New but Not Necessarily Improved

By Otto Friedrich

In the noisy confluence of publicity pronouncements, news bulletins, market analyses, gadfly lawsuits and expert pontifications on the momentous Coca-Cola controversy, the Republic seemed to shudder for an instant last week, then right itself and face toward the flag. In the midst of all the foaming and burbling, though, Americans demonstrated some interesting reactions toward the whole process of change.

Some things, clearly, they would rather not have changed at all, no matter what any market surveys seem to predict. "Baseball, hamburgers, Coke--they're all the fabric of America," cried Gay Mullins, the much quoted Seattle real estate man and triumphant noisemaker who filed suit to prevent the company from depriving him of the pause that refreshes.

Well, aren't they? And yet what is more American than trying to change them? Or arguing about the changes?

Take baseball. Didn't they ruin it when they started using designated hitters instead of letting the pitcher strike out for himself? Didn't they ruin the game when they put in lights and started playing at night? Or when they expanded the major leagues from 16 teams to 26? Or the schedule from 154 games to 162? (Did Roger Maris break Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs by hitting 61--but in eight extra games?) Babe Ruth--bah! Some truly venerable curmudgeons share Ring Lardner's view that they really ruined the game when they introduced the jackrabbit ball during the Babe's heyday to make home runs easier.

The general idea that change is popular, and therefore increases sales, threatens all kinds of cherished institutions. If lots of people can destroy an institution by telling a pollster that they prefer soft drinks to be sweeter and lighter, will the next step be for meat-packers to start producing a low-calorie hamburger by just adding a lot of airy filler? And will somebody then try combining it with goat cheese? Is anything safe? Will Hershey bars be filled with raisins and Oreo cookies with pink icing? Will apple pie be made `a la mode with Tofutti?

Still, even if one is inclined to resist change for the sake of change, one must resist the instinct to oppose all change. Some new things are definite improvements on the old. Pampers are better than diapers. Ballpoint pens are better than fountain pens, and cheaper too. LP records are better than the old 78s that could play only about one-fifth of the Fifth Symphony and cracked if you even looked at them too hard. (But now that we have thrown away all the 78s, do we really have to throw away all the LPs and invest in digital laser-beam compact superrecords?)

Technology occasionally does bring genuine improvements. Tetracycline and Thorazine heal the sick. The rotary lawn mower doesn't get stuck on twigs. The VCR makes it possible for working people who are not insomniacs to look at movies that are shown only at 3 a.m. Does anyone remember that you once had to bend over and give a violent turn to a hand crank before a car would start?

But the yen to fix the unbroken often leads nowhere. Singin' in the Rain was not really improved by being turned into a splashy Broadway musical. Casablanca will not be improved if it is remade with John Travolta as Rick and Brooke Shields as Ilsa, with Prince singing As Time Goes By. Come to think of it, would baseball be improved if we speeded it up for today's busy audiences by ending the game after six innings? Do we really need a new national anthem, with a tune that can be sung and words that can be remembered?

Occasionally an outburst of public opposition does change the inexorable march of progress, and not just in the soft-drink business. Experts in the automobile industry decided a few years ago that people no longer wanted convertibles (which were dangerous, besides), so they stopped making them. They ignored charges that they were tampering with the American way of life, not to mention the birth rate, but they did not ignore the rising price of used convertibles. So they started making them again. There was a time, similarly, when wrinkle-free plastic fabrics were supposed to replace cotton shirts forever. But when enough people complained that the plastic didn't let much air through, the cotton shirt returned, at handsomely increased prices. It is now the centerpiece of the approved yuppie uniform.

The irritating thing about sudden changes in time-honored customs is not necessarily the arrival of the unneeded new but the abolition of the cherished old. To people who don't like flying, for example, it is depressing to realize that there is virtually no other way to get to Europe and that the passenger train, like the luxury liner, may soon be one with the stagecoach. To people accustomed to writing on manual typewriters, it is exasperating to learn that production has virtually ceased, and that the supply of accessories and spare parts keeps shrinking.

Critics of the new Coke were probably asking too much when they demanded that the company cancel its revised formula and return to the old one. But they had a point of sorts in asking why, if the company didn't want the old formula, it couldn't give it to someone who wanted to preserve the drink. Now that Coke has answered that, it will manufacture both formulas on its own, and the new and the old can lie down together at last like the lion and the lamb in a peaceable kingdom (disturbed only by the rumblings of merciless competition by other soft-drink companies).

And now that we have reached this refreshing pause, why can't some other deplorable changes in our lives be undone? Or, rather, why can't we make some changes in a different direction? If they can bring back the old Coke, why can't they bring back the double-decker bus? And strawberries that have a taste? Not to mention chickens and tomatoes and potatoes? And milk that still has the cream on top, so that you can whip it and slather it over the tasty strawberries?

Many of the things that used to make life more pleasant unfortunately depended on cheap labor, so the pleasantness came at somebody else's expense. That's why we'll never again be able to cross the country in the plush comfort of a Pullman or club car, or have the city streets patrolled on foot by police officers who know their neighborhoods, or even, for that matter, get a shirt ironed properly. Other small pleasures derive from services that companies say they can no longer afford. There once was a time, children, when the alterations on a new dress or a new pair of trousers were done for no charge.

Still, as long as we're dreaming, why can't they bring back the free road map? Or Christmas cards that say Merry Christmas? Or the affordable postage stamp? (Remember when Christmas cards could be mailed for 1 1/2-c- if unsealed?) Or the telephone-company monopoly, so that phones will work? Or the doctor's house call? Or the Volkswagen Beetle? Or the waltz?

Dream on, all you lovers of what will now be called Classic Coke, dream on. --By Otto Friedrich