Page 2/The Batta I ion/Tuesday, August 9, 1983
opinion
Timeless advice
on office sharing
by Dick West
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The government
has undertaken a campaign to cut federal
office space by 10 percent, giving each
worker an average of 135 square feet.
The difficulty of getting agencies to
cut back has been illustrated by one offi
cial with a colloquy from Shakespeare’s
“King Henry IV.”
Arthur Barton, deputy assistant com
missioner of the General Services Admi
nistration, which allocates working quar
ters, quoted this exchange between (ilen-
dower and Hotspur:
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
“Why so can I, or so can any man; but
will they come when you do call for
them?”
Barton obviously identifies with the
latter line, uttered by Hotspur.
Well, the Immortal Bard is far from a
one-way street, you know. The other side
can quote from his works, too.
To see how government workers
might feel about Barton’s call for less vas
ty offices, let us think of Shakespeare as a
middle echelon civil servant:
Mr. Shakespeare, what office workers
complain most about being cramped?
“The spinsters and the knitters in the
sun and the free maids that weave their
thread with bones.”
How many can filing cabinets and typ
ing desks can you fit into 135 square feet?
“I have not kept my square; out that to
come shall all be done by the rule. Hob,
nob, is the word.”
“Hob, nob” is two words, sir. It all
sounds terribly bureaucratic. What about
office-sharing by executives?
“Two stars keep not their motion in
one sphere.”
Well, I assume the federal honchos
need room for thinking and decision
making, not to mention shelves for books
of quotations.
“They that stand high have many
blasts to shake them. What private griefs
they have, alas! I know not. We cannot all
be masters.”
But what if some highlevel bureaucrat
did volunteer to cut the size of his office
by 10 percent?
“Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
the gods themselves throw incense.”
Please don’t call me Cordelia, sir. With
whom do you share an office?
“I cannot tell what the dickens his
name is. A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp
looking wretch. He doth nothing but talk
of his horse.”
The two of you must be terribly cozy.
“Arm’d at points exactly, cap-a-pe/’
Wow! Cap-a-pe must be even worse
than cheek-by-jowl. No wonder you are
reluctant to give up 10 percent.
“This was the most unkindest cut of
all. Policy sits above conscience. I’ll not
budge an inch.”
How would you describe the scramble
for choice desk locations in the average
government office?
“The weakest goes to the wall.”
Not even a desk by a window, eh?
What advice would you give government
employees who work together at close
quarters?
“Eat no onions nor garlic.”
Thank you, Mr. Shakespeare.
Publishing rights get
priority over justice
by Art Buchwald
“Louie the Louse, I am authorized to
inform you of your rights. You are per
mitted to make one telephone call.”
“Okay, I want to speak to the Hearton-
gue Literary Agency. Hello, Hearton-
gue? This is Louie the Louse. I think I got
a good one for you. I heisted a Brinks
truck of 20 million bucks, hijacked the
Rolling Stones’ private airplane and
forged Cliff Robertson’s name to a check
for $150,000. My attorney thinks it could
be a ‘Lit Guild Selection of the Month.’ ”
A half-hour later Louie the Louse is
sitting under a light bulb surrounded by
the district attorney and his underlings.
“Louie, who were your accomplices in
the Brinks robbery?”
Louie says, “I refuse to answer on the
grounds that my answer would damage
the newspaper syndication right of my
story.”
The d.a. says, “You told Sgt. Brophy
that there were four of you in on the
Brinks job, including an inside man. Who
was the inside man?”
“Wait,” says Heartongue, “Newsweek
has just offered us $50,000 for the name
of the inside man, providing it doesn’t
appear in The Washington Post first.”
“Louie, we got all the evidence we
need. We have pictures of you hijacking
the Rolling Stones’ airplane.”
“Let’s see those,” Heartongue says.
“You have no right to these photos. I sold
them exclusively to New York Maga
zine.”
“They’re state’s evidence,” the district
attorney says. “They’re part of the public
record we hope will be used to convict
Louie the Louse.”
“You mean to say that you would use
photographs that were sold to a maga
zine on an exclusive basis just to prove a
criminal case against my client? Have you
no legal ethics?”
“I’m not sure what you’re driving at,
Heartongue.”
“The Constitution provides that every
person accused of a crime is entitled to
sell his story to a magazine, a newspaper,
a hardcover book company and a paper
back publisher. The value of his story is
based on what he did not tell the grand
jury or the FBI. If you reveal the facts,
the TV bidding on Louie’s book could be
seriously damaged.”
“Maybe so,” the district attorney says.
“But my only concern is justice. We have
a guy who stole a Brinks truck, hijacked
an airplane and forged a movie actor’s
name to a check. Now he has to be
punished.”
“He will be,” Heartongue said. “But he
wants to save it all for the book. Give us a
break. A guy’s got a right to make a buck
on his own crime.”
The district attorney says, “It’s out of
my hands. There are 100 reporters as
well as photographers and TV cameras
out there. How do I explain to them that
Louie’s story is copyrighted and they
have no right to it?”
“That’s your problem. My client has
committed a perfectly valid crime which
is worth anywhere up to seven figures. By
making these crimes common knowledge
you are depriving him of his literary and
subsidiary rights under the Authors
League and Dramatists Guild contracts.”
The district attorney ignores him.
“Okay, Louie, let’s try once more. When
did you forge Cliff Robertson’s name on
a check?”
Louie says, “I refuse to answer on the
grounds that I may be getting a call from
Mike Wallace at any moment.”
The Battalion
USPS 045 360
Member ot
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
Editor Hope E. Paasch
City Editor Kelley Smith
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News Editors Daran Bishop, Brian Boyer,
Beverly Hamilton, Tammy Jones
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Schrimsher, Angel Stokes,
Joe Tindel
Copy editors Kathleen Hart, Beverly
Hamilton
Cartoonist Scott McCiillar
Photographers
Brenda Davidson, Eric Evan Lee,
Barry Papke
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CERJTPBEEff*»
GO UP TO 1ME OFFICE,
REPRODUCE THESE
DOCUMENTS, AND 6ET
ME- A GLASS OF WATER
fW A COUPLE OF ASPIRIN,
WIU.4A.PA6E?
...HELLO, WASHINGTON RSI?
A CONGRESSMAN JUSTASffl
ME UP TO HIS ROOM TO
REPRODUCE WITH WM.AtC
HE ALSO DRINKS AND
WES DRUGS...
Establish trust at grassroots
Exiled activist speaks out
by Anne M. J
by Children’s Express
United Press International
(Editor’s Note: Children’s Express, a
privately funded news service, is real
world journalism reported entirely by
children 13 years of age or under whose
tape-recorded interviews, discussions,
reports and commentary are edited by
teenagers and adults.)
NEW YORK — One of Mikhail
Ostrovsky’s ideas is to get children from
America to go to Russia and for Russian
kids to go to America — usually the ones
who are politicians’ children.
“That way,” he says, “the military
establishment wouldn’t want to drop the
bomb on the other side because the chil
dren would be there. We thought this
would be a good way of establishing trust
on both sides.”
Ostrovsky is a member of an indepen
dent peace group in Russia called “The
Group to Establish Trust Between the
USSR and the USA.”
“It was started on June 4, 1982 by 11
people in Moscow,” he told us through a
translator. “We were all friends ana for
several years we got together to discuss
politics and the economic situation.
“Gradually we came to the conclusion
that we should form a peace group to
establish trust at a grassroots level be
tween Soviets and Americans, and also to
help stop the arms race and to prevent
the threat of nuclear war.”
Kissinger’s
by Maxwell Glen
and Cody Shearer
WASHINGTON — Ronald Reagan’s
appointment of Henry Kissinger to head
a bipartisan commission on Central
America has raised eyebrows both here
and abroad. But so should Kissinger’s
selection of Harry Shlaudeman as com
mission staff director.
While Kissinger’s sometimes malevo
lent view toward Latin America has been
well-documented — most recently by
Seymour Hersh in “The Price of Power”
— Shlaudeman’s involvement in the re
gion’s affairs is less well-known.
But it hardly qualifies the 57-year-old
diplomat to manage the studies of a sup
posedly open-minded panel on the re
gion.
Shlaudeman has served every U.S.
president since Eisenhower, holding
posts at Foggy Bottom and overseas. At
times, he’s been U.S. ambassador to
Venezuela, Peru and before Kissinger
brought him home, Argentina. He re
grets leaving Buenos Aires, he says,
“especially at this moment when (Argem
tina) is returning to democracy.”
Shlaudeman may have earned Kissin
ger’s favor, however, during the four
years (1969-1973) he spent as deputy
chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in
Chile. During that period, Salvador
Allende Gossens won the Chilean pres
idency democratically but lost it — as well
as his life — at the hands of his generals.
Before the House Foreign Affairs
Committee on June 12, 1974, Shlaude
man declared that “despite pressures to
the contrary, the U.S. government
adhered to a policy of nonintervention in
Chile’s internal affairs during the
Allende period.”
Two years later, however, a select Sen
ate committee disclosed that Shlaude
man had misled Congress as to the Un
ited States’ role in the overthrow of
Allende in 1973.
“. . . in Santiago . . . Mr. Shlaudeman
participated in the formulation of recom
mendations and the execution of instruc
tions which resulted in the destruction of
In Russia there’s an official peace
movement. The feeling Children’s Ex
press reporters got from Mr. Ostrovsky is
that it isn’t people’s wholehearted feeling
to be with this movement.
“It’s a paper organization,” he said.
“People pay dues and then they’re called
members of the Peace Squad or the Peace
Committee. Any independent initiative is
a threat to the totalitarian regime, and a
peace initiative by an independent peace
group or any independent public activity
“Our goal was not to set up contact
between official organizations; but
between ordinary people in the
East and West. ”
is crushed.”
This is why, he says, the Soviet govern
ment said to him, “Either you leave or
we’ll imprison you.” Now he here in
America, working in New York City as a
dental technician.
“I left the Soviet Union about a month
and a half after our group was founded,”
he said. “And during that short period
the group was greatly harrassed.
“It was almost like being in a detective
staff under
Chilean democracy,” recalled former
representative Michael Harrington (D-
Mass.), who was one of the Foreign
Affairs Committee members who ques
tioned the diplomat in 1974.
When confronted with the contradic
tions in his earlier testimony, Shlaude
man would only concede that the ULSL
had helped to finance opposition parties.
The money, he insisted, was “aimed at
preserving the opposition . . . (not) to
overthrow Salvador Allende.”
There are those, of course, who would
say that Shlaudeman practiced obfusca
tion only in the line of duty. But lies of
any color only compound a record
already unsuited for finding paths to
peace and justice in Central America.
There will be more auditors — appro
ximately 400 more, in fact — examining
Pentagon purchases next year if the
House approves an increase already pas
sed by the Senate.
Though Defense spending has
jumped 180 percent since 1979, the
number of Pentagon auditors has in
creased by only 3 percent, to 3,035. Sen.
Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), who au
thored the Senate amendment to in
crease Defense Contract Audit Agency
personnel, says the government’s audit
effort is “constrained.”
In a recent speech to his colleagues,
Metzenbaum cited the purchase of 10
$150 tickets to the movie premiere of
“Superman III” as an example of un
checked Pentagon spending.
Peter G. Peterson, who last week
announced his resignation as chairman
of Wall Street’s Lehman Brothers, Kuhn
and Loeb, Inc., plans soon to re-ignite the
“Bi-Partisan Budge Appeal,” first laun
ched in the spring of 1982.
Peterson, along with hundreds of cor
porate moguls and academics, will be lob
bying Washington to cut both social and
defense expenditures and to raise taxes.
Their goal is lower deficits in the latter
years of the administration’s five-year
budget plan.
Battalion R
Bryan Homeov
novel. There were spies, theife’ | nc 1 , ece ’ v l e<
lowed us, our phones were cut on( * a y' v ien ' u
blockaded our apartments aiiiBP adopted a
under house arrest, weronldnilM 86 t ie ^ ll k l
under house arrest, wecouldnJ
apartments, cars would surrou® on '
the street when we tried tub®
were times when we hadtoM§jh e board cl
There was also the imprisorff 1 would exem]
some of our members. th e market va
“And this is all in spite of tht’ nce homesteac
we consider ourselves loyalcitiil unmarried a
goal was not to set up contact^P 1 ' 011 would r
official organizations, l)utbetwe| ra “ nt l° r bie
ary people in the East and WeH 30 percem
People in the Soviet Unioai^ through 1 ( T
no fault of their own, seeaone-! ;nt in 1988 and
of peace and war, Ostrovskys :ars This will a
‘Soviet children are taugiui ‘^dent homesu
a bad thing and that the SovkI
wants peace,” he said. “In asenstl
problenl
onlyf
bard membe
peace imp
that it’s the other countries'f
UI
“The U.S. peace movementfi’
non-aligned, independent, and l^v
many very individualistic, SbJ
approaches,” Ostrovsky said.
He also noted that Americanj
sometimes all disagree with ead
“It’s hard to understand
SC
by Yvonr
They’re all fighting for peace,® Battalion
fighting against nuclear war,i Santos Alva
are so many different groups bimty deputy
don’t agree. I think they acti® volunteei
ey a'
weakened by this kind of clisagrtflp so i V e anirr
en volunteer
scrutiny
Accepted an
iththe Humar
|. County.
Kris Carter,
lived with the
nee its establi
iys the idea to '
if was not ne\
i “WeVe had
While the final House votestcTp t i me -> Q ai
Reps. Daniel Crane (R-Ill.) anjj
Studds (D-Mass.) were nearly J
congressional views on thetwoni|j
sex offenses were not.
A preliminary vote on a m
censure Crane, who admitted ha 1
with a female page, passed 28
For Studds, who confessed to
with a male page, the vote was
Slouch
ByJ
Crime St
Bryan I
s any ii
:r $ons whe
20
im hr BRYC
J| Street
Be truck
fo inches
Ver S3,200
you hav
■jjh this crime
“We agree that resting befo(
ams is a good idea, but dori l [ r—
think just a little studying* 1 ^ |
be a good idea too?”