The San Francisco Massacre

It is freely acknowledged by San Francisco's way-gone Don Sherwood (TIME, Sept. 9) that he is the world's greatest disk jockey. But when he gets too far away from his records, he tends to set some--chiefly for wild talk, editorializing and plain old airborne nonsense. Tireless champion of all underdogs, Sherwood thought that he had found a great cause last April: New Mexico's Navajo Indians. Commentator Sherwood was soon berating the U.S. Government for freezing Navajo funds (it has not), arguing that the tribe is ill fed, ill housed (it is not), trying to prove the Indian kids are badly educated (they are not).

San Francisco's KGO-TV, which believes that disk jockeys should stick to their musical saddles, told Sherwood to shut up about the Indians. He sulked. "Somebody got to somebody," he said during his TV variety show, "and I can't mention the Navajos . . ." Click! and he was off the air, replaced by a traffic safety film. He fought back on his morning radio show over rival KSFO, playing Indian music and calling KSFO "Radio Free San Francisco."

Last week Sherwood had to face his sternest refuters, members of the Navajo's own tribal council. He had half an hour to commiserate with them; they had half an hour to reject his misbegotten sympathy. The Indians, in full war regalia, scalped him with little forensic grace but plenty of feeling. The tribe's executive secretary effectively refuted "the absurd and erroneous assertions of one Don Sherwood." Sherwood backed down, muttering, "I had my reservations about this."

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