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Show the Utah ENTERPRISE -- PRAGMATIC DOGMATICS The French food crisis by Kent Shearer In this age, which manifests every day in the decline of the every way West, it should come as no great surprise. But, still, one is inclined to lift an eyebrow when the Paris newspaper, Le Monde , editorializes upon Frances declining restaurants. Gourmets (the very word is French) long have viewed France much as the Jews consider It has been to them a sort of Israel. gastronomic homeland. And, just as the Jews easily forgive irrational Israeli policies, gourmets will abide even a De Gaulle if they can have their veal cordon bleu. So francophile are American tastes that, even here in the heart of Zion, two of the three most expensive Salt Lake restaurants serve French food, and the third boasts it as one of its cuisines. Roast beef alone does not a Julia Child make. Hear Le Monde however. French An cooking is going to the dogs, it says. tHteBXO I 5grfAu.ofj loop fkwttPA- - A sweeping statement? Possibly. But look at what happens along Frances major roads where a new breed of is serving up to the hungry and hurried motorist greasy chips, leftover, steaks that feel as if they have been hacked out of used tvrcs.s7c svnthcticallv flavored ices and jugs of wine whose origins are more than dubious. The newspaper continues; The art of cooking has been reduced, disgracefully, to a mere dozen or so dishes. You keep on finding the same old recipes being served up with pretentious new names which are simply aimed at disguising their uniform mediocrity. Wherever one goes, one finds cither the wretched tournedos Rossini and sole souffle of the old school, or a poor imitation of the Nouvelle Cuisines saladc folic and undercooked fish with vegetables. Le Monde points up a crisis of more than Frances ow?n domestic concern. The world has an interest in the rescue of French cooking, for it plays an intrinsic role in Western culture. exaggeration? rcstaurant-eur-cum-highwaym- The Last Time I Saw Paris" was not meant to be sung by one with a heartburn. The Count of Monte Crista docs not play well to a chorus of burp and belch. an Others may and will disagree, but this writer considers the arrest and reversal of French culinary decline to be every bit as condiimportant today as were the post-wa- r tions that occasioned the Marshall Plan. An American initative clearly is requisite of the human right of Frenchmen to decent fare is to be protected. President Carter immediately should appoint Ms. Child a minister extraordinary to France. She should assemble a task force of American French restaurant owners. The company should then journey to France to educate the chefs of that benighted land in how their national food is prepared. The American taxpayer should foot the bill; he has received far less for far more elsewhere. Dumas, Hugo, rest in peace. The Yanks arc coming. so-call- ed en Im TO Across cm& td we wades. mao we climb ieoewes. mt Wine we r biu me w moep we i nop FRflSHrs none W hCllCW 5&S0D weeps ae a torn. Be even. fAMtv eer-mv- m- Stiff The Ritter controversy how to know who is right by Parker M. Nielson Q. DC LLJ Chief Judge Willis W. Ritter of the U.S. District Court for Utah has a high percentage of his cases reversed by the Court of Appeals. Attorney General Robert Hansen has been keeping book on Ritter for years and claims in excess of 80 percent of the cases he has decided against in the State of Utah have been reversed. Outgoing U.S. Attorney Ramon Child points to in excess of 23 of the cases involving the United States being reversed. Hansen and Child have filed petitions with the Court of Appeals alleging, inter alia, that these high rates of reversal indicate the judge is biased, incompetent or that he intentionally acts in disregard of the law. They seek to have Ritter removed from consideration of cases involving the state or the federal governments. Ritter's reversal The thesis of Child and Hansen rate is not only doubtful, it is demonstrably false. For example, in the term of court concluded October, 1976, the United States 74 percent of all cases Supreme Court reversed in excess of which it considered. Those statistics represent cases from all Courts of Appeals, as well as from State Courts, which were reviewed by the High Court. Thus, using the reasoning of Messrs. Child and Hansen, one rould as easily make a case that the Court of Appeals was wrong, or improperly motivated, and that it was Ritter who was correct. To cite but one example, in 1955 the Court of Appeals reversed Ritter in the case of Verne Braasch and Melvin Sullivan. The two men were put to death by a firing squad at vis-a-v- is o o the Utah State Prison. But the Supreme Courts subsequent Miranda decision illustrates that Ritter was right all along and ahead of his time in declaring that a defendant charged with major crime was entitled to counsel at every critical stage of the proceedings. The Court of Appeals proved to be unenlightened, in the end. Such statistics do not prove that the Courts of Appeals arc consistently wrong or improperly motivated in any sense. Neither do they support that thesis in Ritter's case. All they illustrate is the rather obvious fact that those cases which arc appealed, in the main, arc those in which there is some procedural or substantive defect or a controversial issue of law. The far larger percentage of cases decided by the Court of Appeals, or by Judge Ritter, remain undisturbed because they are never appealed. Child and Hansen do not, of course, include those cases in their statistics. Ritter has always been a controversial figure, even since before his appointment to the bench. Only time will prove if Ritter's current reversals are the result of prescience or the In the errors which Child and Hansen claim for them. meantime, the federal judge must have the independence to make the decisions he considers right, however unpopular. If justice could be dispensed by popular vote we could eliminate the third branch of government. In recent years there have been a proliferation of petitions filed with the Court of Appeals seeking to effectively deny Ritter amtrol over his calendar. Thus far the appellate court has wisely declined such an extraordinary move on the grounds that such petitions seek what is tantamount to impeachment a matter reposed with Congress. One may hazard a guess, and certainly hope, that the Court of Appeals will once more opt for the Constitution. |