The Battalion
Viewpoint
Lo<
August 11,1
Slouch By Jim Earle
“You know that your diploma comes in a mailing tube. I
don’t want to meddle in your affairs, but if I were graduat
ing, I wouldn t leave that stage until I opened up that tube to
make sure the diploma was there. ’’
Next in vogue: stereo knees
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Fashion notes from hither,
thither and yon:
HITHER — Knees are back in style, folks.
According to reports from the fall fashion
shows in Paris, some designers have lifted hem
lines back above the knees in both daytime and
evening creations.
This probably is good news for the economy.
One time-tested theory is that skirt lengths
presage economic movement, rising when pros
perity is imminent, falling when recessions are
at hand. So the news from Paris could mean that
Reagan’s budget and tax policies are about to pay
off.
What is not clear — or at least not clear to me
— is whether broad knees will remain fashion
able or whether women must return to the nar
row knees of yesteryear.
I understand the trend in men’s wear is back
to narrow neckties and lapels. So my assumption
is that narrow knees likewise will become de
rigueur.
THITHER — The latest thing in short shorts,
reports Omni magazine, are “stereo hot pants. ”
These garments are wired to a stereo speaker
with a cord that relays music to a two-inch disc
on the waistband. The inventor, David Lloyd,
claims the resulting pulsations produce “an in
credible tingle all over your body.”
Lloyd says the biggest thrills come from clas
sical selections such as the “1812 Overture. ” But
I would think a real trendsetter in hi-fi hot pants
would prefer the theme from “Star Wars.’
YON—Jogging up and down Pike’s Peak may
require strict bodily discipline, but the jogger’s
brain has a lot of time to wander off the trail.
Edwin Paget, a retired speech professor, has
fathered any number of errant thoughts during
the 920 or so times he has jogged to the summit
since 1919.
This summer, while puffing up a switchback,
Despite a
of wet sprin
promising. Ir
weeks and so
could result.
the octogenarian jogger stumbled up);.. “Our crop
of installing electric lights in womesWdue to the the
It is well known that subtle ligktisito cotton wea
enhances feminine charms, but upHBob Metzer, <
poor dears have been largely depm:;tural Extensr
ternal illumination. ■ “We startc
Paget, according to word I have re® ’. n niost areas
the 14,000-foot elevation, hasdesi©;, u h lls c
apparel with the lighting built in tlllp
Electric lighting in or beneathW| n *on’s crop
thing can emphasize the most alliMj “\y e C urrei
of their faces or bodies, " the profe : ' 350 pounds ol
"Unlike the bikini, which revealH even g e t close
erything, much of which is unattrae: conie anc l i ns
permits a homely girl to reveal odIvs Boll weevil
possibly in color. some produci
Yes, and if she wears a Paget-litllil s ®™ e . oca ^ on
pair of stereo hot pants she can whrrflijw*-* 011 ’ som
soft lights and sweet music —thehilP 1 *^ a so cy
of romance. Just make certain bothi;, so „ lern i are ‘
above the knees. Mjp problem
rot, particula
Metzer said.
1 COLUMBUS PWRKH-
j se* P^OGcmeorE
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IBlllilllPi
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1
Mondale ready to hit
campaign trail again
By DAVID S. BRODER
WASHINGTON — The federally fi
nanced transition office closed three weeks
ago and the S'ecfet Service men departed.
Six months after he left the public payroll
for the first time in 20 years, former Vice
President Walter F. Mondale is wholly a
private citizen, one of those six-figure-
salary Washington lawyers who attends sti
mulating conferences on three continents.
He looks terrific, tanned from a fishing
expedition with his two sons. He is rested,
relaxed, even a bit reflective. And he hopes
the condition won’t last.
By next summer, Mondale says, “Til be
on the trail almost full-time,” campaigning
for Democratic candidates in the mid-term
election. His travels will be financed by a
personal political-action committee that
raised almost a quarter-million dollars be
fore it sent its first direct-mail appeal last
month.
And after that, there will be the 1984
Democratic presidential derby. Mondale
figures to be one of the early front-runners
in a vast field that may include Sens. Ed
ward M. Kennedy, John Glenn, Gary Hart
and Joe Biden, Govs. Jerry Brown, John Y.
Brown, and Hugh Carey, former Carter
Cabinet colleagues Moon Landrieu,
Reubin Askew and Robert Strauss — all of
whom see vision of Rose Gardens through
the aura of Ronald Reagan’s current halo of
popularity.
Mondale, for one, is convinced that the
nomination will be worth the scrap. He says
the massive tax-cut bill Reagan pushed
through Congress in the past seven days
will come to be seen not as his greatest
triumph but as “his worst mistake. ” It will,
he says, put intolerable pressure on the
Fedeal Reserve Boards as the sole agent in
the fight against inflation. The resulting
persisitent high-interest rates will not only
choke the American economy but “do more
harm” to U.S. relations with the European
allies and Japan than Russia could contrive
on its own to accomplish.
But aside from his gamble that Reagano
mics will fail, it is far from clear just what
Mondale sees himself — or his party —
offering the voters. In an interview last
week, just before he flew off to Aspen for a
seminar on U.S.-Soviet relations, Mondale
repeated the statement that he had made in
a post-election interview: “We (Democrats)
were sounding awful stale.”
He says he has read and traveled widely
these last six months, in an effort to refresh
his own thinking: eight days in Europe,
including a long look at NATO and its de
fense theories; an energy seminar with oil
men and investors in California; many con
ferences on the domestic economy. In the
fall, he is going to China, Japan and Korea.
Deliberately, he says, he has spent much
more time in the South and the West, with
conservative economists and businessmen
— looking at key issues from a perspective
other than the one he learned as a disciple
of Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter.
But the differences are not yet apparent
in Mondales’s public utterances. His
speeches have been given to “safe” audi
ences, the National Education Assn, and
the Urban League, at the L.B.J. School in
Austin and Brandeis Unversity.
In them, he tips his hat to the current
fashions. “Progessives have learned some
lessons,” he says, but the lessons are the
obvious ones: Inflation is important and
regulation burdensome. “Where govern
ment has been clumsy, or expensive or in
trusive — we should make government
better. ”
But, mainly, he defends the causes he
has always defended: nutrition and child
care programs, education, legal services,
civil rights, voting rights, aid to Israel. His
answer to the dilemmas of Social Security is
the same as it was in the last campaign:
“That Social Security check — and the way
is is figured — should be as sure as the sun
coming up in the morning.”
It remains to be seen how close Mondale
will come to meeting that standard. In the
meantime, there is a possible clue to his
hesitancy in breaking new gound. It is
found in the lines with which he would up
his most important and best-received
speeech of the last six months, the one he
delivered to the Urban League convention
in i u * y ’
“We can now prove,” he said, “that we
weren’t as bad as they (the voters) thought
we were, and that the other crowd is worse
than we thought they would be.”
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Where have all the Dems gone?
By ARNOLD SAWISLAK
United Press International
WASHINGTON — It passes amazement to
see how fragile Washington status can be.
As, for example, Democratic Sens. Ed
ward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Henry
Jackson of Washington.
Two years ago, there were a lot of people
who expected Kennedy, the man who was
going to carry out the mission of his fallen
brothers, to be the 1980 Democratic pres
idential nominee and possibly president in
1981.
John Kennedy has come to?”
Ronald Reagan and the Republicans are
on a roll, as they say in Las Vegas, and
Democrats everywhere seem to be in re
treat.
This is especially true in the Senate,
where the Democrats are only three votes
shy of a majority but haven’t made a dent
worthy of a BB on a piece of legislation since
the national debt limit was increased last
winter.
A week ago, Kennedy made the news for
the first time in months by holding up the
August Senate vacation period by objecting
to a final vote on President Reagan’s tax bill
on a Saturday. He was at Cape Cod at the
time.
Five years ago, there were a lot of people
who expected Jackson, who was chosen as
the most influential member of the Senate
in a 1976 straw vote, to be the Democratic
presidential nominee and possibly presi
dent in 1977.
A week ago, Jackson got in the news by
complaining that Kennedy had caused
everyone a lot of trouble by holding up the
Senate’s August vacation. He almost mis
sed the rollout of Boeing’s new jetliner be
cause of the delay.
All of which explains why some Demo
crats are asking: “Is this what the party of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and
It is true that some of the Senate’s best-
known Democrats such as George
McGovern, Frank Church and Birch Bayh
were given their walking papers last fall.
But Kennedy and Jackson are there. So is
Russell Long of Louisiana, who was sup
posed to be the most powerful member of
the Senate only a year ago, and Robert Byrd
of West Virginia, who was the majority
leader, and Paul Tsongas, who did a lot of
talking about the need for a “new” Demo
cratic thrust after the elections.
Where are those fellows? When it came
time to chose Democrats to rep
dent Reagan just before the taxculj
was Sens. Bill Bradley of New je{
Daniel Patrick Moynihan ofNewl|
spoke for the party. Estimable t
but where were the heavy
Democratic Party?
To suggest that the Democrats!!
because they no longer control the j
convenient, but not very convince
Everett Dirksen, whose fate it*!
Senate Republican leader durint |
which the GOP could have helditj
in a broom closet, always manaSj
heard from. So did Republicanle!
ward Baker during the most 1
of Democrat dominance in the i
A long time member of onel
Democrat’s staff said recently ‘ T |
in a panic. He always gets
years before his term is up, butno*
state of hysteria. ”
Maybe that’s where all the I
have gone.
Warped
By Scott McCullar
c
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