Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 16

He Clarion-JMscr A uthorDe Vries, Hu bris A ntido te Editorials Mississippi's Lending eunpaper For More Than 4 Century Oct. 27. 1877page 18 It Hasn't Worked ticates, uneasy in a world where everything is, eventually, disparaged and nothing is, ultimately, proved. His subject is not Connecticut. It is the slightly Bohemian bourgeoisie, which is as national as McDonald's.

DE VRIES' thoroughly modern middle class subscribes to modern ethical precepts irresponsible, but for reasons for which you may not be entirely so it is broad-minded: "I think you're a man-hating, sexually frustrated, potential lesbian with a slightly sadistic streak and I'm not criticizing you when I say that." Its children can't blame all our young people for the behavior of most of go to prep schools to learn to laugh dryly and say things like, "I've fallen in love with a girl I rather like." In this Diony-sian middle class, chastity is considered evidence of an unhealthy obsession with sex. Among De Vries' most memorable creations is the Reverend Mackerel of the People's Liberal Church "the first split-level church in America," with an auditorium, gymnasium, kitchen, psychiatric i clinic, and "a small worship area at one end." The Rev. Mackerel believes that a Christian's duty is not to be saved, but to "evolve." He be- comes irate when the zoning board permits a billboard near his rectory that "Jesus Saves." "How," he demands, "do you expect me to write a sermon with that thing staring me in the face?" De Vries began to attract a following in the early 1950s, when Henry Luce and others were proclaiming the dawn of the "American Century." As an antidote to hubris, De Vries' humor has conveyed the most sobering of thoughts: We remain human. Satire, like Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels" or George Orwell's WASHINGTON In a novel by my hero, Peter De Vries, a couple are driving on a turnpike and the wife, brooding about the vicissitudes of life, wonders aloud: "What are we coming to?" Her husband answers, absentmindedly, "Connecticut." De Vries' new novel, "Madder Music," is another comedy set in suburban Connecticut, and it is an occasion for considering what is funny, about America and life. The George F.

Hill protagonist is a typical De Vries character, middle-aged and slightly bewildered, suffering a shaky sense of self. In flight from a baroque series of extramarital entanglements, he retreats into the character of Groucho Marx. De Vries characters often are studies in anxiety. They are people who can dive but not swim, semi-sophis- "1984," is angry and reformist: It aims to change people and the world. De Vries' humor has a gentler aim, that of inculcating a sense of proportion, a dignified resignation to "the eternal severities." DE VRIES FINDS it "slightly puzzling" that many people consider him a "religious" writer.

When Invited to lecture at Princeton Seminary, he suggested the invitation was "a clerical error." But religious temperaments understand the message of De Vries' humor: There will be no fundamental improvement. Only once in the Bible is laughter ascribed to God. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lofjd shall have them in derision. But what Thomas Hobbes referred tolas "those grimaces called laughteX" are an appropriate response to file difference between human pretense and the real human place in the strangeness of life. This is how a De Vries character experiences that strangeness: "I am prey to fantasies I imagine that all matter is reducible Jto units of, energy whirling in submi-croscopic orbit, of which balls of roaring gas form the delirious counterpart in outer space I sometimes fancy that I am supported on a jointed improvisation of Tinker Toy called 'bones," (at a violin concert) I had this weird idea that sounds felicitous to the human ear could be produced by a man trained to draw tautened strands of horsetail hair across the dried entrails of cats, arranged in groups of four on fluted wood.

This is crazy I pretend that the room is full of something called an element of which, oxygen, it is necessary for me to inhale through two holes in my nose I really must pull myself together." Life being what it is, small wonder that sensible people, in Connecticut and elsewhere, agree, laughing, with the De Vries character who says, it is high time we "get back to the status quo." Even the best governors do not seem to do as well during a second four years, and the second terms of administrations riddled with corruption and scandal are always worse. Longevity in office, particularly in the governor's office in the South, seems to encourage inferior performance rather than superior service, bad government instead of good government. A review of state government in the United States discloses that entrenched administrations of longtime governors have been those most marked by excessive malfeasance and with the most ruthless use of power. The most outstanding governors have usually been those who served single terms and moved on to higher office. Mississippians tempted by governor succession should ask themselves how many of their governors of the past generation they would want in office eight years.

Something of an answer is found in election returns. Since 1938, five governors have sought the office again after a first term, one of them twice. Given six opportunities to reelect a former governor, Mississippians rejected five of them. Additionally, during that period, three former governors sought other high offices, and all three were defeated. These men may or may not have deserved to win in campaigns subsequent to their election as governor, but the people of Mississippi have indicated that they do not favor political machines with the govern nor's office as the base.

They ob viously oppose efforts to create a strong political machine through the governor's extensive appointive and patronage powers. Governor succession may look good in theory, but performance is what counts. Talk of revising the state constitution to permit a governor to succeed himself persists in Mississippi, assisted, at least during the last six-plus years, by the advocacy of incumbents who wanted to run for a second consecutive term. However, observation of politics in Mississippi and in neighboring states still dictates against it. One of those speaking out against it is John McKeithen, the former Louisiana governor who backed and helped push through governor succession in that state and who then became its first chief executive in modern times to serve back-to-back terms from 1964 to 1972.

Now McKeithen says the constitutional amendment which allowed him to achieve that feat was a mistake. He says his second term was disappointing because he had to spend all his time answering allegations and explaining his first four years in office. The ex-governor, now practicing law in his hometown of Columbia, added that current Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards is running into the same problems, complicated by recent revelations about Edwards' association with Korean businessman Tongsun Park. Although McKeithen won reelection easily after the amendment was adopted, he says it wasn't his idea that he did not really favor it.

He states that he campaigned for it because his political foes opposed it. And he insists the state would be better off if the amendment were repealed. Arguments for governor succession sound rather convincing. However, they do not withstand the pragmatic test. On the whole, it doesn't work, at least in this region.

A comparison of second terms of governors shows that seldom is the second term as productive as or less egregious than the first. Jobs: Focus On Neighborhoods The new central focus of black jobs' were found had left these jobs Sludge For Sale ville, though, the Maryland Environ mental Service and the U.S. Agricul ture Department have come up with a successful and fairly simple way to compost sludge from this area's Blue Plains treatment plant. The re sult is an odorless, uncontaminated, peaty product that is good and safe for use in farming, gardening, land States is to get every family into the doorway of marketable skills. If over trie next 20 years we invest great energy into getting every single household through this doorway, things will go better for the whole nation.

The task is not so much merely "finding jobs." We need to discover techniques for teaching marketable skills at a very early age beginning at ages 10 or 11. Every urban neighborhood could use "skill clinics," in which adults who know carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical and other skills, begin teaching these to youngsters. In every old neighborhood there is plenty of work to be done. Finding the capital to pay people in the neighborhood for doing such work, thus raising property values and implanting inalienable skills at the same time, is a task on which social imagination might be profitably expended, A focus on jobs is an excellent focus for coalition-building. We should begin to focus on neighborhoods.

Job creation begins at hoifle. Industry and government can help tremendously, if they focus on helping families and neighborhoods. Strengths spread outwards from usually projected by the media, most working class blacks are working, deeply concerned about a solid education for their children, and "conservative" in their interests and value. Few politicians or opinion leaders directly address the realities of this large social class. Of the almost 25 million poor persons in the United States (living in households with $5,815 income or less for four persons), 15 million are white, 2.7 million are Hispanic, and 7.6 million are black.

Disproportionately, Hispanicsand blacks live in rural areas (the areas of greatest poverty). Disproportionately, Hispanics and blacks are very young, with a median age 10 years or more below that of other ethnic groups. The factor, too, depresses income levels, since children and young people do not work, or earn far less than adults. In addition, economic skills passed along in families vary ethnically. A father who is in business installing furnaces, fixing roofs or gutters, pouring asphalt, or minding the store, teaches his children his skills.

Mothers teach their daughters marketable skills. Once a family possesses a repertoire of such skills, each new generation begins a step ahead of the preceding. THE PROBLEM in the United leaders on jobs is an excellent focus. All political activists and concerned citizens can enthusiastically unite behind it. JOBS, JOBS, JOBS! A sound economic base under each family makes every other problem Illusions And Realities By MICHAEL NOVAK (education, health, aspiration, morale much easier to handle.

In addition, an emphasis on jobs is not divisive. Persons of every race and background need jobs. This is the sort of emphasis on which Robert Kennedy wished to build a coalition between blacks and whites, as far back as 1968. It is the kind of focus Hubert Humphrey has worked for. But it is also the sort of focus conservatives support: every able citizen should On the goal, all can agree.

As to methods, no one seems to have the full answer. The job training programs of the 1960s showed that mere training is not sufficient. Many of those who received job training could not (a) find a steady job in which to use it, or (b) hold the job they did find. In one study in 70 percent of the trainees for whom within six months. FOR ALL SOCIAL systems these days, socialist as well as capitalist, finding sufficient employment for larger populations than the world has ever known strains resources.

Then, too, expectations change. Many families "move up" in social standing, and do not want to "slide back" into the hard, dirty jobs they left behind. Migrant laborers normally move into the industrial economy by taking "unwanted jobs." Then they, too, "move up." in the United States, as late as 1910, 90 percent of all blacks lived in the agricultural economy of the South. Just over half of all blacks have now moved into the industrial economy, most of these since World War II. This transformation of black life in America is one of the great epic stories of our era.

Almost onethird of all nineteen million registered union members are black. More blacks belong to unions than to any other organization except the black church and the Democratic party. Blacks are particularly strong in the municipal unions and government employees unions, but also in the United Auto Workers and others. CONTRARY TO THE IMAGE THE WASHINGTON POST Congress has just voted to prohibit any dumping of sewage sludge in the Oceans after 1981. It's a good move.

Guest Editorial Federal and state authorities have a terrible time trying to persuade Philadelphia, New York and pother cities to find alternatives to "shipping their sludge out to sea. outright ban appears to be Jthe'jmly way to get the message through that the oceans may not be Jused indefinitely as convenient dumping grounds. The next question, of course, is where the sludge should go instead. This is a growing problem here and elsewhere because better sewage- treatment plants generate much sludge. Burying it in landfills is wasteful and usually unpopular.

Incineration costs a lot, wastes en-J ergy and produces pollution. What to do? One answer is to turn waste into a 0 useful compost. This is hardly a new the city of Milwaukee has been 3 selling treated sludge as Milorgan-tite soil conditioner for decades. Indeed, the principle is as ancient as the use of "night soil" as fertilizer. 'I However, in the era of indoor plumbing, elaborate systems and better farming 4" through chemicals, the concept of spreading sludge on the land has come to sound, well, distasteful and crude.

After four vears of work at Belts- scaping and reclaiming barren ground. The National Park Service's Constitution Gardens, near the Lincoln Memorial, is one place where the compost has already proved its worth. Maryland officials are so pleased with the process that they have just unveiled a plan to treat most of the Blue Plains sludge at a proposed regional composting, facility in Charles County. Meanwhile, the Montgomery County Council has approved a site for composting that county's sludge in an industrial area near Route 29. If these programs get all the necessary go-aheads and funds and are properly run, they could bring a happy end to the regional "sludge wars" that have dogged every phase of improving Blue Plains.

Beyond that, this cooperative approach should show other metropolitan areas how a persistent problem might be solved. Composted sludge, from industrial cities such as Baltimore and Philadelphia might not be fit for farming, because traces of heavy metals would remain. Even so, it could help restore roadsides, parks, and strip-mined land. Surely that is more beneficial than polluting the there. IWY Accused Of Dele ga te Stuffing After two months in which to determine their strategy, the International Women's Year (IWY) people decided they were "shocked" by the Mississippi delegation's having no black delegates.

Letters DUN AGIN' PEOPLE 177SiHi'S te. i sarily accurate, journalism. Where on earth does it say that a "critic" must always find some miniscule wrong, at a well-received, musically top-rated affair such as this one? I guess, in order to reach his required level of emotion, this group would have had to cry, screara, laugh and the whole gamut! People don't come to concerts to see an artist emotionalize they want to hear what they like, the music that this artist produces. To hell with Fine and his sick version of critiquing- Brandon, Miss. JIM COOPER Thousand TimesNo President Carter is being just little bit too charitable, offering to care for foreign countries' nuclear waste.

Haven't we got enough nuclear waste of our own? And does he thit)k, by letting foreign governments dump their over-supply of waste oft us he is stopping the spread of n-clear weapons? They will use what they want to make their own plutoni-um and then gladly saddle us with their left-over waste. 4 as one American taxpayer, Say a resounding NO! A. HALL 150 Wacker Drive Jackson, Miss. Accent The individual is the end of the universe. -MIGUEL DE I would be very discouraged about women in government if any great number acted so high-handedly.

Fortunately, the great majority have a wonderful tolerance and concern for others. -STEVEN BARROWES Starkville, Miss. Reproaches Will Columnist Will is clearly not a born-agairt Christian or he would not get as mad at them (reference Sept. 29 column on Christian yellow pages). Why is it wrong for Christians to buy from Christians? We are free to buy from whom we choose.

This is free Why do a few try to force on us the re-election of a governor? When has one been so good we need four more years of him. Look at what New York, Pennsylvania, California and other states get when a governor can buy another election. If a man is that good, we can re-elect him later; we have done that a few times. C. WILLIAMS Columbus, Miss.

Nips Kilpatrick I do not like to quarrel with a fellow conservative. Lord knows there are too few willing to speak out against the deluge of muddle-headed egalitarianism from liberal journalists, politicians, and clergy. In order to be fair, however, it is my opinion that the usually wise and cogent James J. Kilpatrick should have added one more paragraph to his article "Little Tender Lowing Care Found By Traveling Journalists" which appeared in The Clarion Ledger of Oct. 12.

The managers of first-class hostelry do want their guests to be happy! But, today, it is a very difficult task to even run a "first-class" home. Why? Big government and big union bosses make it almost impossible. A worker must be paid whether he does a good job or not. And you can't fire anybody. Put the blame where it belongs on the hired help, on too powerful government and unions.

PATRICIA K. FAWCETT Oxford, Miss. Yes Donovan Yes I read Marshall Fine's rather seedy review of the twin-bill Yes Donovan Concert of Oct. 8 and have witnessed, once again, his entertainment journalism. The music of the group Yes was as one would expect, quite correct.

But for the sake of stirring up a little controversy, Fine, instead of giving them credit and noting how much the audience enjoyed them, so much, Fine sticks to the stuff that he thinks makes him a critic and falls into utter hypocrisy by continuing to expect all shows to be perfect. If dear old Marsh had bothered to park his dingus in the floor, closer to the musicians, instead of up in the stands, where one couldn't get a proper mood of these men, then he wouldn't have had to strain so hard to make up readable, but not neces What a big put-on! They know the reason very well. The Negro people very often vote as a bloc, and in this case they bloc-voted for all of the ERA (equal rights amendment) proposals, such as "right" of abortion, rewriting the rape laws, legalizing prostitution, etc. The majority rejected the ERA proposals, so the majority had no Negro candidates available. It was delegates chosen by principle, in preference to using racial bias or quotas.

Haven't. the IWY people heard that there are decent people with principles? Now they say the 20 elected delegates, who represent the majority of the conference, do not represent the state. Whose imperial authority gives them such wisdom and power? Why is the IWY committee allowed to handpick 400 at-large delegates, to cover cases where they did not like the slates of elected delgates? In addition to their other devious tactics (such as advertising the conference mainly through local women's lib groups) they now plan to blatantly stuff appointed delegates into the national IWY convention. Then they will claim to be representative of U.S. Women! "A RECErJT SCIENTIFIC STUCK SHnutt THAT OOP.

FZCVOCT IS UE6 HARMFUL "THAN OU COMPETITOR!" T.M. HEDERMAN. Editor 1921-1948 T.M. HEDERMAN. Editor R.M.

HEDERMAN, Publisher Published daily by Mississippi Publishers, Corp. 311 E. Pearl Jackson. Mississippi 39201.