ustxtxb_obs_1986_05_30_50_00023-00000_000.pdf

Page 19

May 30, 1986, 12:00 AM, CDT

state zip state zip this subscription if for myself gift subscription; send card in my name Send the Observer to address address $23 enclosed for a one-year subscription bill me for $23 i3 -,

<div id="pico"><p>state   zip  state   zip  this subscription if for myself  gift subscription; send card in my name  Send the Observer to   address  address  $23 enclosed for a one-year subscription  bill me for $23  i3  -,<T e   The Texas Observer,  600 W. 28th #105, Austin, Texas 78705  price includes $1.12 sales tax  cessfully adjusted themselves." Now  was the. time, in the words of e.e.  cummings, to "up grow and down  forget."  Mayer drew up a simple moral  dilemma to make his point.  He  asked  the students to imagine themselves 25  years older celebrating their wedding  anniversary with their beloved \(or less  a window table for two at the choicest  restaurant in town, and the champagne  bucket will be at the table when you  arrive. You will not be. the cynosure of  all eyes, but you will think yeti are. The  head waiter \(or maitre d', as he is known  eye travels. down the menu it will be  distracted by something outside the  window, which will prove to be a  hungry man. What will you do? Do you  know what you will do then, 25 years  from now? You will call the maitre d'  and tell him to have the drapes pulled,  and he will tell the waiter, and he will  tell the .bus boy, who will do it."  Then, with the rolls buttered and the  champagne poured, Mayer's imaginary  couple notice the phrase, in small print  at the bottom of the menu, "The  Management reserves the right to refuse  service to anyone." And by this they  knoW they are in a Jim Crow restaurant.  Will you get up and leave? he asks. "Or  will you pretend, as the management \(by  intended you to pretend, that you did  not see the notice? You will stay at the  table and order your dinner and eat it,"  he assured them. "You will have been  measured for corruption and found to  fit." He added later that he was the man  who had taken his wife to the Jim Crow  restaurant.  Mayer told the students to "resist the  beginnings," to resist the doctrine of the  lesser evil, to be heroes in their own  land, not in some faraway Iwo Jima.  "If you do not begin to cultivate the  habit of heroism today  and habits are  formed by acts  you never will." He  told them what they needed is "what  Bismarck said was the only thing the  Germans needed  civilian courage."  In , my mind, I protested Mayer's  moral severity, as did, most likely, the  Class of '58, whoever they were. He  left too many questions unsolved: How  would a person of inviolable conscience  participate iri society in any way that  counted? How could _one live at odds  with the "deplorable society" and not  sever the bridge with fellow citizens?  Where does compromise end and corruption begin?  And isn't there a time for lying low,  to live to strike another blow? "Fool,"  quoth Milton Mayer, "this night thy soul   shall be required of thee." The lesser  evil you choose today gets written in  the book; tomorrow the book may close.  To this day I don't know whether I  believe the message of Mayer's Commencement Address  that we are all  marked for corruption. I am deliberating  . . . trying to wriggle free of his  damnable questions. But of all the  politicians, preachers, and business  leaders, of all the two-bit tycoons and  One-Minute Managers who are thought  to have wisdom to impart to this season's  graduates, I'd take this hack newspaperman. He was one of the most wonderfully bothersome writers we had.    ADVERTISE in  the OBSERVER  I .vC\\  1   THE TEXAS OBSERVER 23 
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