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Student protests, 1969

1969-02-07 Daily Iowan Article: ""SDS given warning--You'll hear from us""

[handwritten] DI Feb. 7, 1969

SDS given warning - You'll hear from us

An open letter to S.D.S:
See the little kiddies suffer! Your rebellion is so full of sincerity, and your sincerity is so full of illusion. You are bebelling against, among other things, the consumer society. Ironically, you are the first generation trained from the cradle to be consumers, and you consume with a glassy-eyed obedience which would have delighted Pavlov in his doges.
These are strange times: you kiddies conform to a philosophy of nonconformity, and consume a message of nonconsumption. You sweetly believe that the Beatles, a multimillion-dollar manufacturing corporation, are at one with you, truly opposed to big business and the system and all that. Little kiddies, do you know who owns United Artists, Liberty, Veep, World Pacific, Soul City, Blue Notes, Unart, and Mini records, along with a good many music publishing companies?
They get you both ways, man. RCA sells military equipment, reports on its use in Vietnam through its subsidary NBC, and then puts out records by the Jefferson Airplane, protesting it all. The Airplane really wraps it up by extolling grass, which fuzzes the minds of you kiddies and turns your attention from the terrifying verities of our time toward the meaningless.
You have to admire the efficiency of it though, the sheer organizational brilliance. A bunch of you kiddies overturn a car and burn it - and Detroit replaces it at a profit. The insurance company pays off, meanwhile raising the premium to the sucker consumer (that's you) and turning the situation to profit by putting scare advertising on television.
We will be watching the S.D.S -- we can all tell who you are, you know, by the hair-trigger mouth and the underworked mind. And you kiddies will be hearing from SDSDS in the future.
Larry D. Mattear, Secretary
Students for Destruction of S.D.S.
3101 Engineering Bldg.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The signer of this letter is not listed in the University or city telephone directories. The address given is the office of Hunter Rouse, dean of the College of Engineering, who, needless to say, has denied any knowledge of SDSDS. And, also needless to say, this is the first mention, to the editor's knowledge, of the existence of SDSDS>

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[handwritten] DI Feb. 7, 1969 SDS given warning - You'll hear from us An open letter to S.D.S: See the little kiddies suffer! Your rebellion is so full of sincerity, and your sincerity is so full of illusion. You are bebelling against, among other things, the consumer society. Ironically, you are the first generation trained from the cradle to be consumers, and you consume with a glassy-eyed obedience which would have delighted Pavlov in his doges. These are strange times: you kiddies conform to a philosophy of nonconformity, and consume a message of nonconsumption. You sweetly believe that the Beatles, a multimillion-dollar manufacturing corporation, are at one with you, truly opposed to big business and the system and all that. Little kiddies, do you know who owns United Artists, Liberty, Veep, World Pacific, Soul City, Blue Notes, Unart, and Mini records, along with a good many music publishing companies? They get you both ways, man. RCA sells military equipment, reports on its use in Vietnam through its subsidary NBC, and then puts out records by the Jefferson Airplane, protesting it all. The Airplane really wraps it up by extolling grass, which fuzzes the minds of you kiddies and turns your attention from the terrifying verities of our time toward the meaningless. You have to admire the efficiency of it though, the sheer organizational brilliance. A bunch of you kiddies overturn a car and burn it - and Detroit replaces it at a profit. The insurance company pays off, meanwhile raising the premium to the sucker consumer (that's you) and turning the situation to profit by putting scare advertising on television. We will be watching the S.D.S -- we can all tell who you are, you know, by the hair-trigger mouth and the underworked mind. And you kiddies will be hearing from SDSDS in the future. Larry D. Mattear, Secretary Students for Destruction of S.D.S. 3101 Engineering Bldg. (EDITOR'S NOTE: The signer of this letter is not listed in the University or city telephone directories. The address given is the office of Hunter Rouse, dean of the College of Engineering, who, needless to say, has denied any knowledge of SDSDS. And, also needless to say, this is the first mention, to the editor's knowledge, of the existence of SDSDS>