Fair Game

...Remember, this was set up by Democrats...

...And (see the memo from Ambassador Bunker) it's not for us sitting in our swivel chairs over here to say a bad word about the Vietnamese citizen who prefers to dream away his days rather than face them fully conscious...

...They are debilitating and demoralizing and distracting...

...the frontal lobotomy is still a tricky operation...

...J. Edgar is sure that Rennie Davis is at the bottom of the whole mess...

...We're fighting ideology with ideology...

...It would ease matters if a few thousand of the veterans took a lesson from the North Vietnamese pows and refused to come home—but excuse me, I'm dreaming...

...As our men return from the bastion of democracy, they will be shipped directly to detoxification centers designed to resemble Uncle Fred's Candy Shoppe Back Home (the Washington, D.C., police force has agreed to handle the logistics...

...Therefore, our intelligence advisory board is suggesting that the President go on tv to announce the following: That the war against poverty is about to be Appalachian-ized under the dynamic leadership of former Congressman Albert R. Watson of South Carolina, to whom we still owe a job...

...As you are aware, it's Pentagon policy for our boys to get to know the way of life of Asiatic peoples, their traditions and customs, no matter how disgusting—it's a real opportunity to broaden one's horizons, become acquainted with unusual lifestyles, as the recruiting posters point out...

...Not that one can't make allowances...

...By the way, chief, we hear that the Tobacco Industry Research Council has found a causal connection between Rennie Davis and lung cancer...

...As the President has pointed out more than once, everybody in our Administration, from the top right on down the line, is committed heart and soul to all poverty programs...

...If that isn't sinister enough, chief, our informants confirm the accuracy of that survey the Administration leaked a few weeks ago which showed that a large percentage of vtsta volunteers are being radicalized by their experiences in working with America's poor...

...after all, we don't want to be put in the position of policing the whole world (see what happened to Lyndon Johnson...

...Hustling around out there in Appalachia for peanuts instead of getting a foot in the door in the insurance business back home...

...We're not all fogies up here on Constitution Avenue, no matter what the Trotskyites say...

...Billy Graham told me on the golf course the other afternoon that the obstinate refusal of a small minority to live the good life bespeaks a want of moral fiber...

...That all poverty workers will be withdrawn before November 1972...

...And (see the memo from Secretary Rogers) the way business is conducted by government officials in South Vietnam is a matter for decision by democratic process in that little democracy...

...And we certainly don't want to be accused by the Washington Post of trying to tell today's fine young people what they should or should not do with their time off...

...The vista volunteers represent a trickier problem...

...But when you stop and think about it without letting your emotions run away with you, chief (chief, please stop letting your emotions run away with you), what kind of young folks would go into programs like vista in the first place...

...The lesson of this unfortunate experience, chief, is that the poverty program has to be thoroughly reformed...

...the penalties for pushers cannot be too severe, no matter what the Supreme Court says...

...Kicking Poverty SO, to get back to our plan, we want to hand each returned volunteer $10,000 in cash and a Detroitmade automobile to help him resume his acquaintance with the American Way...

...Where's their sense of perspective, for God's sake...

...But my facelessly informed guess is that the volunteers weren't stable to begin with...

...Any radical under 30 who expresses an interest in buying a piece of property will be offered a fat bank loan at advantageous rates, which ought to tie him up pretty effectively well into middle age...

...But we have been sending our troops and our treasure in to help the poor since 1965...

...Which reminds me, chief—regards from old Harry Carswell...

...Just when the editorial writers were saying that the kids have sown their oats, that they are going to stop aggravating everybody and go back to gang rumbles and drunken driving, comes the news that a lot of soldiers in Vietnam intend to return to their moms, dads and sweethearts as heroin addicts...

...Much more important, my staff—in collaboration with Rogers' people and Kissinger's people and J. Edgar's people—has in the works a program to come to grips with everything through a shrewd combination of disengagement and preventive detention...

...It's one of those basic virtues that can only be inbuilt by a good home and a good evangelist, Billy said, and made a birdie on the seventh hole (the power of prayer...

...The Vietcong must be laughing up their pajama sleeves...

...Get the scenario, chief...

...Between us, that won't have an effect on heroin addiction, but it's guaranteed to smoke out the radicals...

...But no use mincing words...

...The Vice President's suggestion that all long-haired youths be shipped to an island off the coast of Italy as part of a Mops for the Wops program would probably upset an ethnic element...

...Stoned on poverty...

...Look at the total picture: Their government sends them forth on the high mission of helping the poor, equipped with plenty of good wishes (if only I had a dollar for every vista volunteer I've patted on the back), and just because they find that the poor don't all have indoor privies and local officials are busy uptown, the young folks become radicalized...

...And the detoxification campaign, naturally, as "Honorable Withdrawal...

...Surveys made in Croton-on-Hudson and Martha's Vineyard prove that more Communists have been converted by real estate than by the blacklist...

...Lawsuits challenging our program of Congenial Rehabilitation will doubtless be instituted by the aclu in behalf of veterans who are allergic to strawberry flavoring, but our experts assure us there's nothing in the Constitution that guarantees anybody a right to chocolate or vanilla...

...Let me put this on the line, chief—it's unrealistic to expect a strawberry shake to take the taste of Appalachia out of anybody's mouth...

...As for the hard-core poverty addict who refuses to take the money, he may have to undergo strawberry shake therapy...

...I know it's not prudent politics to point that out in writing, with Jack Anderson checking your garbage can...

...surely it's time those people stood on their own ill-shod feet...

...Of course the inspiration, chief, is 100 per cent yours...

...Reentry Pains NOW, these foreign and domestic dilemmas are very much on all our minds in this shop, believe me...

...Fortunately, we're already well into the Vietnamizing process...

...The whole thing is just not designed for young folks who cherish our national values...

...To get back to nuts and bolts, the first step should be a stiffening of the penalties against marijuana...

...But heroin...

...We've considered inaugurating a job-training program for addicts, but that seems kind of pointless since there are no jobs available to train them for...

...The main consideration, here, is that we don't want to appear oppressive—you know how the papers jump on every little thing...

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Depressing Areas TO: THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FROM: HEAD, INTERNAL SECURITY DIVISION Chief, reports from our faceless undercover agents at home and abroad confirm our worst suspicions ¦—the under-30s are at it again...

...Billy and I met him at the club and had a stimulating chat about moral fiber...

...J. Edgar's proposal seems to us ingenious but premature...

...We understand that any young American might feel at loose ends over there in the battle zone, lacking wholesome entertainment in between Bob Hope's visits...

...The least the heads of the Army pxs could have done, when they weren't busy stealing, was to provide Ping-Pong balls and Monopoly sets and checked-out girls from high-status gook families for the Gi's leisure time...

...Once there, the veteran will be fed strawberry shakes laced with Southern Comfort until his native tastes reassert themselves and he is ready to find happiness in his own country...

...they catch things from one another...

...That from then on, helicopters will be flown in over less affluent areas to drop self-help manuals onto those below...

...By the time a young fellow is of an age to leave home, he ought to have learned that drugs and poverty are dangerous, and that he should steer clear of them...

...Yes, chief, I know we'll need one-liners to get across our new program to the American people, and the boys in the one-liner shop have come up with a couple of grabbers...

...Having been given the opportunity to fly clear across the world to serve under General Abrams and do combat for the national honor, these young men have chosen to shoot up rather than shoot at...

...It's just too chancy to continue to expose the middle class to the poor...

...The self-help-manual idea can be presented by the President as "Target: The Poor...

...Sorry, chief—white soldiers, too...

...those poor people sure deserve help, and I know that you for one are all for giving them what they deserve...