ustxtxb_obs_1981_08_14_50_00021-00000_000.pdf

In the richest state in the union, 22 of our state-supported institutions of higher learning have no new construction funds to meet the requirements of growth. At the same time, the University of Texas and the main campus of Texas A&M in College Station suffer from an embarrassment of riches resulting from geometric progressions in income to the Permanent University Fund and the largesse of available funds it produces. Yes, we need to maintain “a university of the first class” as our constitution dictates, but what about the animals on the hind tit? It’s George Orwell’s equality again, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” Good ole Texas boys will come up with the right answer by doubling all the poor bastards’ tuition in the universities. That way all of the UT and A&M “stoonts” can pay twice as much tuition as they pay now at their schools and build the buildings at the 22 other schools. Real good Texas leadership logic. What the hell? We can’t raise taxes on oil and gas. God would strike us all dead. We can’t do that just to educate all our young folks in adequate equal facilities with firstclass equipment. We only need one or two universities of the first class. Says so in the Constitution. Anyway, they ain’t got a 365-day-a-year lobby like big oil and big business, so nobody can get hurt voting against them. How about the $20-million-a-year subsidy we give to the universities like Rice and Baylor and 43 other private or church schools under the mantle of ICUT, the Independent Colleges and Universities? It may be unconstitutional, but there’s no contest from any of the public institutions or leadership. For each Texas student who is voluntarily going to a private school with tuition of five or ten times the public university tuition, send $700 to the church school, and the same time double the tuition of the public university student to do it. More religious leaders show up at the finance committee hearings than students, and ICUT spends real money, even throwing an annual luncheon for the entire legislature, to keep their church-school subsidy. Only in Texas can all God’s children sustain such wonderful, logical conclusions. NOT MUCH proof of progress, when you consider the few illustrations given, but some funny things happened on the way to the forum and 1984. I’ll tell about them in another article or a whole book. My law partner, Jim Simpson, told a lady in Texas City that I was going to write a book, but it was coming out so strong it could only be released posthumously. She was overjoyed, expressing her hope that it would be printed soon. Editor of Houston City is Fired Rule. Those that have the gold make the rules.” Joe Murphy, Houston City’s publisher, broke the news about Curtis to the staff with the statement that there were differences of chemistry and differences about the direction of the magazine. Murphy did not return the Observer’s call for more information. Accordingly, one hears what one hears and looks at what is public. Curtis’ article on Texas Monthly in Washington Journalism Review last April appears to be a plausible explanation of the genesis of the trouble. This study of TM by the editor of its competition in Houston so inflamed the TM crowd, the June WJR carried letters of complaint from TM’s editor-in-chief, editor, and associate editor. Repercussions could have reached Ray Hunt in Dallas, though this is not known. Curtis’ reportage on TM repeated at length details of the 1976 contretemps when publisher Mike Levy blew up over two sidewise-shots at Neiman-Marcus in the magazine, but that episode was reported fully at, the time \(see Kaye Northcott’s story in TO bly the most vivid picture in Curtis’ story is his opening account of his first meeting with Mike Levy, who was to become the publisher of Texas Monthly. Curtis wrote that in the spring of 1972, while he was a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, Levy interviewed him as a candidate for editor of the magazine he was planning. Curtis continued: “The would-be publisher glanced at the list of story possibilities I had written down for him, many of which were investigative projects that had already been rejected by my city editor, and dismissed them. ‘We’d want to get ads from all the big banks and insurance companies,’ he explained. ‘We certainly wouldn’t want to do stories that would offend them.’ In short order, he went on his way and I went mine.” Curtis’ evaluation of TM is at one with the genre of the yes-and-no evaluative style, often ending with a knock-down, that was developed by Time and tends to be a recurring style in the slick regional magazines. Selecting Bill Broyles as editor, Curtis writes, Levy was “inspired”; Broyles edited something “masterfully”; at its best, TM has developed writers with real voices, has communicated a genuine sense of place, and has dealt, “from time to time, with central values and crucial issues.” But, Curtis wrote, “With its success, the magazine has frequently come to embrace the traditional, politically conservative Texas business position on matters like energy policy and the power of federal judges. One liberal contributor refers to the magazine’s senior staff as `young fogies.’ ” Curtis also quoted Chase Untermeyer, a former Republican state legislator now an aide to George Bush, characterizing Broyles’ study of the King Ranch last fall as “an insider’s story, a pro-King Ranch story, an Establishmentarian story. . . . I doubt that the family would have let anyone but Broyles write it.” None of TM’s editors, in their letters to WJR, challenged Curtis’ story about the 1972 meeting. Broyles warmly came to Levy’s defense, though, citing a case in which Levy stood up to heavy pressures concerning an investigative story about Zale’s, a company that is important in TM’s finances. TM Editor Gregory Curtis confined his letter to berating WJR for running a piece on TM by the editor of a competitor. Tom Curtis had raised this problem with WJR and disclosed it in the article that he wrote, but of course a problem is not necessarily dissolved by having attention called to its existence. Harry Hurt III, TM’s associate editor, celebrated his magazine’s investigative pieces “on such subjects as Houston police killings, city hall, corruption, cancer-causing chemicals, the H. L. Hunt family of Dallas, stolen art, and cable TV franchising.” He, too, cited the Zale case in evidence that Levy has “consistently supporte.d investigative reporting with courage and poise.” “As for being part of the ‘establishment,” Hurt let go at Tom Curtis, “I suggest that Curtis look at his own glass house before throwing stones at his competition. . . . Houston City is Owned by no less an establishment THE TEXAS OBSERVER 21