of the most powerful pushers of behavioralnnihilism within the Liberal Culture’snestablishment. Mr. Ertegun toldnMr. Zion:nThere’s nothing we can do to make anrecord sell. . . the public creates thendemand; we simply fill it. That’s allnthere is to it.nSo much for all the hoopla we’ve seennon T”V screens and in the release copiesnregarding the Beatles, the RollingnStones. Janis Joplin. The Who, etc..netc., etc. Then, Mr. Ertegun expressesnhis taste:nI think that the rock-and-roll writersnare lyrically head and heels above thenGershwins and Cole Porters for poeticncontent. I think Mick Jagger andnKeith Richard write better lyrics thannany of those old writers.nThis qualifies Mr. Ertegun as either ancynical murderer of all literary criteria,nor an idiot—at least in our eyes.nOne thing has to be added: wherendid Mr. Zion publish his welcome, ifninept, observation.’ Surprise! In thenNew York Times Sunday Magazine. Asnif he were unaware of what the Timesnand its venerable “critics” have con­ntributed to those years of calamity andnabomination. Mr. Zion seems not toncorrelate facts which clearly indicatenthat the respectable media—like thenTimes. CBS or Time magazine—nevernlifted a finger against the onslaught ofnrock barbarity and illiteracy, against thensavaging of every socio-civilizationalnnorm by all the Mick Jaggers and punkrockers,nagainst the utter trashiness ofnthe Alice Coopers and Ramones. That’snwhy such subcultural garbage was ablento invade the popular culture in triumphnfor more than two decades. Now thenTimes seems to have rediscoveredntaste. nnWe, the HypocritesnIn a prominent, smugly dignifiedneditorial, the Chicago Tribune—thatntower of artful hypocrisy—shows how,nin a single masterstroke of cant andnduplicity, one can make the good guysnlook very, very bad, thus preservingnfor oneself the glory of being infalliblyncorrect. The editorial was a statementnsupporting (suddenly) Proctor &nGamble’s decision not to advertise innT”V shows with excessive sexual permissivenessnand violence. In it thenChicago Tribune preaches:n’Se HILLSDALE REVIEWn”I recently received the [latest] issue of the Review and read itnfrom cover to cover (as I do every issue). It is superb. You havenestablished the Review as must reading among conservative intellectuals,nand for this I salute you.”nJames J. Thompson, Jr.nAssociate Editor, Chronicles of CulturenSubscribe today to the Hillsdale Review. There’s nothing quitenlike it.nOne year for just $5.00 Send to: The Hillsdale Review, 225nHillsdale St., Hillsdale, MI 49242nznChronicles of CulturennnFar better to cope with the evils ofnTV this way than to do nothing —nwhich would ultimately be to invitenback the book-burners, moral vigilantes,nand thought police of worsentimes and other places.nThe book burners, vigilantes andnthought police, in the Tribune’s code,nare those who (for the last 30 years)nhave claimed that liberal ideas wouldnultimately turn the American cultureninto a moral and behavioral jungle. Itnhas finally happened. And the ChicagonTribune lone of the most effective disseminatorsnof ideological and culturalnnihilism for the last decade) now donsnthe mantle of a defender of reason andnmorality. It seems that if one can buyna baseball club, he can perform any jugglingntrick with his identity, his past,nhis bygone sins and come out pure andnrighteous. All one needs is to own annewspaper. •nPrecision of Thinkingn& WritingnThe title in The Nation, a journalnof leftish purity in the service of liberaln”decency,” over a review of two booksnwritten by convicted criminals aboutntheir prison experiences reads: “Notesnfrom Our Gulag.”nThe Nation hates Solzhenitsyn fornhis anticommunism. his anti-Marxismnand his contempt for American liberalism.nStill, if they intend to use his emblematicnword for their own purposes,neditors of The Nation, an organ of selfanointedndecency, should practice onenprimordial decency and at least read thentarget of their phobia. If The Nation’sneditors ever did read Solzhenitsyn, theynwould discover that Gulag means a territorynwhere people who are completelyninnocent (by any Western, democratic,nliberal standard) are jailed and torturednby a totalitarian state power in defiancenof any existing law. This descriptionnhardly fits San Quentin, Leavenworthnor any other federal correctional institution.nBut at The Nation, who caresnabout such details.’ •n