April 7, 1976

TV Makes Heroes Of Hooligans

Now that the statute of limitations has run out former Yippie leader Jerry Rubin is ready to confess: "Guilty as Hell"!

I'm not quite sure whether the villain of today's piece is Rubin, or the television networks which made him into a latter-day folk hero.

Both deserve criticism for the preposterous and dishonest propaganda rip-off they perpetrated during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

For those who joined us late, we remind that a group of ragged, foul-mouthed hooligans made a shambles of the convention with riots protesting the Vietnam War.

It was dramatic TV fare, much of it arranged by and staged for the television cameramen - as some TV officials later admitted.

Seven Yippie leaders were arrested for conspiracy to incite riot.  Kuntsler, a radical attorney specializing in preposterous political crimes, defended them.  Through the nightly newscasts the accused rather quickly gained notoriety as the Chicago Seven.

The group was in great demand for campus rallies - especially Rubin and Kuntsler.  Their fee was $1,500 an appearance, and student unions in scores of universities clamored for the privilege of being conned.

After nearly five months of testimony, featuring obscene insults to the judge, five of the Chicago seven, including Rubin, were convicted of crossing state lines to incite riots.  Kuntsler appealed and the convictions were thrown out by an Appeals Court.

Kuntsler and Rubin trumpeted their "vindication" and took to the banquet circuit full-time to cash in on their fame.

Seven years after the Chicago Seven were first convicted public television took to the air to lionize the protesters who beat the system.  On the whole, the propaganda was not too blatant.  The portrayal of Judge Julius J.  Hoffman as a crotchety old man was subtle.  The portrayal of Rubin and Kuntsler was full of ringing rhetoric defending freedom of speech.

It almost convinced.

Within a couple of weeks, however, we got a straight pitch, from Rubin himself.

Filling a guest column spot in the Chicago Sun-Times, Rubin wrote brazenly:

"Let's face it.  We wanted disruption.  We planned it.  We, were not innocent victims.  We worked on our plans for a year before we came here.  We made our demands on the city so outrageous because we wanted the city to deny us what we were asking.  We did all of this with one purpose in mind - to make the city react as if it was a police state, and to focus attention of the whole world on us.

"The prosecution, all during the trial, said we were guilty.  And you know what?  We were, Guilty as Hell.  Guilty as charged!"

Rubin went to justify his actions on the grounds "guilty doesn't mean wrong." He contends he acted for patriotic reasons.

Judge Hoffman snorted.  "That's like admitting that you've robbed a bank to pay for your wife's pregnancy, or your sick wife's hospital bill."

The Chicago riots, trial and arrogant confessions are horrible examples how we can be bamboozled by the boob tube.  Strange, the news twisting is always pro-liberal, anti-conservative.  Why can't it be just neutral?

A year ago, on the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam pull out, one of the networks reviewed the involvement of U.S. presidents in the conflict - Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon,

Some one missing from the indictment, you say?  By George, you're right.  The network seems to have over looked the president who sent in the first combat troops and participated in the assassination of Vietnam president Diem.  Now, who could that U. S. president have been?

Just a few weeks ago, another network did a special program on the CIA and FBI, reviewing the abuses of those agencies by U.S. presidents - Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon.

Was one of our peerless leaders conspicuous by his absence?  Maybe the president who conspired to assassinate Cuban Dictator Castro, who bugged the telephones of Martin Luther King, and who slept regularly with a Mafia moll?

I say the television networks are criminally biased.  They consistently engage in a silent conspiracy to promote their heroes regardless of fault, and to destroy their scapegoats regardless of merit.

They have made paragons of the Rubins, Kuntsler, Ellsbergs, Fondas and Schorrs.  They have made clowns and knaves of the Fords, Kissingers, Wallaces and Regans.

This may be fun and games if you agree with the television sow-business viewpoint.

But it is an Orwellian threat to our traditions of truth, fair play, and free speech.

Sooner or later the know-it-all knows better than all.  Even you and me.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

Author: Lindsey Williams