Land O'Goshen

...The conclusion of the civil wars in the Sudan and Nigeria LOIS SPEAR found the Christians facing a new wave of persecutions com- (Sister Lois Spear, who teaches History at St...

...If Goshen puts an end to that, good gosh...

...FRANK GETLEIN Of several minds: Thomas Powers J [] THE REAL PEACEMAKER WHAT SADAT FACED N O NATION ever needed peace more than Egypt...

...to establish a network of relations-- totally different from the It makes the words of President Felix Houphouet-Boigny colonialism of the past--between the Holy See and black (Ivory Coast) in his telegram of condolence more than merely a Africa...

...For our purposes here, the point to note is that as each of these forms gets drearier and drearier, more and more removed from any pretense of either art or legitimate entertain- ment, the producing orgalnzation gets more and more corporate in form...

...The astonishing thing is that apparently Anwar el-Sadat feels the Same way...

...at cards routinely cheating the general public up when the car is struck from behind by It's odd on the face of it, this kind of Ford- in the goods sold the public, going in for all another car...

...It is a branch of advertising which uses a kind of show biz simulacrum much the way other branches of advertising have used simulacra of science, art and high society...

...Granted all this, it is nothing short of amazing that it has taken this long for an American apparatus of justice to act on the assumption that a corporation, like an individual, is capable of criminal deeds, namely, in the Goshen case, knowingly selling automobiles unnecessarily likely to incinerate their purchasers...

...Walking through the streets of Cairo, it is hard to see why Egypt should be spending millions on all-weather jet fighters, self-propelled artillery and ground- to-air missile systems...

...In the words of African peoples, the Catholic Church has had its failures there...

...clearly labeled sins, such as Pride, Lust and never been a Broadway producer who didn't Since, when you get right down to it, corpo- Sloth, to name just three, can effectively want to make money...

...Even a day or two in Cairo tells the story...

...To understand the true difficulties which Sadat faced in his search for an exit one has only to ask who won the better bargain in the 27 October 1978:680...

...GE Chairman Ralph Cordiner, on the other hand, who had to be either a crook himself or a hopeless incompetent not to know what the boys on the bids were doing, was officially stamped Not-A-Crook on the one hand and on the other given a hero's welcome by the GE shareholders and management who had prof- ited from the cheating...

...On the outskirts of the city farmers can be seen tilling tiny fields with oxen and wooden plows...

...Sometimes an iron tip has been nailed in the wooden blade, and sometimes not...

...Sadat's strategy for ending the war began with war...

...Small barefoot boys in overalls and engineer caps deliver huge burlap bags of charcoal at a jogtrot...

...In network television, of course, there is no struggle at all between talent and accounting...

...Attorney-General Katzenbach immediately ruled that, yes, in- deed, the costs of corporate crime certainly were legitimate expenses and went on to be- come a rich corporate lawyer himself...

...Businessmen think noth- ing of devoting an entire evening to the sale of five dollars' worth of perfume...

...Augustine's ing from authoritarian regimes in countries for whom indepen- Episcopal College, recently returned from a trip to Africa...

...The defendants were found guilty, of course, there was no real way around that...

...been legal questions raised by stockholders as to whether management had any right to engage in good works, was not, in fact, flagrantly derelict in duty in so doing, instead of A FEW WEEKS ago, a grand jury in that corporations have committed, crimes in bending every effort to get and keep every Goshen, Indiana accomplished an as- the past, do commit them in the present and possible penny for the shareholders...

...The Pinto's gas tank has been the to-Nixon blanket pardon we seem to have manner of unfair competition against rivals, subject of recall activity, of civil suits and of a extended to corporations for the criminality including industrial espionage and even lot of speculation on automobile design, but , they share with mankind...

...When that mo- ment occurred it is hard to say...

...Thus, not only does the desire to be television, leaving out such distractions as press...

...There are 25 today...

...Fraternit~ Matin, he was "un grand Africaln...

...tempered in most producers by an equal and people and since individual people are well The corporation, on the other hand, is sometimes conflicting desire to put on a good known to be the principal producers of crimes motivated solely by greed, the desire to make show...

...For our purposes here, The obvious question is Why...

...In big-time American movies today, an awful lot of directing, acting and scientific talent is lavished on material right out of Street & Smith's Western, the oldArgosy and True Detective, along with an endless series of larger scale natural and unnatural disasters: Accounting and the individual talent, in which the talent is relatively free to work its artistic will upon whatever rubbish the ac-countants believe will catch the buck...

...Assessed triple damages against its ill-gotten gains, GE paid up and promptly entered the criminal fines as deductible expenses, part of the cost of doing business...

...failures and the continuing persecution the church faces from Paul's efforts on behalf of African peoples earned for him neo-colonial regimes, in the eyes of African leaders, the record the profound respect of the new political classes, enabling him of the 261st successor of Peter is a brilliant one...

...More than that, it more criminally inclined than the ordinary run It's quite a record, but contemporaries can was just about the first time in living memory of men and women...

...Not why the eliminate criminality altogether, while others greed-wise, all show biz can be divided into Goshenites are doing it to Ford...

...Of several minds: Frank Getlein make more money every year than was made last year, and to make it by any means availSWEET LAND O'GOSHEN able...

...Artisans and craftsmen work in one-room shops opening onto narrow streets, with a forty-watt bulb hanging over a pre-war drill press, or Brown and Sharpe screw machine, or metal lathe...

...From Nasserhe inher- ited a policy of no war and no peace, which meant in practice all the sacrifice of the former, with none of the blessings of the lat- ter...

...Before the shooting stopped the long Israeli complacency of 1967 was over, un- counted (and unacknowledged) thousands of Egyptians were dead, and Sadat was Well on his way to the agreement which his former Arab allies would attack as surrender...

...The crass is always greener and, despite the employment of actors and directors, the enter- tainment section ads and reviews, and the look of the thing, television is not a branch of show biz at all...

...The elevators are ancient and erratic when they work at all...

...Thus, often, comers are not cut that of all kinds, it seems reasonable to assume as much money as possible in any year, to could be, risks are taken with material considCommonweal: 679 erably less than sure-fire--current hits in- clude Gin Game, which consists wholly of two inmates playing cards in an old folks' home and Dancin', a musical with no story at all, no sketches, either, few lyrics, and noth- ing you really walk out of the theater humming--in short, the accountants are kept in their proper, ancillary, place...

...Should Ford be found guilty--and this is one case clearly destined for final judgment by the Nixon Supreme Court--it will be an interesting question as to who goes to jail...

...Buses belch out thick clouds of grainy black smoke, careen wildly on dead springs, sometimes threaten to tip over from the sheer weight of riders clinging to windows and doors...

...constant preoccupation with problems of the Third World, and Approximately 15 chiefs of state and at least a dozen African particularly of Africa, in which regard he encouraged a politics politicians and ministers visited the Vatican to see Paul who, of openness and dialogue in a spirit of fraternity, won for him symbolically, returned their visits when, at Kampala, he met universal esteem and respect...

...ing considerations, quite a few of which can rary show business...

...But this natural desire is rate affairs are in fact conducted by individual check inclinations toward stealing...

...When corporations have occasionally dabbled in what, among individuals, would be called good works, there have actually AREN'T CORPORATIONS SINNERSTOO...

...Is it that corporate affairs are so con- ever isn't nailed down, but well-established, documentaries, all that...

...Penny dreadfuls have become three- and four-dollar dreadfuls, but the dreadfulness remains...

...The overall effect is almost Victorian in its teem- ing grey dinginess...

...That's obvi- can moderate the inclination toward criminal three parts, Broadway, movies and network ous to the most casual reader of the Pinto's behavior...

...He was not quick to show his hand...

...When he was elected in 1963, only 3 African ambas- series of empty phrases...

...It is half a day's work to phone outside the country...

...In October, 1973, Egypt assaulted the Israeli fortifications across the Suez canal, armed with surprise, hydraulic mining equipment (used to hose away Israeli earth- works) and Soviet handheld anti-tank mis- siles...

...For thirty years Egypt had beggared itself in the struggle over Palestine, aterritory unclaimed by Egypt since the last of the Ptolemies, until Sadat finally asked himself if there were any point in it, and decided there was not...

...It is small wonder that Paul VI will be remembered by Despite Paul's concern for peace and the well-being of the Africans as the Pope of the Third World...

...The city is liter- ally falling apart from sheer neglect...

...Not only share, in sabotage, defrauding the government of just the Goshen indictment was the first intimation the view of many observers over the years, taxes, and, most spectacularly, defrauding that the corporation's original desig n and con- but share disproportionately: the corporation, the workers of everything they could be de- tinued use of that lethal design could be con- in this interpretation, is by its nature much frauded of, including their lives...

...strued as criminal actions...

...There has probably ducted that criminal acts never take place...

...tonishing feat...

...The Broadway producer, in fact, is one of the last honest- to-God free entrepreneurs in the economy, whereas the broadcast networks are clearly one of the great cartels...

...The jury indicted the assuredly will commit them in the future...

...with representatives of the Organization of African Unity...

...President Boigny said of Paul: "His sadors were accredited at the Vatican...

...That was interesting enough, the more so since Cordiner was the Simple Simon of his time in his childish belief in the free enterprise GE did everything it could to strangle, but the bit got even better...

...The Goshen indictment is a welcome contrast to the accepted attitude perhaps best expressed by Attorney-General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach in the case of the electrical giant firms, General Electric, Westinghouse, et al., conspiring to cheat the government by collu- sion on what should have been secret bids...

...Rather, why not anybody else until honest hold in check the desire to steal what- off-Broadway, off-off, regional, public telly now...

...The windows of government offices do not appear to have been washed since the British left, and clerks use carbon paper twenty and thirty times in their antique machines...

...The The truth of this distinction is evident Ford Motor Company on criminal counts in reason for the non-indictability of corpora- enough in industrial history, which shows so- the matter of the well-known tendency of the tions until now must be sought elsewhere in cially distinguished men who wouldn't cheat gas tank on Ford's Pinto to catch fire or blow their presumed innocence...

...The reason is that men see the principle even more clearly in a com- when criminal activity was even imputed to a and women are motivated by many conflict- petition of the degrees of greed in contempo- corporation...