing doesn't feel true enough, kind enough, or necessary enough. Cheers. . . & Greer |