Oregon daily emerald., July 24, 1973, Page 5, Image 5

-Outrider
The court flubs one
By GARRY WILLS
I frequently have occasion to read Lolita by
Vladimir Nabokov. I just read it again in connection with
some religious research — for it is not only a stunningly
beautiful novel, but a great religious masterpiece. It is a
profound study of perversion, possession, and a kind of
exorcism. The book could not have made its impact
unless the perversion had been presented vividly. Few
works of art have rendered so faithfully the real nature
of sin.
Yet, back in the Fifties, Nabokov had great dif
ficulty publishing his novel. Several American firms
turned it down, and he was forced to publish it with
Olympia Press, which specialized in sex-filled foreign
works.
Even after publication, understanding of tjie book
was for a long time clouded by public debate over the
propriety of letting it appear. That was not so very long a
time ago, and I would regret to see those standards
make a comeback now. Yet the Supreme Court’s recent
judgment on pornography threatens us with just that
prospect.
The majority’s Justices deplored — and so do I — the
cesspool atmosphere of Times Square in New York. And
they tried to fight that by saying each community should
be allowed to set its own standards, region by region,
almost neighborhood by neighborhood. But whose neigh
borhood is Times Square? What does “community”
mean in a no-man’s-land of transients? Times Square is
better fitted to resist this kind of measure than almost
any other place.
Yes, say defenders of the decision, but that is no
reason the filth of Times Square should be tolerated in
Topeka. True enough. Nor was it tolerated, even before
the decision — not in kind, and not in degree. Certainly
not where neighborhood still has some meaning.
Near my home, some drugstores do not carry even
so mild a feature of the current scenery as “Playboy.”
The magazine would be sufficiently distasteful to
regular customers, so this profit-making item is
removed. Not far off, even supermarkets carry it, where
traffic is drawn from many areas by car. The super
market is not a neighborhood store, and cannot be
controlled as such. It caters to transients.
Enforcement of a community norm of taste will be
easiest where it is least needed. It will make it possible
to ban Lolita and its equivalents from the local library
branch.. It will put undue power in the hands of those
willing to spend their time purging supermarkets of
“Playboy.” It will mean the college campus must
conform in its standards to the accident of its location. It
will endanger the dubious marginal cases much more
than the hardcore traffic of Times Square.
The truth is that “the community” is an elusive
concept in our mobile commuting and transient era — as
elusive as the definition of pornography itself, which it is
now supposed to clarify. Liberals found that out when
they tried to break the hold of networks by forcing local
communities to come up with their own TV time. Most
neighborhoods prefer the expensive network fare, as
they are growing to prefer supermarkets over neigh
borhood stores. That may be regrettable; it is un
deniable. There is often more real community among
those of the same age, work, or background than by
region, neighborhood, or the accidents of place.
The Court, by taking a geographical approach to the
problem, will dilute some standardized fare; but it will
not make for real choice by community. Times Square
did not dictate to Topeka. But Main Street can, hence
forth, dictate to Podunk High and the State University in
its environs. Lolita can be taken off the shelves of the
college as well as the high school and the branch library
— contributing to divisions between real communities
that are contiguous or interspersed within geographical
areas. Lolita is more endangered by this decision than is
Whipping Boy.
(C) 1973, Universal Press Syndicate
-On the right
The presidential tapes
By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
Concerning the presidential tapes, a few
observations:
1) Should President Nixon have taped
his conversations in the Oval Office? Some
will say that is a point of purely academic
interest at this juncture in the in
vestigation of Watergate. Others will say it
is more than that, that Nixon’s having
taped these conversations is one more ray
of light into the dark neurons of the
presidential mind, increasing the public,
understanding of the dragon who sits in the
White House.
It being so much the habit of his
detractors to assume that modern sin is
Nixon’s invention, it became of course
interesting to inquire whether other
Presidents had taped some of their con
versations, and die word came in at
disconcerting speed from several quarters
that the answer is yes, other Presidents
have taped their conversations. FDR, for
instance, LBJ as one would expect, and —
JFK. JFK?
“Arthur SchTesinger Jr.,” the historian
and a Kennedy aide, reports the New York
Times, “described the idea of secret
recordings during the Kennedy Ad
ministration as ‘absolutely inconceivable.’
‘It was not the sort of thing Kennedy would
have done,’ Dr. Schlesinger told United
Press International. ‘The kind of people in
the White House then would not have
thought of doing something like that.’ ”
One can only imagine how Professor
Schlesinger would have dealt with, say,
Professor Arthur Burns, back at Columbia
after his services to the Nixon Ad
ministration, had he said that it was
“absolutely inconceivable” that the men
around Nixon could have plotted
Watergate. The fact of the matter is that
Letters policy
The Emerald invites letters and commentaries. In
order to provide a torum for open discussion of issues and
ideas all letters which are 300 words or less and are
double-space typed and signed in ink Will be printed
regardless of the viewpoint expressed. Letters intended
for publication must be accompanied by an address,
phone number and class status at the University.
Longer pieces will be considered for Commentary, but
because of space limitations not all those submitted can
be printed. Pieces will be selected by the editors on the
basis of quality and relevance. The maximum length for
commentary is 1500 words.
there are 68 tapes in the Kennedy Library
of presidential conversations, and when
they are made public, I am going to line up
and listen to what Arthur said to Jack
during the Bay of Pigs.
2) Now this does not of course mean that
Presidents should tape conversations
secretly. It says merely that non-Nixons
have done it, including the two Presidents
who have inspired Professor Schlesinger
since he was a child, for whom he con
tinues his child-like reverence.
The pressing point, pending a con
solidation of the ethical position on
presidential taping, is whether Nixon
should release the tapes to the Senate
Committee, or if not to the Committee, to a
panel of distinguished citizens who would
report to the Committee on whether these
tapes corroborated John Dean’s story of
the implication of Nixon in the cover-up, or
whether they corroborate Mr. Nixon’s
insistence on his innocence.
The New York Times’ editorial on the
subject is direct. “Why this evidence came
to exist, the dubious legality or propriety
of its collection, why its existence was not
made known long ago — these are
questions to be considered; but the
essential point now is to have the evidence
produced and made available to the
public.” This position is in refreshing
contrast to the enthusiasm the Times
editorial board has shown over the past
decade for the decisions of the Warren
Court, notoriously Mapp vs. Ohio (1961),
which ruled that evidence improperly
gathered against the accused cannot be
used against him. In a masterstroke of
irony, the question concerning the legality
of Mr. Nixon’s tapes bears most directly
on the question of the guilt or innocence not
of someone else — but of Mr. Nixon
himself.
One supposes that if the tapes showed
that John Dean was flatly lying, they could
have Dean up on yet one more count, on
top of the several dozen counts he has
already in effect pleaded guilty to. But Mr.
Nixon, though he has denounced the Mapp
ruling, would hardly plead Mapp in behalf
of himself. He pleads instead Executive
Privilege. And more and more the
question, as it shapes up in the public
mind, is: Is there an Executive Privilege
to survive any Congressional investigation
into Executive behavior?
(C) 1973 The Washington Star Syndicate,
Inc.
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*/■
mwm...
'SAM, THIS IS THE PRESIDENT ... NO, REALLY
. . . SAM, I HAVE THOSE TAPES YOU WANTED
. . . HONEST . . . SAM . . . SAM? HELLO?'