Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 7

DETRQ'lT FREE PRESSMONDAY, SEPT. 23, 1985 7 A other voices Peace isn't a matter of public relations Guinness Book sets the record for poor taste By MARIUSZ ZIOMECKI Free Press Editorial Writer I AM NOT the Pole of the American stereotype a partisan who waves the Polish flag first thing in the morning; wears a "KISS ME, I'M POLISH" button on a T-shirt with an eagle painted on the chest and the pope on the Great communicators By FLORA LEWIS New York Times Service COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. A Detroit businessman asked how it was possible that the multi-billion dollar American communications and advertising industries seemed to fail in delivering America's message to the Russians. They are so obviously effective here, he said, why can't they get the word through? And President Reagan has said his back, and eats soup made of duck blood three times a week. But I can tell a gross anti-Polish provocation in the making when I see one.

The drama began in August, when the Kowalski Sausage Co. of Ham-tramck decided to break into the "Guinness Book of World Records" by manufacturing the world's biggest kielbasa for the Hamtramck Festival. At a great expense of money, talent and labor, the 602-foot-long, 466-pound kielbasa was made, cooked and care a main purpose at Ziomecki the coming Soviet-American summit would be to explain that the U.S. wants peace in the world and its policies should be seen in that light. In effect, both are saying, why doesn't Moscow Millie Lewis be purely defensive, isn't intended to put things right American-style by taking the offensive.

THIS DOESN'T mean that Americans should or even could look at the world through Soviet eyes. It isn't "moral equivalency," that modish phrase to remind everyone that there really is a difference between freedom with individual rights and totalitarianism. In the international arena, a major difference is the constraint that democracy imposes on foreign policy. It is a lot harder, though not impossible, for ambitious or righteous leaders to send democracies to war, and a good bit safer for its neighbors if a super-power is democratic. War probably wouldn't disappear from the world if all states were democratic.

There would still be conflicts of interest exacerbated by nationalism. But the danger of war would be greatly reduced. Sadly, the prospect of a fully-democratic world is far beyond the horizon. If it is ever to be achieved, it is therefore necessary in the meantime to learn to live in a world full of oppressive regimes without either succumbing or provoking their resort to arms. To manage that delicate and complex duty requires awareness of how those regimes see the world outside, distorted as their assessment looks to us.

That is why no amount of expertise' in advertising good intentions can win acceptance of America's message. Negotiating between states has to be more than promising good will. The U.S. doesn't accept such promises without evidence of deeds from adversaries. Neither will the Soviets.

reasons in the Soviet Union repression guarantees it, in free societies expression permits adjustment and conciliation. Nonetheless, most people's loyalty to their land and their community leads them to value that very existence as outbalancing the obvious flaws, particularly when aliens insist to the contrary. It is fashionable now to note the troubles of the Soviet system. Indeed, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev is doing it himself in his own way. But it is a gross exaggeration to say that his country is in crisis.

By American standards, it would be. The whole point is that the Soviets do not judge by American standards, nor react as Americans. THE PROBLEMS Gorbachev is drawing attention to at home are alcoholism, inefficiency, corruption, lack of discipline. But nonetheless, his country is working in its fashion. If it feels isolated and menaced in the world, its people aren't about to suppose it's their fault rather than that of some foreigners.

For perspective, it is useful to imagine how American society's balance of achievements and failings, assurances and threats, may look from the other side. To be sure, there is material success, but there is widespread drug abuse, crime, corruption, unemployment and immorality. It isn't all glitter that gets through in the message. Furthermore, the Soviets hear Americans blaming them for everything that goes wrong in the world. It shouldn't be surprising if they wonder whether the enormous American military establishment, despite its claim to fully delivered to Joseph Campau and Caniff, where, on Aug.

30, Hamtramck Mayor Robert Kozaren cut the first slice with a 30-inch knife, officially opening the festivities. BUT THE British publishers of the Guinness Book, contacted by my Free Press colleague Peter Gavrilovich, had the gall to say that the ground kielbasa was not a distinct creation worth a separate entry in their book. The Guinness Book had already accepted a frankfurter made in Frostburg, and a link pork sausage that stretched 3.8 miles in Ontario, the Britons argued. What's so special about a continuous 602-foot kielbasa? How does it differ from a frankfurter? To us Poles, that's an outlandish question, equal to an inquiry about the difference between a new Rolls-Royce and a burned-out Pinto. Frankfurter or bologna, or Vienna is made of finely pulverized scrap meat and fat, enveloped in nylon casing.

A malicious sausage maker can put almost anything into frankfurter and people would still eat it; it's a mass-production junk food, typical of our decadent epoch. Kielbasa, which consists of coarsely ground prime pork and beef, belongs to an entirely different species. Kielbasa is a mature, technologically perfect creation, the epitome of a East European tradition of cuisine. Secrets of kielbasa making have been passed from generation to generation; today there is no one recipe for making it right. Like beer, or brandy, or wine, good kielbasa comes in variations.

But only a handful of the many who make it make it well, with the right touch and inner feel for the subject. (In case you wonder, I buy my kielbasa in Kopytko Meat Market at 8609 Joseph Campau.) Kielbasa is a unique Polish product; no other nation can or dares claim credit for its invention or refinement. Its origins are hidden in the darkness of the forests that covered Central Europe in the times when Roman merchants trekked north along the Vistula River to the Baltic Sea for amber. Travelers, hunters, tar-makers and soldiers appreci- trust us? Put that way, the question provides its own answer. It is for many of the same reasons that we don't trust the Soviets.

The two countries have different aims, which their leaders seek to serve, and which often cannot be reconciled. Americans don't see themselves the way critics and adversaries see us. Just arguing that we mean well cannot convince opponents. SENDING A message that gets through needs to take the self-interests of the listener and his circumstances into account. In the Soviet Union, that means primarily the view of the rulers, although it is a serious mistake to overlook the national patriotism and pride of the people.

There are Soviet dissidents, just as there are people in the U.S. who don't like the system. They are marginal in both cases, though for quite different Free Press pholo bv RICHARD LEE Hamtramck Mayor Robert Kozaren makes the first slice in the record-setting 602-foot-long kielbasa while Kowalski Co. representatives assist. ated a compact, nutritious, tasty product that could last months without spoiling.

ANY UNBIASED person could see that the Hamtramck kielbasa was a champ. Slim and delightfully proportioned, it was superior both in weight and length to the known competition for the record: The awkward, 20-foot-long 242-pounder made in 1974 by the Chicopee Provision Co. in Massachusetts and the short, grotesquely thick 400-pound monster patched together by Klement's Sausage Co. in Milwaukee. The Kowalski entry was stuffed into one continuous, custom-made casing; that's the difficult thing to do.

The sausages currently in the Guinness have consisted of many separate pieces simply tied together; you may prepare a hundred-mile frankfurter that way, but what's the point? The London publishers of the Guinness ought to appreciate the Hamtramck firm chose to attain its record the hard way. It's still not too late for the Guinness committee, which has granted records to such trivial items as apple and cherry pie, to reconsider its anti-kielbasa position. We Poles are an easygoing people, but if the British don't give us a fair shake, it may be their gravest mistake since they pronounced the Titanic unsinkable. 1 YOU WANT TO DO VJHAT WHEN NO 50M OF MINE Will CAUGHT PEAP DOING THAT YOU REQOINfi WHERE HtMOREY IS! ffl N(7v Ml SP05J.LIKE F00BLL! A (MpRBJCK. th MAYBE! PRESTIGE! WEALTH! AMERICANS WILL APPRECIATE YOU jjffi K1N6ATEACHEH GRAND OPENING EASTSIDE DETROIT 19604 Van Dyke Just South of Outer Drive 893-0700 FREE TINT ON 1st PAIR! IFWr Bring this ad to The Eyeglass Factory and get 2 pairs of single tf fj vision eyeglasses complete with lenses Free tint on first pair Jj? f'J Choose from our large selection Pick two identical pairs, or two aafl different pairs Or get" one pair of prescription sunglasses and one wmtm I pair ol regular glasses The eye exam only S20 00 Pnor sales Llm miiiiin niMfn' Zimbabwe: Model for South Africa? SAPPHIRF BLUE EMERALD GREEN AQUA MARINE AMBER ly RICHARD COHEN Vashinoton Post Writers Group HARARE, Zimbabwe She stood line at the Ministry of Immigration, olding her British passport.

She was Inglish by heritage, South African by irth, but raised here in the old British olony of Rhodesia. Now, five years fter independence, she and others ith joint citizenship were being told choose one country or another. She ad chosen to become a citizen of imbabwe. Down in South Africa, the woman's hoice would almost certainly be greet-1 with consternation. There, Zimba- FMJL LK YOUR EYES SALE WITH CONTACT LENSES we is discussed ss SCQ95 one pair S1Q95 Extended Wear Color Daily Wear Color one pair worsened and the country seems headed for the one-party rule that is commonplace in Africa.

There have been occasional detentions of both whites and blacks. Whites, not surprisingly, take a keener interest in the former (if the detention of blacks bothered them, South Africa itself would be impossible to take). As for the media, it is a bulletin board for the government. It's quickly apparent that anyone given the title "comrade" can do no wrong. The erosion of civil liberties is nothing to dismiss.

About the best you can say for it is that the state does not discriminate racially in its abuse of power and, for the most part, is using emergency legislation passed by the old white government. Anyway, whatever the situation in Zimbabwe, it is far better for whites and blacks than it is in South Africa for dissidents of either race particularly blacks. Nothing in life is so neat that it permits an exact comparison of one country with another. South Africa and Zimbabwe are two different nations. A bitter seven-year war of independence was fought here but it may have been nothing but a lounge act for the show threatening South Africa.

For one thing, the whites of what was once Rhodesia were mostly English, not Afrikaners. They had somewhere to go South Africa, Australia, England and a lot of them went. The Afrikaner feels the wall at his back. Still, the woman at immigration speaks volumes about what is possible and suggests a solution to South Africa's problem. Those there who ominously say Zimbabwe is the future ought to talk to her.

She's seen it, and for her it works. tling to see neighborhoods that are both black and white, white children playing with blacks in schoolyards and white women pushing baby carriages down streets clogged with black pedestrians. The country's 110,000 whites are certainly outnumbered by eight million blacks, but on the' street at least the statistic is irrelevant. In fact, so profoundly wrong were all the warnings that independence would bring a racial bloodbath, that whites who once fled are now trickling back. A woman at immigration said she knew of people who had returned from South Africa; so did a local journalist.

There is little traffic, the people are courteous and, anyone of any means (and that means most whites), can enjoy a life-style that elsewhere is limited to rock stars, baseball players and institutional bankers. The woman at immigration, after announcing herself to be of "modest" income, admitted to several servants (cook, gardener and some part-timers) a pool and enough land to require the attention of the aforementioned gardener. Better than that in her view is a lifestyle reminiscent of the 1950s. The only drugs kids take are for malaria and there is no radio or television to speak of. Things are so laid-back here that, according to one resident, pilots used to announce on landing, "Welcome to Rhodesia.

Set your watches back 25 years." The country's name has changed, but the pace is about the same. STILL, CRITICAL South Africans have something of a point. Since independence, Zimbabwe's economy has FOR 1 ON CLEAR LENSES nth contempt ke a great fight-r who has turned wrestling to lake a buck. It is lpposed to be a ation on the ide, its economy isintegrating, impant (black) onyism replac-lg storied 35995 $3995 2 pair Extended Wear Clear 2 pair Daily Wear Clear Cohen fi 1 i Ml ti 1 -i 1. 1( 1 ir 1 1 'fi Ill' If 'i 'i "t1 l.W.HU I I i 1 i (i1 1 vhite) efficiency, the political situa-m for whites ever-worsening and 1 because a white minority governed has been replaced with a black ajority one.

If Zimbabwe is the fu-re, many South African whites ey'll stick with the present as' icertain as it may be. BUT IF Zimbabwe is the future, en South Africans have constructed a igeyman with which to rationalize denial of political rights to blacks, le first thing that strikes you here is total lack of racial tension. After ing in South Africa, it's almost star- DEARBORN, 13306 Michigan lust East ol Schaeler 846-8877 PONTIAC. 710 West Huron. ol Telegraph 332-8489 FARMINGTON HILLS.

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