During the previous few days, in his column, he had referenced pink shirts, and was sure that this would have drawn a strong reaction from his mentor, G. Rockford Riley.

He finds that one could see the signs of effeteness breaking out everywhere in the newspaper business, as it was no longer possible to distinguish a reporter from a photographer. Each fraternity had formerly kept to itself, with each being jealously insulated from the other, news editors objecting to photographers looking over their shoulders and generally finding them detestable creatures consigned to the darkrooms. Now, the darkrooms, themselves, had undergone a considerable transition, eliminating the cheesecake nudes which once adorned the walls, in favor of purity, no longer hiding the office bottle there.

He regards the whole business as being emblematic of a definite decline of newspapermen's participation in the news, as nobody wearing a homburg was apt to become involved in a "gaudy rumpus". "It is unsettling to the dignity and apt to spoil the lyric beauty of the lid."

Well, Mr. Ruark, you, no doubt, began to enjoy a return from the gentrification of journalism to the more people-oriented affair of the latter 1950's and into the 1970's, and would have, had you lived beyond 1965, especially enjoyed the rough-and-tumble of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, captured on camera. But you would be cringing mightily, in all likelihood, since the early 1980's at the proliferation of the ditzel-headed variety of mock-journalism, no longer worthy of the name, which looks first to style long before, if ever, seeking the substance of a story, reacts to any old thing which comes across the desk which bears sensationalism as its dateline and watermark, designed to pique the audience, then delivers it breathlessly over the air, as if a banner headline was deserved by someone's cellphone video dispatched to the news desk as an "exclusive" scoop, before actually vetting the story to find out the true facts and whether the purveyor of the non-story actually had a dog in the race such that it was unreliable from its inception, unworthy of sending out to millions of homes.

The name of the game today, and for the last 35 years or so, is infotainment. Damn the facts and the newsworthiness of the story. If there is a handy villain, to which the demographics of the audience will be predisposed, run with it, and sort out later whether it is true or not, with rationalizations and apologies aplenty.

Forget: "I have a dream today..." Supplant it with let's see who the goddamn villains are on the Mall among the three nicely parsed and divided small groups demonstrating for "freedom".

Let us first listen to the Native American "Vietnam veteran"—who isn't, but rather, by his own statement, a "Vietnam War-era veteran", which means that he never served a day in Vietnam, and, indeed, by his time of service in the Marines, between 1972 and 1976, assuming his statement in that regard is accurate, Marines were no longer being sent to Vietnam, as the Paris Peace Talks concluded with the accord in January, 1973 and the draft call-up ended in fall, 1972, such that no one born in 1954, as this person was, could have been drafted or sent to Vietnam, and, in any event, joining the Marines at that time represented a sure ticket to avoid service in Vietnam, when the Army infantry was the only branch being sent afresh by 1971, facts which would have been obvious to anyone who was not still a baby during that time or afterward, as most of the ditzel-heads who now "report" the news were, if yet a twinkle in their parents' eyes.

Let us not even examine the entire 10-15 minutes of available video of the event from different angles to see whether the high school students were the "bad guys" and the Native American man the "good guy" because he is, after all, an oppressed minority "who served his country in Vietnam" and therefore could never misrepresent the facts. Let us not see that the video plainly shows that the students did not, as the Native American man claimed, "slide over" to block his way up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial but rather demonstrates that he approached them and one student in particular, who appeared simply to be standing there and smiling, minding his own business, not seeking to block anyone or protest anything.

Yes, the MAGA hats are disturbingly stupid and naive, on anyone. Yes, it is disturbingly naive to be attending a "pro-life" rally in 2019, 45 years after Roe v. Wade, without any notable scientific advancement in the meantime which would appreciably change the trimester formula regarding viability of the fetus outside the womb, the medico-scientific rationale for the decision. We do not agree at all, in short, with the politics demonstrated by these callow high school students, who appear particularly uninformed.

But the facts are the facts and the lies are the lies, and the bulk of the media, this time, ran with the lies, which were designed to be as divisive as possible, when the real culprits were the black Israelites who were hurling racial epithets and other obscenities at the white students, who, to them, because of their hats and the color of their skin, were "dusty-assed" "white crackers". The students were only chanting their high school cheer, with permission of their chaperon, to drown out the uninvited insults. The Israelites earlier had also taunted the Native Americans for wearing feathers, against "God's will".

The media ran with the lie because of sensationalism trumping content, not because of any "liberal" bias, as there is no such thing. The bias is toward infotainment and sensationalism, has nothing to do with points on the political spectrum—except perhaps at Fox News—, as the "conservatives" and racists would always defensively be wont to say in an instance such as the one we reference. If there is any political bias evident, it is toward the conservative side, lending apparent additional initial credence to an individual because he happened to have served, by his unsubstantiated claim anyway, over forty years ago in the Marines, and then jumping to the wild conclusion that he served in Vietnam, for want of vetting of the individual's own misleading statement, designed to elicit initial sympathy for his cause—which appears, at the end of the day, to be division of American society, his protests to the contrary notwithstanding.

The high school students were politically callow teenagers, waiting for their bus, who should have been left alone to stumble through life and learn on their own how naive and anachronistic they appear in wearing MAGA hats and attending a "pro-life" rally 45 years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. Is making America great again going back to the pre-Roe v. Wade days of the coat hangers and back alleys, with consequent unsterile conditions and possible death attendant the procedure, to be rid of an unwanted pregnancy? But that realization might come in time to these callow students, if any among them should deign actually to read Roe v. Wade and attempt to understand its rationale, legally and scientifically, which has not changed in the 45 years since it was decided, its painstaking research, and the fact that conservative members of the 1973 Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice Potter Stewart, joined in the 7 to 2 decision, that Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote for the majority, was an appointee of President Nixon, as was the Chief Justice and Justice Lewis Powell, also a member of the majority, only two of whom having been appointed by Democrats, Justice William O. Douglas, by FDR, and Justice Thurgood Marshall, by President Johnson. Indeed, one of the two dissenters, Justice Byron White, was an appointee of President Kennedy.

Such eventual understanding will not be urged along by crass remarks hurled at them by unthinking adults who ought know better or by an Indian drum being beaten in their faces by someone who lies and seeks division of the country, trying to act "cool" for the cameras, relying on his service of his country during the "Vietnam era" and being a Native American "elder" of his tribe for his sole credentials.

All in the wrong. We raise our middle finger in salute to the whole lot who purveyed this trash during the weekend leading to a day honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who, no doubt, would have been dismayed and appalled at the whole episode, including, most especially, the behavior pattern exhibited by the black Israelites and the Indian toward the white students because of their skin color.

We note also that one of the Native American group, who was protesting, with profanities aplenty, that his forefathers had been in America for "millions of years" before the white man ever got here and therefore it was his land, not theirs, also was wearing a red hat. He, perhaps, is in need of the greatest amount of education among the lot.

The coverage of this non-event, full of distortion and blatant lies, is emblematic of one thing, not the state of America itself, we hope, but rather the unfortunate state of journalism today in 2019 among the ditzel-heads, who really ought take up fashion-modeling and hairstyle demonstrations and forget about being "journalists". You are failures at the profession and are undeserving of the title, disserve the public in your Fourth Estate responsibility to inform, fairly and honestly, on newsworthy events, not to become purveyors of private, amateur videos, often pre-planned with confrontation in mind from the start for the purpose of obtaining the proverbial 15 minutes.

Candidly, were we in the shoes of the unfortunate high school student who was faced down by the man playing the Indian drum, we would sue, for defamation and casting in a false light, each and every media outlet who ran with that story, without properly spending 15 minutes to review the available video and determine the actual events, claiming falsely in the process racist, deliberately insulting and obstructive conduct in the matter by that student, to send a message loudly and clearly to these infotainment ditzel-heads that enough is enough and that the "instant story", not properly investigated, really must stop. Infotainment is destroying the country. Infotainment is responsible for a nut being in the White House. Infotainment is why people go out wearing those silly red clown hats. Infotainment is why this non-story was covered. Sue the hell out of them and teach them a lesson, and show that you are not the MAGA-wearing cracker whom they sought to brand you. (We could say "dusty-assed" "butt-boy", but that would only be subject to misinterpretation, perhaps.)

We may not agree with what you say, to paraphrase Voltaire, but we shall defend to the death your right to say it—as long as it is not a complete lie and perversion of the truth, full of defamatory and divisive remarks.

The only people who ought be "disciplined" from this incident are the infotainment producers and scroll-readers, masquerading as journalists, who promoted this non-story and inflicted it on the American people. They ought be fired.

You wasted about an hour of our time, too.

Even had the story been as some originally perceived it, through the lens of their own racial biases, projections, and preconditioned stereotypes, that the white student was "staring down" and "smirking" at the Native American man, it is a person's right to stare and to smirk, if one feels like it, especially when one is approached by someone to within less than an arm's length and thus within potential range of an assault. Indeed, the student could have reasonably perceived the man's approach with a drum in the manner he did, beating the drum close to his head, to be an assault, and demanded that he remove himself a further distance away.

And, of course, the worst part is that the White House now will use this non-story for some time to come as their prime example of "fake news" and "liberal bias" and the rest of their spewed invective designed to divide the country against itself, in the hope that the spoiled child might somehow avoid impeachment amid the numerous grounds now available for same and perhaps even win "election" for the first time legitimately in 2020...

This non-story was no way to educate the hardcore supporters of these manipulative lunatics and hopefully thereby induce them to some form of enlightenment, that they might shed their support of this continuing lunacy. It will only solidify it and even give them, presumably, a photographic moment in time, as a martyr for their cause, just as with the photograph and video of the young Chinese student who stood down the tank in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989, as with the photograph of the young man who placed daisies in the rifle barrels of the Army M.P.'s standing duty over an anti-Vietnam War protest outside the Pentagon in 1967, though the three incidents are vastly different in their widely disparate implications and are diametrically opposed to one another along the spectrum of importance and relevance to American life under the Constitution.

Anyone can go to the Mall and, with permit, protest about anything, especially during a Government shutdown over the child's Wall to keep out the threatening Tourists, when security is necessarily curtailed. But no one has the right to try to create a public disturbance, as did the confrontational drummer and the Israelites against the young MAGA-people and their "pro-life" ways.

If they wish to forget, that is their right, too, as long as they do not forget you, without your consent.

Someone in the infotainment department has been smoking the peyote, perhaps.

A letter writer, originally from New York, congratulates the newspaper on five years of success under publisher Thomas L. Robinson.