Guest Column
ARGUS, M. K.
GUEST COLUMN By M. K. Argus Dig That Crazy Idea, Senator: Bop Instead of GOP Leadership The Senate has just killed an excellent idea. It has voted down the Administration-sponsored amendment to...
...The McCarthy-Stevens investigation, too, would have gained considerably if all the people who conducted it and participated in it were teen-agers...
...Were Secretary Stevens, say, 19, and Senator McCarthy 18, the affair would have become the gonest of all gone spectacles...
...A teen-ager still has a chance...
...And, for all we know, Mr...
...I am not certain about the Presidency...
...Cohn and Schine, young men in their first adultery...
...It would have had the coolest acts...
...Too bad...
...the investigator would tell him: "Why don't you turn blue...
...The trouble with the investigation was that too many of its principals were adult men in their second childhood, instead of, like Messrs...
...The argument is wrong...
...Opponents of the measure point out that there are quite a few people in public life who have not yet grown up anyway and can easily be counted as teen-agers, so why lower the voting age...
...But with a few teenagers added it would have become the greatest show on earth...
...The job, after all, requires a certain amount of experience...
...One could, to judge by performance, combine both...
...It has voted down the Administration-sponsored amendment to slash the voting age to 18...
...go man, go, and let us coo...
...After several months of negotiating with Molotov, our youthful Secretary of State could tell him amiably: "Mister, you're a real Gone Ghoul...
...The investigation of Communist activities, for one thing, would acquire a different and more pleasing aspect when conducted by the young ones...
...or, to put it correctly, being wagged a pinky...
...It is only fair to assume that the teen-agers could do better...
...Indeed, ours would be a better world with the teen-agers admitted to the act...
...And that would be the end of the witness...
...If a Red, receiving a summons to testify...
...It would be a pleasure to have him get up at some future Geneva Conference (or, as a teen-ager would call it, Brain-Session) and exclaim, pointing at Comrade Molotov: "Dig that crazy Russian...
...but utterly-utlerly, woo-woo...
...It seems to me that giving the vote to 18-year-olds would be the best remedy for all our troubles, domestic as well as foreign...
...man, I'll call you Joe Slump, the midget.'" There would be no need for recalcitrant witnesses to invoke the Fifth Amendment...
...What is wrong with having a Bop administration...
...He had said it several times before the investigation, you know...
...Should our teen-age Secretary of State find himself unable to reach an agreement with the Gone Ghouls of the East, or to gain the support of our friends and allies, the Hep Brains of the West, he could return home and tell the people about his unfortunate experience with the Crazy Mixed-up Cats...
...A number of problems would be easily solved with the lowering of the voting age...
...Stevens would have said to Senator McCarthy "Joe...
...Domestic politics, too, would be clarified and simplified if the teenagers entered the field...
...If the witness refused to answer the question, "Have you ever been or are you now a Red...
...the Eastern Drips and the Western Schmagegi...
...Why not give the youngsters a chance...
...However, we should all welcome a young man of 18 as our Secretary of State...
...As a matter of fact, I am personally in favor of lowering the voting age to 15 or even 14, but that would be asking too much...
...There is nothing like politics to transform a delinquent into a respectable citizen...
...for my money, it was as good a show as any...
...By offering the teenagers a chance to enter politics, we would most likely contribute a great deal to the elimination of juvenile delinquency...
...We now have a GOP administration...
...Not that it was a bad show...
...I don't think a young man of 18 should become eligible for so exalted an office...
...They deserve it...
...it would have become the bitter end, and, as every teen-ager will tell you, there is absolutely nothing in the world crazier or goner than the bitter end...
...We adults have surely made an awful mess of everything...
...A teenager, when questioning a Red, would be hep to the situation at once...
...It would, of course, be a compliment, but it would make Molotov very sad: He would be reminded of his former friends, gone ghouls all...
...An adult who has not grown up never will...
...19, I should say, would be a more acceptable age...
...refused to disclose his identity or tell his real name, the investigator could tell him: "OK...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 27
