Irrepressible Weinstein still ‘making noise’
Archie Weinstein
By JAS SAUND
Of the Emerald
The sign on the office door of outgoing Lane County
Commissioner Archie Weinstein reads:
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s land. But if you
do, call thy local planners and they will help you.
Weinstein is known for saying what he thinks —
outrageous or not.
Now preparing to leave office after four years as
county commissoner, Weinstein is as opinionated as
ever, and perhaps even more distrustful of his four
colleagues on the county commission.
Weinstein says he ran for office to defend and
protect the rights of private property owners and rural
voters who are threatened by the increasing voting
strength of ‘‘hippies and environmentalists from the
city of Eugene."
“By making lots of noise, I was able to slow down the
taking over of private property rights by planners in
this county and save people a lot of money.”
To Weinstein, government planners are bad guys
and “over-educated superstars.”
The county’s future is bleak without the straight
shooting Weinstein on the board, he says. The new
commissioners are playing politics with the taxpayers’
money, adds the outgoing commissioner.
But most of Weinstein’s criticisms are personal, not
political.
He says Otto t’Hooft “hasn’t kept any of the
promises he made when he ran for the office two years
ago. He said then that he is with Archie 100 percent,
but he never supported me much.
“You want to know why? Because he wants to get a
job with the Department of the Environment in Salem.
That’s why he supports all those planners."
Rust, says Weinstein, “is a hippie land-use planner.
You know, he believes that we all should be living in
communes on hills and mountains.
"He also says that we should not cut any timber and
put all our land in wilderness ”
Weinstein isn't too fond of commissioner-elect
Scott Lieuallen, either.
“His father is the chancellor of the university system
in this state, you know.
"They tried their damndest to make something out
of him. They sent him to Europe, to England and to
school trying to educate him, but what does he do
after all those years? He becomes a bicycle mechanic.
"Maybe the county should open a bike shop for
him."
Weinstein adds that perhaps the county should
open up a carpentry shop for commissoner Harold
Rutherfold and a paint store for commissioner Vance
Freeman because they could manage those shops
better than they do the county.
The commissioners, however, are accustomed to
Weinstein’s caustic attacks.
“Considering the source, I have no comment,” says
Freeman. "Archie has called me worse things.”
Rust has often been the target of much of Wein
stein’s criticism.
Soon after he was elected county commissioner in
1976, Weinstein said Rust’s style “comes from the
lack of owning anything, the lack of paying taxes, the
lack of any business management.”
Weinstein, the son of Russian immigrants, says
planning should be confined to personal business
only because that’s “what America stands for:
freedom, opportunity and free enterprise.”
And Weinstein says he plans to run for governor in
1982.
"Maybe I’m 79 or 75, but it doesn’t make any
difference because I have taken the word retirement
out of the dictionary,” he says. “I don’t know what a
doctor is or what an aspirin is.
"The man upstairs likes me, and I'm healthy and fit.”
Professor gets rave reviews for entertaining class
Grant McKernie's students
say he has the uncanny ability to
excite students with even the
driest academic fare
The University speech and
theater professor relates his
material to each of his students
and today’s society, they say.
Comments like these recently
prompted the Mortar Board, a
senior honor society with about
20 members, to name McKernie
its Professor of the Month. The
board selected McKernie
because of the excellence of his
Theater and Culture class.
Mortar Board members con
sider three nominees each
month from a boxful of submis
sions. They observe and survey
each nominee’s class before
making the final choice
Theater and Culture students
give McKernie rave reviews.
"I will never miss this class,”
one student recently promised
Describing his class as a
study of the relations between
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art, music and theater in differ
ent time periods, McKernie says
he tries to connect the different
fields by exploring their rela
tions to theater in different
social structures.
“In talking about Shake
speare, you might ask, 'What
was (Queen) Elizabeth’s court
doing?' ” McKernie explains.
“Theater tells us what our
culture is thinking about.”
Referring to both stage and
screen, McKernie says theater
“gives people a way of seeing
their problems, of shaping their
problems and responding to
them.”
McKenzie also sees theater
sharing some common goals
with politics.
“I just happen to think theater
people do it in a lot nicer way,"
he says.
“The politician’s just con
cerned with one narrow part of
you — he wants to get your vote.
Theater appeals to the whole
person.”
McKernie says his 15 years of
semi-professional stage work
have shown him the power of
theater.
“As an actor, I don’t know
what kind of play it is until the
audience tells me.”
An audience may laugh one
night and cry the next,
McKernie says.
Last year McKernie directed
the University production of
Sheridan’s “The School for
Scandal ” Last summer he act
ed in Hugh Leonard’s "Da."
Despite increasing inflation
and unemployment, McKernie
says the outlook for theater in
Eugene is "very good."
“People are cutting back on
their entertainment dollar," he
says, noting a recent drop in
University Theater attendance
Nomination blanks and the
deposit box for the Professor of
Grant McKernie
the Month are located at the
entrance of the Education-Psy
chology section on the first floor
of the main library. The winner is
announced on the 10th day of
each month.
Petition says strip isn’t worth Peanuts
Almost 2,000 members of the
University community say
"nuts” to the Emerald’s comic
strip, Sparrow.
A petition signed by more
than 1,900 students and faculty
members demands that the car
toon, developed by a local artist,
be withdrawn. The petitioners
want Peanuts returned to Page
2.
Drawn by Alan Baral, Sparrow
chronicles the trials of an aspir
ing but unemployed actor in
New York.
University student Donovan
Vliet, originator of the petitions,
says he collected the signatures
last week.
The petition, Vliet claims,
shows students prefer Peanuts
to Sparrow by an eight to one
ratio.
“It's easier relating to a dog
and a little bird than a talking cat
complaining about its unem
ployed owner,” Vliet says.
He says students commonly
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complain that Sparrow is “too
realistic, too East Coast, and is a
cheap copy of Doonesbury."
Baral, who is moving to New
York, says “the most ironic and
interesting aspect is that proba
bly one of the cartoon's biggest
supporters is Charles Schultz.”
Vliet threatens to take action
if the newspaper doesn’t rein
state Peanuts.
“We’ll stage a sit-in or blow
up the Emerald office — we
can’t let Berkeley have all the
fun," he quips.
But the Emerald plarvs no im
mediate response to the peti
tion Emerald Managing Editor
Sally Hodgkinson says, “We re
committed to the strip for the
rest of the term. “
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