xt7wdb7vqn2w https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7wdb7vqn2w/data/mets.xml The Kentucky Kernel Kentucky -- Lexington The Kentucky Kernel 1975-10-07 Earlier Titles: Idea of University of Kentucky, The State College Cadet newspapers  English   Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. The Kentucky Kernel  The Kentucky Kernel, October 07, 1975 text The Kentucky Kernel, October 07, 1975 1975 1975-10-07 2020 true xt7wdb7vqn2w section xt7wdb7vqn2w PAGE(S)

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editorials

Lettas and Spectrum articles should be addressed to the Editu'ial Page Editor.
Rant "4 Journalism Building. They should be typed, doublespacm aid sig'ied.
Lettas should not exceed 250 wens and Spectrum articles 750 was.

Editorials do not represent the opinions of the University.

Bruce Winges
Editor-in-Chief

Ginny Edwards
Managing Editor

Susan Jones
Editorial Page Editor

Jack Koeneman
Associate Editor

 

 

Degrading

Editor-
In response to John Vogel, Kernel
sports editor, i feel, as many UK

students do, that he degrades UK
football. In these times of rebuilding it
is relly unfair to the football coaches
and players to have to read such
pessimistic material regarding UK
football games, as this reporter has
already proven himself wrong in his
predictions of football scores and also
this SedwUlIIS record. Wouldn’t it be
fairer to be optimistic toward the team
and their capibilities? UK has already

 

 

proven several things this season. For
one thing, it has one of the best defenses
in the SEC and also the nation, and a
maiority of the fans are more optimis-
tic than pessimistic about UK football.

Just ask yourself this question. Would
you find such articles downgrading
football programs in Sin" srmc’" as
Tennessee, Alabama or Auburn? Did
these schools obtain p we. nouses With
such pessimistic views from students
and their school papers? If UK is to be
a power house in football, it will be
because of the good job that is being
done by Fran Curci and his staff and
also with optimistic support of all UK

students and even Kerrwi reperters.
Let’s all back the cats.

Bruce A. Health
Business administration junior

I I
Predictions
Editor:

I find Sports Editor John Vogel’s
“prediction" that Pittsburgh will beat
Cincinnati in the playoffs truly amaZ»
ing. He must be a disciple of Jethro
Bodine’s school of thought to come up
with that one. Vogel states lack of
”team play" will doom the Reds as it
did in the i973 playoffs against the
Nets. i doubt it.

A team that wins nearly 110 games,
has the second best team batting
average and the third best ERA earned
run average in the National League has
something going for it. Moreover, a
mental lapse and great pitching are the
reasons why the Reds lost to the Mets,
not lack of “team play.” Cincinnati’s
surperb blend of speed, power, defense,
pitching and bench will prove fatal to

WWWW-LeiiersW WW-

Pittsburgh. in the future, Mr. Vogel. I
suggest you examine facts before you
make any half-cocked "predictions.”

Dick Flinchum
88. E senior
I
Mountains

Editor:

Mindy Fetterman’s article in
Thursday’s Kernel on Alice Lloyd
students at Caney Cottage ("Living in
Caney College,” Kernel, Oct. 2) shows
that Stinking Creek telescoping con-
tinues in this generation. How can you
define an Appalachian? Give us your
sociological "sub-culture” or non
funded "minority” labels if you will,
but please none ofthis "give-away” soft
voice twang "hillbilly mud-slinging.”
Appalachians are, contrary to Fet-
terman‘s distinction as "apart from
others,”a part of UK. The University is
a conglomeration of cultures—«each
contributing to the total fabric. I agree
it’s time for the upcoming Appalachian

(Editor’s note: Because of the number of letters and commentaries received by the ,
i Kernel, there is no editorial today. In cases where a number of letters and
" commentaries are received about one or several subiects, more space will be devoted 1
l to readers’ views. All letters and spectrum articles should be typed, double-spaced
i and signed. Letters cannot exceed 250 and Spectrum articles 750 words.)

Seminar to the mountains. Only 2-3
hours up the parkway, the mountains
are there for all who wish to telescope
and romanticize.

S.R. Damron
Education Graduate student

Satire?

Editor:

Will wonders never cease? Jon
Murgino’s rebuttal to my article, ("A
Defense of the UK Bus Cutback”
Kernel, Sept. 22), would seem to in-
dicate so.

l am compelled to point out to
Murginothatan essential element of all
satire is an indication that it is just
that——satire. While the skillfulness of
my indication could be debated, I wish
to draw Mr. Murgino’s attention to the
summary of my defense: "Why do
something sensibly when there is
perfectly illogical...way to do if?”

It is indeed unfortunate that Mr.
Murgino completely misread my ar-
ticle. We really are, after all, on the
same side.

Theo. R. Leverenz
English Department
PS This is not satire.

’Good Ole Boy’ takes his own grits

When a friend of mine~his name is
Pate, but that’s not important—announced
last spring that he was moving from
Nashville, Tennessee, to St. Louis, Mis-
souri, the sole comment of the only bona

fide Good Ole Boy in the room was ”Take
your own grits.”

Now what is a Good Ole Boy and what
would prompt him to say a thing like that?
Andy Griffith is the perrenial Good Ole
Boy, even when he’s pushing crisp Ritz
crackers on the tube, and one strongly
suspects that Opie, under the watchful eye
of Aunt Bee, grew up to be one. I thought
Dennis Weaver was a Good Ole Boy until I
found out that he is a preacher in some
bizarre California sect. Good Ole Boys
almost have to be (nominal) members of
the Southern Baptist Church or the Church
of Christ.

 
  
  

Vipeggv
coldweli
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Ned Beatty in his roles in ”Deliverance”
and ”Nashville” is a Good Ole Boy,
especially in the latter, with his white
shoes, ban-ion shirt (with a tie), and his
affection for both Gwenn Welles and for
bumping in the night with the young,
polished, Kennedyesque advance man
(who was far too polished and blueosuited
to ever aspire to Good Ole Boydom).
Beatty has a right to be a Good Ole Boy;
he's from Louisville.

It is, to be sure, an ephemeral quality.
Politicians of national stature, even
though they be Southern, are never Good

 

Ole Boys, but they might be accepted into
bar room enclaves of those who are.
George Wallace is not a Good Ole Boy; his
brother Gerald is. That’s probably be-
cause Gerald sells liquor—the lubricant
and common denominator of the species—
and rarely appears on television. Jimmy
Carter would like to be a Good Ole Boy,
and he rolls up his shirtsleeves—neatly—
at rallies and state fairs, but he is entirely
too urbane for permanent admission to the
vast confraternity. As a 608 might put it,
Carter is slicker’n owl shit, and that’s too
slick.

A strict constructionist might be tempt-
ed to define the Good Ole Boy as a
blue-collar type with a pick-up truck and a
gun rack. Not so fast there, son. The Good
Ole Boy can drink Jack Daniels (but not
Scotch) out of a paper cup as well as he can
suck on a beer can.He may even be a high
university official. His style of manage
ment as well as of politics, is essentially
|aissez~faire, back-slapping, nonaggres-
sive manipulation. He lets nature take its
course, treating events with the same
deference as a maiden aunt.

The Good Ole Boy’s female counterpart
is the Sweet Ole Gal, but a woman is not
born to this distinction. She must be
annointed by the boys. A GOB’s sister is
often a Sweet Ole Gal, but not necessarily.
She is, however, sacred. Hence, while
Lyndon Johnson may well have been a
Good Ole Boy before he left Texas (even
after he was in the White House, remem-
ber he was once iust folks enough to show
the world his gall bladder scar), Lady Bird
could never have been a Sweet Ole Gal
because she promoted Keeping America
Beautiful (whatever that meant), about
which a 608 doesn’t give a rat’s ass. It
impinged on his personal freedoms be-
cause it meant he couldn't throw his Dixie
cups and Falls City cans around the

country club lawn.

Again, Ned Beatty as Lily Tomlin’s
husband in ”Nashville” exemplifies the
Good Ole Boy vis-a-vis females. Because
Gwen Welles had earlier taken off her
clothes, however hesitantly, she was
automatically fair game, but he pounced
as politely as one can, with the standard
608 formula of flattery and self-indul-
gence. In fact, they are obsessed with sex
and football, not necessarily in that order,
but are just too polite to speak of the
former in mixed company and-or the
Masters-and~Johnsonese of the East.
imagery and sports terminology are
primary modes of expression: much goes
unsaid, but little is unnoticed. Florence
King, who wrote a delightful book called
”Southern Ladies and Gentlemen,” advis-
ed Southern ladies never to take bananas
to work for lunch. I would go so far as to
say that any object longer than it is wide,
when seen by 3 G08 in the possession of a
female, is an indicaton that she wants it.
Good Ole Boys think all women want it; so
there are many illegitimate children and
Tennessee Williams-type scandals in the
South, but GOB’s rarely stoop to rape.

A friend of mine—whose name is not
Pate, but that’s not important—believes
that the Good Ole Boy syndrome is a rural,
not an exclusively Southern, phenomenon,
a reflection of what he terms "the
abandonment of identity and ideal stan-
dards and the result of consensus think-
ing” which has invaded all sectors of
society and ultimately led to the break-
down of continuity and philosophy—in
short, the ills of democracy, which are
non-regional. Hence the Atlanta bankers in
white shoes and the chic Kinseyites of
Manhattan.

Sure. Maybe. It is my own belief that the
Good Ole Boy, whether he wears a white
hood or a hard hat or no hat at all with his

leisure suit, is inextricably bound to the
South and its history. He is the misunder-
stood, well-meaning individualist in the
novels of Thomas Hardy (a rural English
type who might well have been related to
the landed gentry of the Old South).
Southern men are the only American men
(not counting Vietnam) who have ever
gone down in military defeat, seen their
towns and fields burned and their women
raped—and this generation has not forgot-
ten the Great War of Northern Aggression
any more than those who survived it. Just
watch the Kappa Alpha's drag out the
fusty grey uniforms in the spring or ask
any Mississippi boy about Vicksburg.

To an extent, the same thing is going on
now, in the name of progress. Savannah
still stands, but other Southern cities are
beginning to look like little plugs of
Chicago dropped in the tobacco fields by
helicopter. And the Good Ole Boy remains
as jealous as ever of his womenfolk and
tenuous history, thinking fondly of 5 p.m.,
when he can belly up to the bar to drink
beer and talk filthy before going home to
pick up his wife and six kids for church
services. Such contradictions are inevita-
ble in a subculture trying desperately to
hang on to its machismo in the face of
change.

To paraphrase the writer John Egerton,
Dixie has been Americanized, and not
always ameliorated in the process. For the
Good Ole Boys, the only thing to do is roll
with the damn punches, ma’am.

Hee-hyuh.

i
l

 

Peggy Caldwell is a graduate student in
the Patterson School specializing in inter-
national relations. She is interested mainly
in getting some sleep. Her column appears
weekly in the Kernel on Tuesdays.

 

 

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