Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1971)
Nicholas Von Hoffman Of hookers and journalists (C) 1971, The Washington Post WASHINGTON-Catalina Kate Coleman has always been a highly par ticipatory journalist. How she got the nickname Catalina has drained out of memory, but for the rest she is vivid enough. She first came to her colleagues’ at tention during the student insurrection at Columbia University when she was working for Newsweek. You’d be walking around the campus, moving around the edges of a group of 50 or 100 heated-up students and you could hear this power fully emphatic young woman’s voice from the center. When you’d ask who was talking, often the answer would be, “...That Girl from Newsweek.” Some months later that girl from Newsweek quit her job. Before she did she caused at least a modicum of trouble. There was, for instance, the time Hubert Humphrey came to pay a call on the magazine. Candidates often visit the home offices of major news organizations during a campaign and, as happens, a number of the staff people lined up to greet him. One of them was Kate, but when this possible next President of The United States got to her, she not only refused to shake his hand but said something to the effect that he was a war criminal. Despite this unbridled partisanship, Kate is a good journalist. She gets the names spelled right which is more than a lot of people in our business are able to do, and she can write well. Also she can think, which has enabled her to write longish magazine pieces where formula journalism breaks down. She’s written for Ramparts, a magazine that’s gotten more accurate and reliable as it has grown less shockingly flamboyant. Her most recent contribution appears in the December issue under the title of “Carnal Knowledge: A Portrait Of Four Hookers.’’ It’s a good professional job, and if you want to know what a rotten life most whores lead, Kate tells you, but prostitution is in journalistic vogue this year and there are other articles around that will give you the same information. What makes Kate’s the most unusual offering of the season is the last section of her story: “During the course of my interviews a number of call girls generously offered me their ‘john book’ (a john being the name that whores have for their customers), playfully urging me to gain firsthand knowledge of the subject. Certainly the idea of doing so had crossed my mind, but I rejected it... I did not feel a serious lack of versimilitude in my reporting. . . I had always felt, there was a false note in the accounts of Henry Miller, for example, when he wrote of whores in his own self congratulatory bravado. I found myself silently screaming at him, “Bully for you, so the whores love you and you get it for free; big deal, you still don’t know their private vision.” George Plimpton “Furthermore, while harboring a commitment to involved journalism-as opposed to the great American myth of objective reporting-the idea of doing a George Plimpton-on-the-job-reporting number seemed absurd in the case of prostitution... with all these thoughts firmly imprinted upon my con scious mind, I nevertheless found myself turning a trick . . .” But after Kate had exchanged sex for money in one of the bedrooms of a Manhattan call girl establishment, she still hadn’t tasted of what she calls the private vision of those in this occupation. The john she took to bed was a handsome, sexy younger man who provided her with what she called a “stunning pleasure... ” But then, after it was over and she was having coffee with the other girls, she writes, “suddenly, I heard myself ad dressed by one of the (other) johns. I looked up and saw a paunch, shiny suit and homed-rimmed glasses on a doughy face. Omigod, he’s asking me to go into the bedroom with him—with him! I stut tered my refusal . . . The other hookers urged me to go with him, but I was adamant.. . lids man flaccid, gross and wore an American flag pin in his lapel— a complete turn-off. One of the hookas chided me, "But you see, that’s the point: Your research is unreal...you don’t have the right to refuse. You don’t have that kind of choice.” Journalist vs. Memorist Kate’s experience shows that a journalist can never know, not completely, not as it is lived. When she does know, then she ceases to be a journalist and turns into a memoirist. It’s as the hookers said, one trick with an exceptional john isn’t enough; you have to be a hooker to share the hooker’s private vision. But that private vision excludes you from so many others. How, as a hooka, are you next going to capture the private vision of a detective on the vice squad? The best a journalist can hope fa is a vicarious approximation, one that will not be exactly right, and which those readers who do know will see and object to, be they hooka, politicians a pro football players, but it’s given to each of us to have only one private vision and that of the journalist must be journalism. LA Tlmes-Washington Post News Service William Raspberry Wrong questions asked of Butz (C) 1971, The Washington Post WASHINGTON—It is no great surprise, really, that the Senate Agriculture and Forestry Committee has approved (by an 8-to-6 vote) the nomination of Earl C. Butz to be secretary of agriculture. But it is curious, to put it mildly, that the committee hearings dwelt almost exclusively on the small farmer agribusiness issue and virtually ignored the question of Butz’s feelings about agriculture-sponsored food assistance programs. Barbara Bode, who doesn’t put it mildly, is shocked, dismayed, in credulous and occasionally unprintable. 3^nd with good reason, considering that one-fourth of the Agriculture Department’s budget goes for food assistance. As executive director of the Children’s Children’s Foundation, a public non profit service to groups organized for child-welfare and hunger issues, she has been deeply involved in school-lunch and other federally subsidized food programs, and she understands the im portance of official attitudes. “From press reports (the hearings were closed), we get the impression that no one raised any really substantive questions about his attitudes toward school lunches, school breakfasts, food stamps or similar programs,” she said. She quoted from an old speech in which Butz chided those who talk about poverty in modern-day America. “There will always be a ‘lower fifth’ of our society,” Butz was supposed to have said, “but let us not forget that the Tower fifth’ of our society today is better off than the ‘upper fifth’ in my day.” “Given this ye—have—the—poor always—with—you attitude,” Ms. Bode wondered, “does he believe that the department of agriculture shouldn't be involved in ‘giveaway’ programs? Or that they should be cut back? “I think some questions should have been raised.” The Agriculture Department already has been under attack for its regulations (later rescinded), lowering the poverty I WHAT'9 VOUR I BROTHER DOING I I HOW THAT MB'S 1 f BACK FROM ] I VIETNAM? College Press Service cut-off for free lunches, effectively eliminating a million or more children from its coverage, and for foot-dragging on other assistance programs. With the administration’s posture thus revealed, and with Butz craning in as the new tough guy to shape things up, he will have considerable power to do more of the things that many people regard as anti-poor . Ulus Ms. Bods’s astonishment that no one on the committee made Butz talk about his views and his plans for dealing with the assistance programs. She was particularly upset that the certified liberals on the committee Humphrey and McGovern-let the issue slip by. Jerry Berman of the Center For Community Change echoes that view. "If anybody was to point out that more than the price of com is involved in the Butz nomination,” he said, "It should should have been McGovern or Humphrey. Although both voted against con firmation, neither seemed to give much importance to the question of poverty. "It’s almost as though we’re going back to the days of the invisible poor.” Some observers have also wondered at the silence of the so-called hunger lobby-the UAW, AFL-CIO, leadership conference on civil rights, the churches, common cause and others. ‘‘The questions simply weren’t raised,” Ms. Bode said. "Apparently they (committee members) thought the mid western vote was crucial and that for midwesterns the small-farmer question is more important than hunger." Nor could she raise them officially herself. Her position with the children’s foundation, a publically supported agency, makes it illegal for her to lobby against the president’s nominee. But if she had the chance to speak her mind before the committee, there is no doubting with her testimony would be: no ifs, and*, or Butz Las Angeles Times. Washington Post News Service
