TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...Yet the New York actor gets a minimum of $610 a week against $180 in London, a New York stage manager $1,000 compared to $300 for his London counterpart...

...Why, from the managers, of course...

...In most cases that would permit sensible and humane schedules for the younger doctors and break the insane chain of self-pity that now distorts the attitudes of the entire profession...

...I certainly would hate to have my life depend on a person who had gone without sleep for two days and a night...

...of this and future budgets will• be devoted to them...

...This seems to me to be generally true in the book publishing business, where an editor's day appears to consist entirely of taking people to lunch and making deals...

...For this month's lesson on how lobbyists work, I turn to Susan Trausch of the Washington bureau of the Boston Globe...

...going to see an . end to the editorial page as it exists today...

...You either accept that judgment and go public with it (no one did...

...The Committee on the Care of Children was not much in evidence at the lunch...

...This firm has succeeded, by threatening legal action, in getting hundreds of television stations around the country not to run a public service announcement prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services cautioning parents on the use of aspirin...

...A tire company or a steel mill...

...The major flaw, according to the experts and the reporter who wrote the story,• was that the' proposals weren't politically realistic...

...in the end he was mostly a pawn...

...Recently, I was talking to some friends about the Long report on the Beirut bombing that killed 200 Marines...

...Meanwhile, a couple of thousand miles away from Beverly Hills, Joan Burton, the deputy clerk of Chase County, Kansas, was offered a pay raise by the county commission...

...She got a phone call from a public relations firm inviting her to a lunch sponsored by "The Committee on the Care of Children...

...Please ask your friends in the medical world the purpose of such training...

...It may not have been an overt conspiracy but there was certainly tacit encouragement of false intelligence...

...They seem to think their artistic integrity is threatened whenever an editor suggests they might be wrong...

...When the most passionate of these officers, Lieutenant Colonel John Vann, retired from the service so he could go public, his briefing to the Joint Chiefs was canceled at the personal request of Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the military officer closest to McNamara...

...But there is very little of what I call "argue" editing, in which the author's ideas are examined, intellectual loopholes are discovered and filled, and some facts are exposed as irrelevant while others are found to be missing...

...Ten years ago, if such story had appeared' in the Post at all...

...She asks how can, we have a centrist position on an abomination like the South African government...

...In all the talk about the Barbara Hutton biography that turned out to contain some fairly glaring errors, one comment about editors stood out...

...The problem •with this kind of expert—and this kind of reporter—is that he never mentions the ideas that could bring about big savings, because he is convinced they wouldn't get through Congress...

...She turned it down because she didn't believe the rural county could afford it...

...One lesson you learn very early as a lawyer is the high desirability of having your partners find the flaws in your case in the forgiving privacy of the office instead of having opposing counsel reveal them in the courtroom to your certain embarrassment and possible defeat...

...He cuts with his wit, he disarms with a hyped up Latino accent, he shies away from spotlights, he beguiles his enemies...

...We do a lot of argue editing at the Monthly, probably because I was trained as a lawyer, not as a journalist...

...The trouble is, their $500,000-a-year salaries are not enough to provide the capital to buy a $100 million corporation...

...There is a simple solution to this problem: require all the senior physicians who practice at a given hospital to take one night-duty assignment a year...

...combat units are ready to use them...

...The reason is that lobbyists make money off of industry's tendency to panic at the slightest hint of regulation, and lobbyists have therefore become expert at exacerbating that panic...

...This statement outraged David Halberstam, who immediately wrote a letter to the Times...

...Then journalistic fashion changed and even the best businessmen tended to be treated like suspects in a holdup...

...If their assignment is to the chain of command, their concern for their own careers and their loyalty to (Continued on page 60) (continued from page 11) their superiors and subordinates in that chain of command mean that they are unlikely to concede that serious error has been made by anyone in the...

...Secured by what...

...That is at the core of this trial: General Westmoreland was, in fact, not a hero, nor a villain...

...with orchids flown in from Hawaii...

...The memo also says that the "least preferred" way of controlling costs is the practice under which the machine shops at Air Force logistic centers have begun making spare parts themselves at savings of tens of millions of dollars...

...The affidavit from McNamara isn't much help in unraveling all this (although by giving it, hL and Bundy at least pay back a partial debt to Westmoreland whom they left holding a bad policy once they bailed out to their happier new jobs), but perhaps it means that CBS's lawyers can finally get him under oath...

...Wolpoff, the tenants said, would allow fledgling businessmen low rent for the first couple of years, and if they failed he would simply write off the remaining rent due under the lease instead of suing them...

...But it just doesn't make sense for people who can have fun going to work every day to risk not having that fun in order to get money they don't really need...

...I had deplored the journalistic tradition that dictated a ghetto of facts in the news section, facts unadorned by coior, opinion, or 'human understanding...

...The jiggling was what Lyndon Johnson wanted...

...My concern about argue editing prompts me to add one proposal to what Jonathan Friendly of The New York Times reports that many editors said at a recent conference on how to train journalists: "It is more important for journalism students to get a broad background in the liberal arts rather than train in specific methods of reporting and editing...

...it' would have been in the Style section...

...When asked by a magazine interviewer, "Would you consider a challenging role in a film if it were a meaty character part even if it weren't a starring role...

...McNamara's reign as secretary of defense and even before General Westmoreland's tour in Vietnam there was in fact precisely this kind of trickiness with reports and estimates on the part of the Saigon command...

...Charles Peters...

...This is the kind of argument desperate lawyers concoct when their client is guilty as hell under the current rules and their only hope is either to get the rules changed or to exempt their client from them...

...He owns houses in Malibu, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills...

...But' the experts say it's unrealistic 'and so do the reporters, so the people aren't told the facts...

...There are three or four guys on Sligo Avenue here who would have lost their business in last year's recession if it wasn't for Stan:' said one of the tenants...

...For example, a new book called U.S...

...Here is how it works...

...Her annual salary is $1,066.67...

...They wondered how such a report could have come from a military where coverup seems to be a way of life...

...Now we seem to be moving toward a recognition that at least some businessmen are good guys...

...But Regency's head is unbowed...

...When the stories about those prices began to appear, Congress demanded changes and Caspar Weinberger promised reform...

...Remember, to cite another example, the Peers report on My Lai...

...you can come to that conclusion, as McNamara did, separate yourself as quietly and deftly from your own policy, or in desperation, as the Saigon command was forced to do (with a political campaign approaching and pressure mounting from a highly political president), you began to play with the figures, giving Washingon inevitably what you thought Washington wanted...

...There's no reason liberal arts teachers couldn't do the same thing, and I hope someday they will...

...These people never propose radical' reform—the change they suggest is always five or ten degrees from the center...

...The war was thus unwinnable...

...Jay is exhausted to the point of being unsure about everything, including his ability to make decisions...

...Where do you get the facts about the company so that you can decide...

...Another is through his own life experience, which he should seek to make as varied as possible...

...Ann Landers, who is usually shrewder, unquestioningly accepted the medical profession's answer that "rarely is a life-anddeath decision made by an intern or resident who has been without sleep for many hours...

...With so many weapons lying around—there are 5,800 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe alone—it's hard to imagine our security being so perfect that one or two aren't going to end up in enemy hands...

...So money is the operative factor',' the interviewer commented...

...One is the experience of others that he learns through history and literature and that is why a good liberal arts education is so important...

...They're going to be seen as boring compared to what is happening with the appearance of more and more stories like Sinclair's...

...Eligio (Kika) de la Garza (D-Texas...

...Yet on Broadway it has degenerated into a labor of greed...

...Meg Greenfield, for one...

...If it at least were widely debated, it would make colleges face the terrible hypocrisy involved in their athletic programs, and it would do something to take care of the injured college athlete, who often finds his alma mater indifferent to his disability when it becomes clear that he can no longer be a revenue-producing player...

...We have to devise policies that have nothing to do with seeking a precise midpoint between the tired old prescribed choices and cliches...

...Readers still 'have a legitimate need for straight news about what happened yesterday, and if they're going to be given something else in the news section it should be .labeled, as Sinclair's was not, "Profile" or "Background" or "News Analysis" or some •such term that would warn the reader that, this is not objective reporting...

...The catch is that, once the item is declared proprietary, military purchasing officials will not furnish other companies the engineering data they need to make competitive bids...

...Nuclear Forces and Capabilities says that we have 26,000 nuclear weapons and that 700 U.S...

...The government seldom challenges such claims, even when the contractor does not make the part himself but buys it elsewhere...

...An affidavit Robert McNamara made in connection with General Westmoreland's suit against CBS was quoted recently in The New York Times...

...Many are kept behind doors that have only single locks...

...Well, when the speeding driver's radar detector sounds off, he slows down...

...When I was growing up, the press tended to be excessively deferential to businessmen, portraying the worst scoundrels as distinguished pillars of the community...

...GM $2.2 billion in 1982 alone...

...There are two kinds of experience that can enrich a reporter's point of view...

...Now the manager makes an offer to you for your stock...

...The latest craze in corporate finance is called the leveraged buy-out, and, like most of the innovations of Wall Street, it involves a new way to take you to the cleaners...

...Since the experts, and the reporters who follow them, won't talk about •the ideas, the public has no chance to learn about them and to generate the pressure that could make the ideas politically realistic...

...Sinclair trend...

...The formal education I would add is one year of law school...

...Alaska dairies complained, and the budget process ground to a halt so Stevens could protect Alaskan dairies, even though doing so will cost the taxpayers more...

...I can't afford to take time off to do something that doesn't compensate me as much as what I can make otherwise...

...I recommend this practice to other editors...

...The choices are not pleasant...

...You might find color and empathy in' sections like' Style: And...

...Halberstam sent it to us and here it is: "Since there is a new revisionist fashion to blame the press for the defeat in Vietnam (primarily on the part of people who said that there would never be a defeat there) and since public memory is short, and public figures like McNamara have selective recall, it should be pointed out that in Mr...

...Since their interest is in keeping the price low, you are not likely to get facts from them that will lead you to put a high value on your stock...

...But his kindness often kept them from failing...

...The star of the show got $3,000 a week in London and $12,500 in New York...

...Journal of the American Medical Association permitted an editorial decision to be dictated by a drug company that was a major advertiser...

...Very tough warnings came from senior Saigon officers that those who persisted in being honest and pessimistic not only would not be listened to, but that they would dissent at the risk of their careers...

...The firm's defense, according to the Associated Press, is that law firms should be free to discriminate against women because "lawyers are different—they're essential to the enforcement of the Constitution...

...Everyone agrees that we should spend more money on education but there is compelling evidence that money is not the whole answer...

...It is tragic that McNamara, who has lived such an honorable and useful life since leaving the Pentagon, could come this close to committing perjury...

...There are substantial bureaucratic forces at every paper •who will fight this development, but I think ultimately they are doomed...

...There is some good style editing in magazines...

...So they put up maybe a million or so and go to the bank where they get a loan for the rest...

...I am convinced there would be strong public pressure' for later retirement for military and civilian officials if the public realized how early these retirements take place now 'and how much...

...It compared the costs of the London production of Kean with the New York version, and the results were bad news for people who worry about the excessive value that American culture is now putting on money...

...They used the occasion to argue that aspirin does not cause Reye's Syndrome, although there is substantial evidence that it does when given to children who are recovering from the flu or chicken pox...

...Trausch describes the lunch as "a seven-course, gold-plated finger-bowl and hot-towel extravaganza that looked like something out of I, Claudius...

...A man whose only job was to tend to the star's wig, a job that took at the most an hour a day, had to be paid $500 a week...

...Sometimes',' she writes, "we have to choose...

...Kenny Rogers, the singer and actor, is said to have made more than $20 million last year...

...It's called the Kika...

...It had tried to save $200,000 by buying milk for a base in Alaska from a dairy in Seattle...

...The Socratic-method teachers at the better law schools do teach their students how to think—to argue edit, if you will...

...The Times refused to print it...

...But Charles Mohr of The New York Times has unearthed a subsequent Pentagon memo that expresses concern about moves to restrict the practice of declaring proprietary rights...

...What was in evidence were attorneys from the law firm of Warner & Stackpole, which represents the aspirin industry...

...That alone would make this trial worthwhile...

...he just didn't want anyone to get caught doing it...

...But the simple fact is that each of us, even the most gifted, falls into error from time to time...

...It came from Frances Fitzgerald, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Fire in the Lake...

...Experience in government, business, and the military is particularly desirable as a break in or preceding a career in journalism...

...The journal proceeded, to print another article more to Pfizer's liking, and the advertising is back...

...Who is General Motors' largest contractor...

...What had the Air Force done to inspire such wrath...

...Most of them bitterly resent the slavery' of internship and residency...

...that there was no investigation or courtmartial simply confirmed what those of us who watched that period already knew: Washington was not angry with Saigon, because Saigon was giving Washington what it wanted: results and estimates which fit in with the policy and made the domestic politics of that policy more tolerable (helping to keep it from being an issue in the 1964 campaign...

...Recently, for example, The Washington Post's R. H. Melton wrote about a memorial service held by the small businessmen who were tenants of Stanley Wolpoff, a commercial landlord in Silver Spring,- Maryland, who had died the week before...

...No, it's Blue Cross and Blue...

...On the other hand, if they are assigned to do an independent report, they take the assignment seriously and often do a commendable job...

...Which is at the heart of the current controversy: what happens when a government and a command finally begin to discover that a policy has failed...

...Some writers, especially the famous ones who tend to become prima donnas, feel it is insulting...

...Shield of Michigan., Health insurance cost...

...If you doubt that journalism has changed dramatically in recent years, consider this story by Ward Sinclair that ran recently in the first news section of The Washington Post: "There's a fresh and different breeze blowing across the great congressional desert where the hot air 'dries the brain cells and the ego trips pass for statecraft...

...Ann's medical adviser went on to say that most young doctors "would rather take care of patients than eat or sleep?' That, too, is a lie...

...According to present and former employees of the journal, "Pfizer pulled $250,000 in ads and threatened to remove $2 million more...

...The 100-hour weeks, the 40-hour shifts and the constant stress and pressures of modern-day medicine are taking their toll not only on him, but most interns and residents...

...For Secretary McNamara to issue his affidavit now is particularly disingenuous since his various aides know that one of the reasons he became increasingly disenchanted with the policy around 1967 was that he no longer believed Westmoreland's estimates...

...Experts Cite Flaws in Grace Panel's Claim for Savings',' read the headline in The Washington' Post...

...This strikes me as sensible...

...A recent news story in The Washington Post said Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who is chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense, had "angrily canceled" hearings on the Air Force budget...

...Three thousand eight hundred of these weapons in Europe are artillery shells that are 20 years old and, according to Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, "do not have modern electronic systems that allow them to be destroyed by a remotecontrolled radio signal if stolen...

...Children with the flu or chicken pox are a tiny percentage of the market— why would the aspirin industry make such a huge effort to protect it...

...Anyone who has been around hospitals very much knows this is a blatant lie...

...Speaking of our friends the physicians, the Chicago Sun= Times reports that the...

...I think that 'in the long run we're...

...Since they don't own the company yet, this security may seem a bit dubious, but not to a banker who is cut in on the deal, receiving a percentage of the ownership sufficient to overcome any excess of rectitude in his character...

...He is chairman of that grasping crowd of strivers called the House...

...His counterpart in London got $140...

...She said, "There is very little editing, even for style...

...I can understand when we are held up by unions representing people who do society's drudge work...

...By the assets of the company, of course...

...That King & Spalding's lawyer may well be desperate is suggested by the fact that the firm, at a recent picnic for the members, asked the female associates to participate in a bathing beauty contest...

...It would be...

...But the sad fact is that today that kind of rigor is not part of the average college teacher's intellectual equipment...

...There is also some excellent fact-checking, of which The New Yorker is also a good example...

...One senior partner had wanted the contestants to parade in wet T-shirts...

...Anyone who has worked in the theater knows what a labor of love it can be for everyone concerned, from the people backstage to the actors in front of the footlights...

...Because of such union work rules as one requiring the crew that installs the set to be paid not only for the hours it works, but for the hours until the lights are focused on the set, set installation costs in New York were $10,000 compared to $3,000 in London...

...Absolutely',' answered Rogers...

...Certain news makes me nervous...

...Conspiracy is probably too strong a word for what took place at that time, since an Army staff works in subtle and nimble ways once it finds out what its superior wants, but there is no doubt that the growing strength of the enemy and the failures of the ally were systematically ignored, despite the pleas of passionate officers in the field...

...The sad thing about these high costs is that they discourage production and reduce the opportunities for people to function in work that can be truly joyful...

...Amen...

...But if you know the Army, that kind of money will be spent on plans for a double lock for which the maker will then claim "proprietary rights" and charge outrageous sums...

...Is the offer fair, you ask...

...The New Yorker is perhaps an outstanding example...

...Among the states, South Dakota ranks 47th in teachers' salaries but is fifth in the percentage of those who enter high school and stay on to graduate...

...He is a sly fox who occasionally plays himself off as a poor little step 'n'letchit Mexican guy...

...Agriculture Committee,, and he is an unusual man...

...King & Spalding, the large Atlanta law firm, has been charged with discrimination against its female employees...

...Most military officers are competent people—perhaps even a cut above their counterparts in the civilian government—but their performance is shaped by their role...

...The Army is spending $35 million on a new security program for these weapons...

...I should, however, inject one note of caution about the...

...With these numbers and the normal tendencies of military bureaucracy, the possibility of accidental detonation seems not nearly slim enough...

...As far back as 1964 I detailed this, using the names of some officers (others would have been easy enough to find out...

...But if Broadway is bad, Hollywood is worse...

...It may be a trifle overwritten, but I'm delighted by the trend that has brought it to• the front of the paper...

...has begun' to question this centrism...

...That's why every article in this magazine, including this column, gets a hard look from at least two editors who are free to question anything, whether a matter of fact, style, or meaning...

...The New York Times recently published a case study of the high cost of Broadway theater...

...In it McNamara said, "I did not believe it would have been possible for the military command in Vietnam to engage in a conspiracy to suppress or fake intelligence or enemy troop strength and if such a conspiracy had existed, I do not believe it could have been kept secret from myself or the president...

...Rogers replied, "The problem is monetary...

...It is also at least partly true of the magazine business...

...How, you ask...

...Now you would think this would be a business it would be hard to brag to your children about...

...A state senator from Nebraska has proposed that college athletes in revenueproducing sports like football and basketball be treated as school employees with salaries, health insurance, workers' compensation, and the other usual benefits...

...One way the contractors get away with such charges is by declaring they have "proprietary rights" in the small parts...

...Then there's the danger of theft by terrorists...

...If you have been to London recently, you know the cost of living there is much the same as in New York, certainly not more than 20 percent less...

...just as sterile as the dry facts of the news section, for the opinion would be written, not by reporters who had first-hand knowledge and a feel of the underlying reality, but by fellows who sat in -the office all day writing editorials...

...They have sent out a press release that proudly asserts that they are promoting highway safety...

...I agree with Halberstam...

...In the last year or so you've probably read a number of horror stories about how the Pentagon pays extravagant sums for small parts that often cost only a few cents to make...

...The managers of a company decide they want to buy it...

...And it is, of course, the lack of competition that produces the outrageous prices...

...The other day Ann Landers got a letter that said: "I have just talked with my son, an intern in a large, prestigious hospital...

...The explanation is simple...

...why should that bother the doctors who seldom settle for less than a Mercedes...

...Thatadded $480 to the cost of each GM car...

...There are also some truly exotic union rules that run up the cost of Broadway productions...

...This kind of realism is typical of the incremental approach to problems that' dominates respectable Washington...

...Surely they can't believe that a doctor can be mentally alert when he is fatigued...

...Pfizer didn't like a story' that the journal published about one of its drugs...

...The experience leaves them with a lifelong self-pity, which they use to justify their high fees`lf you knew what I had to go through"--and a sadistic determination to see that future generations of medical students suffer just as they did...

...This was not a laughing matter for the Air Force because Stevens's committee has the power of the purse and can reduce or increase the Air Force's budget...

...The District of Columbia, on the other hand, ranks second in salaries but 50th in graduates...

...Prodded by briefings from his aide, John McNaughton, he knew that the bombing had failed, that the other side could send down almost as many men as it wanted, that we were in effect fighting the birthrate of North Vietnam, and that therefore the best we could hope to do was impose a fairly brutal aerial tax upon them...

...you would find opinion on the editorial page...

...chain...