EDITORIAL
Poor Now York City
In Soviet TV Syos
Well, at last wo have tho word! Gotham is gruesome# Daghdad-on-the
Hudson is a blight# America’s Wonderful Town is really a thundering
brown antheap populated by bums, undornourishod slum children, unemployed
idlers, striking longshoremen and - bankers# Those last lurk in a lair
called Wall Street, “the street of big business and tho empire of tho
dollar#"
What’s the authority for this grim portrait of the world’s largest city?
Why, none other than the Soviet television network which has been edifying
its audience with a series of "documentary” films about life in the United
States. One of these, called Streets of New York, introduces the city as
"the show window of America" and proceeds to make it a pretty smeary pane
of alass.
This approach is scarcely unexpected, of course* Soviet TV wouldn*t be
likely to picture New York in terms of Central Park, Radio City, the Easter
Parade and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts• But it is a pity that
the sixmillion Russians fortunate enough to own television sots couldn?t
be treated to something of the excitement and splendor of a metropolis
whose current building boom is one of the marvels of the century*
Granted that New York has staggering urban problems. It’s not all
Park Avenue and it doesn’t have Moscow’s marble-paneled subways. In
fact almost any New Yorker will sound off with a list of things about
his city ho doesn’t like. But much as he gripes about some things, he
loves the city.
No, Ivan Ivanovich, Streets of Nov; York is a badly blurred video imago*
pay us a visit and see for yourself. Sure, somotimos thoro arc pro
Castro demonstrators in tho United Nations Plaza - thoro aro also anti
Castro marchers aplenty* V/o leave them be as long as they don't mix it
up. And it's true that you'll find New Yorkers lounging on the steps of
their public Lirary at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street. But it
isn't because they don't have homos or jobs, Ivan. They simply like to
eat their lunch there or read books there or just watch the passing crowd
And they're awfully attached to those big lions that flank the entrance,
Ivan - along with a lot of other things about New York.
Red Scientist Would Change U. S. History:
Munich, Germany (APRS ) An Englishman, not Christopher Columbus, discovered
America, according to Russian geographer Dr* Samuel Varshavsky*
He claims that the real father of America was Uicholas of Lynne, who made
his trans-Atlantic voyage in 1360 - more than a century before Columbus.
After studying old maps and documents, Varshavsky claims that the trip
was first described by Lynne in Latin but that unfortunately the original
manuscript was lost* However, excerpts from it have appeared in the works
of later authors.
Some historians consider the Lynne voyage to be sheer fiction but Varshavsky
claims that a close study of the description given makes it clear that it
could only have been done by a person who had been to the American continent*
He believes that one of the maps is that of Hudson Day#