ustxtxb_obs_1971_06_18_50_00024-00000_000.pdf

government censorship is the unavoidable fact of journalistic life. I refer to Brazil which, as members and friends of the Inter American Press Association well know, has not permitted anything even approaching freedom of the press since the military president assumed dictatorial powers on a Friday the 13th, in December, 1968. As managing editor of the Brazil Herald, an English-language daily newspaper published in Rio de Janeiro, I learned first-hand what it was like to be called to the monolithic Ministry of the Army at 2 a.m. to be ordered to remove certain material from the next day’s news pages because military censors found it objectionable. I learned what it was like to have my publisher tell me he had received phone calls warning of a bomb in the newspaper plant, without so much as a hint as to whether we were being harassed as supporting the military establishment or the revolutionaries. I learned to live with the routine frustration of having news at hand and not daring to publish it, and to share the anguish at learning of the imprisonment of Brazilian journalists and the confiscation of newspapers daring to print truths not “liberated” by the regime. In short I learned the difference between a healthy fear of libel resulting from journalistic irresponsibility and the paranoid dread of power structure repression for publication of the truth. . . . I still take pride in what the Texan did during my days as a staff member, and by and large in what I did on it. Yet I still also admit to a twinge of what might as well be 24 The Texas Observer called Yankee disdain for the absolutist approach that all too often still characterizes the Texans’ approach to issues. That’s what makes my notoriety as the author of the “Viet Cong” editorial so ironic. It merely emphasizes just how much in vain I voiced a plea for “intolerance of intolerance” in my lead editorial that same day. I hoped then that Texans would prove me wrong. I still hope that you might do so today. Jean Etsinger, newswoman, The Associated Press, P. 0. Box 1812, Columbus 16, Ohio. Who paid? My husband and I are a couple of peasants and rarely entertain, but sometimes kinfolks drop in. When they do there is always extra washing and drying to do which makes the electric bill and water bill go higher. We have to buy more food and sometimes we buy a roast instead of hamburger. And if it’s Christmas, my husband will even buy a bottle of whiskey instead of our usual beer. It mounts up. Alll this is in preparation for the big question: Who paid for LBJ’s party? It turns out that the Texas taxpayers are paying for the Library itself, and the federal taxpayers are paying to run it, so I just wondered. Georgia Kipple, 3104 Beverly Road, Austin, Tex. A Roman Orgy You need not have withheld printing the complete word used by the citizens in their chant against the Asian holocaust, when the Roman Orgy was being held in Austin last week. No words which they might utter could equal the obscenity of the two old stags memorializing their careers which are being capped out in charnel depravity. And, the repulsiveness of their suck-egg dog sycophants and satraps licking their bloody hands and devouring the scraps from the dead animals they had barbequed should not be overlooked, as well as the entertainment afforded by their brownshirts clubbing the citizens, aforesaid, who were seeking to exercise what was once declared to be a Constitutional right. The real memorial to these two monsters will be the destruction they willfully inflicted upon the entire world, including their own country and people. The cement outhouse, amply supplied with paper, is more than HE deserves even though his megalomania obviously drives him to a contrary view. From all apparent signs he is, however, mortal and so far as anyone HERE has been able to tell, he won’t be able to observe what he has really wrought from his personal Valhalla which rapidly approaches. Hitler undoubtedly found it to be the same situation. The real Almighty, though, will see a nation in its death throes bankrupt of all Honor and decency, corrput and ineffective politically to govern itself or control its destiny and threatened with constant anarchy created by its old Stag leaders in their blind and bullheaded attempts to memorialize and justify their sorry existence. Every GI addict returning from THEIR Asian holocaust will shoot up \(by gun and by J. D. Crow, 311 Main Street, P. 0. Box 216, Canadian, Tex. 79014. Thanks to Thirty All of us owe Cissy Farenthold, Tom More, Dan Kubiak, Rex Braun and the rest of the Dirty Thirty a debt of gratitude for their efforts in the last Legislature. The Speaker’s ‘victory’ in the redistricting fight was a pyrrhic one; for the people of Texas will at last learn something about the backroom and shoddy speaker’s apartment tactics that have perpetuated the present tyranny in Texas. The moral victory belpngs to the Dirty Thirty. By their obstruction and opposition, they have called -our attention to the personal and political corruption of the House leadership. But a moral victory is like kissing your sister. Beyond court challenges and a possible redistricting special session of the Legislature, where do we start for 1972? Or as Gus would put it for us “What is to be done?” George Shipley, 1807 Brazos, Austin, Tex. 78705. In the wind Two events of statewide significance occurred over this past weekend in Texas, and they might have escaped the notice of your readers. The first was the conferring on May 29 of an honorary Doctor of Laws on former Sen. Ralph Yarborough. The second was the taking of a straw vote on the governorship for 1972 by the Adult Questors Sunday School Class at the University Methodist Church here in Austin on May 30. This was a private written poll of the class, seeking their preferences assuming that three candidates were in the field. The results were as follows: Gov. Preston Smith-1, Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes-3, former Sen. Ralph Yarborough-28. From this it would seem that something is in the wind besides straws this year, and that it could mount to a whirlwind by this time next year. Ralph Carney, 1200 Windsor Rd., Austin, Tex.