The Charlotte News
Tuesday, February 11, 1958
TWO EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Dr. Bernard Schwartz, fired counsel for the special House investigating committee looking into FCC favoritism bought by gifts from the radio and television industry, had gone before his former employers this date with a staggering armload of documents, after having been subpoenaed as a witness in the committee's investigation of Federal regulatory agencies generally and instructed to bring all of his personal files. In angry tones, he had told reporters outside the committee room: "Compared to this kangaroo committee, the Star chamber itself was the very paragon of justice. I have been denied basic procedural rights which would be accorded to the most blatant criminal." The committee had voted the previous night to fire Dr. Schwartz, an NYU law professor, from his $14,000 per year job. In the wake of the action, the chairman of the committee, Congressman Morgan Moulder of Missouri, had announced after midnight that he was quitting as head of the investigation. Two lawyers had resigned from the staff during the morning, having come to Washington from New York to assist Dr. Schwartz with the investigation. The group was technically a subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee, the chairman of which, Congressman Oren Harris of Arkansas, had called the subcommittee into closed session, with Mr. Moulder present, after he had told reporters he would continue to serve on the subcommittee although resigning as its chairman. Mr. Harris had told the press as the meeting was about to open that he had not yet actually received Mr. Moulder's resignation, but had received it through the press. Dr. Schwartz, his voice at times shaking with emotion, came down the hallway to the committee room ahead of a procession of staff members loaded with investigative files, indicating that he had been served with the subpoena shortly after midnight to appear with his files and had spent most of the night trying to seek counsel. He had obtained the two staff members who had resigned from the subcommittee staff to represent him. He asked rhetorically of newsmen what was his crime, saying that he had tried to conduct "in good faith" an honest investigation of the Federal regulatory agencies. He said: "I made mistakes but they were honest mistakes. I couldn't turn my back on the strength of evidence which was to be produced before this subcommittee. I couldn't live with myself if I had done that. It is the only crime I've committed. The only mistake I made is treading on the toes of powerful interests."
In London, it was reported that Peiping Radio had announced this date that Chou En-lai had been "relieved" as Communist China's Foreign Minister on his own recommendation, that he would, however, retain his post as Premier. Vice-Premier Chen Yi was appointed to succeed Chou as Foreign Minister. The actions had been taken at a plenary session of the National Peoples Congress, which had begun meeting in the Communist Chinese capital the previous day. Peiping Radio said that the new Foreign Minister would continue to hold his post as a Vice-Premier. He was also a marshal in the Chinese Army. His 3rd Field Army had been first over the Yangtze River and first in Shanghai during the Communist conquest which had driven Chiang Kai-shek from the mainland to Formosa in 1949. For awhile he had been shunted into relative obscurity as military mayor of Shanghai, and then in 1955 had been named a Vice-Premier under Chou.
The President told Russia's new Ambassador this date that the U.S. would try "through patient negotiation" to settle urgent world problems "on a basis which will promise a just and enduring peace."
In Jerusalem, in the Israeli sector, Israel this date denied Syrian charges that Israeli military units with armored cars and air support had moved into the demilitarized frontier area.
In Algiers, the French this date announced that they had killed 110 rebels and captured large quantities of arms and ammunition in two clashes in eastern Algeria, the clashes having occurred late on Sunday night and Monday.
In Athens, the foreign ministers of Britain and Greece launched secret talks this date on the future of troubled Cyprus, with Britain's Selwyn Lloyd and Greece's Evanghelos Averoff having met at the Greek Foreign Ministry building.
In London, it was reported that the British Government was planning to make operators of privately owned atomic reactors legally liable for damages of up to 5 million pounds, the equivalent of 14 million dollars, in case of a disastrous accident.
Near Lens, France, 11 miners had been killed this date when an elevator cage had broken loose and fallen 250 feet into a pit at a coal mine. The miners were going down for the morning shift and all in the cage had been killed.
In Clinton, Tenn., selection of a jury to try three men charged with conspiring to dynamite the integrated Clinton High School, which had been the subject of extensive attention in the fall of 1956 as it was being desegregated, began this date in Anderson County Criminal Court.
In Washington, Master Sergeant Roy Rhodes denied guilt in his court-martial on charges of spying for Russia, accused of passing secrets to the Soviets while on duty at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow between 1951 and 1953 and after his return to the U.S. He admitted contacts with the Russians in a Brooklyn spy trial the previous year. He told reporters prior to the start of the court-martial, to be conducted at Fort Leslie McNair, that he was innocent. His wife was standing by him and said also that he was not guilty, that he had been in no position to spy. He had said that he had met the Russians because he had only Russian mechanics to deal with while chief of the motor pool at the Embassy. He had received a good conduct medal plus a combat infantry badge, three battle stars for the European theater and a Bronze Star for his service in World War II. The court-martial had begun with legal technicalities. He was being tried by a ten-man tribunal headed by the assistant chief of staff for logistics and supply of the Military District of Washington, a colonel.
Near Ringgold, Ga., a 27-year old expectant mother and her brother had been shot to death the previous night and the woman's former husband had been wounded in the shoulder. Police issued a warrant for a 49-year old man, charging him with murder, identified as an estranged husband of the dead woman. The shooting had occurred at the home of the parents of the victims, and the sister of the dead woman told police that the man charged had burst into the house as they were sitting in the living room and began shooting, then fled after the shooting.
Near San Antonio, Tex., airman Donald Farrell was preparing to go on a simulated trip to the moon, having been squeezed on Sunday into a 3 by 5-foot experimental sealed cabin at Randolph Air Force Base. Space medical experts at the base's School of Aviation Medicine expected the airman to crawl from the cabin the following Sunday unharmed after a week in the "space barrel". The chief medical officer at the base said that he appeared "very bright and chipper", and saw no reason why he could not last the full seven days. He saw and heard nothing on the outside of the cabin, with all instructions being relayed to him by closed-circuit television hookup or by prearranged signals on a panel of buttons and switches. He worked for four-hour shifts, about the same shift at the controls as would be anticipated in a spacecraft. He had a rubber mattress which he could inflate and stretch out on during a specified sleep period, and otherwise had to sit almost upright. There were also "rest periods" during which he read, including two textbooks on accounting and English grammar. At those times, he also listened to music piped into the craft, mostly George Gershwin and Cole Porter selections which he had picked before his time in the cabin had started. (Like, squaresville...) Scientists believed it would not be impossible for space travelers to hear radio music broadcast from earth or maybe from a space station. He followed a master menu which was high in protein and highly nutritious, not consisting entirely of condensed or dehydrated foods, having, for instance, an orange with his breakfast. To test his reactions daily, an alarm signal was sounded during any of his rest periods and he was expected to respond and take over the controls of the craft as soon as possible.
In Washington, a Naval Reserve officer, who had just returned from a training cruise, reported this date that two destroyer escorts had come upon an outboard motorboat drifting upside down in the Atlantic on February 5 and that there was no sign of life aboard the tiny craft. Speculation was aroused that it might be the motorboat of Melvin West, who had set out 13 days earlier for Bermuda from Morehead City in a motorboat. The officer said that he was under the impression that the boat located by the two destroyer escorts had two outboard motors mounted on its stern, while at the time Mr. West had set out from Morehead City, dispatches had said that his boat had only one motor. The boat had been seen 150 to 200 miles south-southeast of Morehead City and was east of the gulf stream and drifting in a southerly direction. The seas were reported to be quite rough and one of the two ships had put a boat over the side to investigate the motorboat, but it was believed that they had not been able to obtain information about it because it was floating with the keel straight up in the air. The Reserve officer suggested that the boat could have torn loose from its moorings and simply drifted out to sea. Mr. West's wife said that he had told them that if they did not hear from him after two weeks, they should ask the Coast Guard to hunt for him, and that time period would expire the next day. Mr. West, 28, once a disc jockey for station WJNC in Jacksonville, N.C., had left on January 29 on his journey, carrying about 260 gallons of gasoline, navigation equipment, some fishing gear and rations for about eight days, consisting mainly of fruit juice, water and canned meats. His first attempt to make the journey had been the previous October, ending in failure.
In Fort Walton Beach, Fla., five small children, apparently planning to camp out, had disappeared in a densely wooded section near suburban Ocean City the previous day. Officers, servicemen and citizens searched for the children the previous night. A neighborhood child told the missing children's families that the five had blankets, food, a bow and arrow and an air rifle with them.
In Jersey City, N.J., the water main leak draining the city's water supply at an alarming rate had been located this date and the state of emergency was declared over. That's a relief.
The winter's worst and longest spell of cold and stormy weather in the Eastern half of the nation showed little indication of respite this date, as the arctic air, which had temperatures near zero for almost a week in some Northern sections, remained stationary. The huge mass of cold air also continued across the country's Eastern half except in southern parts of Texas and most of Florida. More snow and ice had hit many sections and a near blizzard had hit western New York the previous day as other upstate areas battled to dig out from snowdrifts which measured up to 15 feet deep. More snow had also fallen in the Great Lakes region and was expected to continue during the day. An additional four inches had fallen at Traverse City, Mich., atop the eleven inches which was already on the ground. Snow and sleet pelted areas as far south as west central Mississippi. Since the weekend, the weather had been blamed for at least 48 deaths, including 18 in New York State, eight in Massachusetts, six in Pennsylvania, five in Oklahoma, and three each in Texas, Iowa and Illinois, with one each in Indiana and Mississippi. Most of the deaths had been from traffic accidents on ice and snow-covered highways, while others were from heart attacks while shoveling snow or attempting to free automobiles stalled in snowbanks.
In Baldwinsville, N.Y., a woman had moaned and shivered beside her dead husband in an automobile buried in snow for two nights, until a faint beep of her horn had alerted rescuers who found the husband dead of a heart attack and the woman suffering from chill and shock. It had not been determined how long her husband had been dead, the woman believing it was "several hours". She was treated at a Syracuse hospital and discharged. She said that a blizzard which had struck the central New York area had halted their car on Saturday night as they drove toward their home after shopping in Baldwinsville, set to celebrate her birthday at home. Her husband had sought twice to shovel the car free and then complained of a pain in his chest, slumped over the wheel and she could not awaken him. He had been a foreman for the Carrier Corp. in Syracuse for 20 years.
In New York, it was reported that the current cold wave was taking its greatest toll on the feet, according to the American Foot Care Institute, Inc. The Institute suggested that the cold person bathe his or her feet alternately with hot and cold water after a bath or shower, stimulating blood circulation, to wear closed shoes, that men should wear two pairs of thin socks instead of one heavy pair, as the space between would help retain body warmth, that women, prone to nylons, could rub lanolin or baby oil into the skin to prevent chapping, that exercise of the feet briefly by wriggling the toes and rotating the feet from the ankles was beneficial, and to stay indoors, if one could. But would not staying indoors promote varicose veins?
In Detroit, despite 13 degree temperatures, a 44-year old man took a three-minute swim in the icy Detroit River, saying, "It's the best way I know to prevent colds."
In London, a British Government official said that Americans were better drivers than Britons. The parliamentary secretary to the Transport Ministry had told a meeting of the Royal Automobile Club the previous night that Americans drove at higher speeds but had more skill in driving than did the British, paying heed to the highway safety rules and accepting discipline, which was what the drivers of Britain needed. First things first, try driving on the right side of the damn road.
On the editorial page, "Integration Just Can't Be Manufactured" finds that the effort of 13 Senators to sponsor a new civil rights bill would likely fail in Congressional indifference, which it finds was a deserving fate for the proposal.
The plan was to aid with Federal money those communities wishing to proceed with integration and to bring legal action against those who declined either to develop their own integration plan or accept one designed by the HEW Secretary, who would be empowered to draw up integration plans for local communities which had failed to initiate their own.
It finds that some of the proposal's defects were striking, two of which involved a Cabinet official prescribing enrollment procedures for a local school system, inviting the wrath not only of segregationists opposed to Federal force, but also of citizens opposing any kind of Federal intervention in public schools.
There had been, in less than four years since the Brown v. Board of Education decision, a substantial amount of desegregation in the South and the District of Columbia, with about 761 of the 2,980 districts with pupils of both races, having been desegregated. Most of the desegregation had occurred voluntarily in the sense that no compulsion had been necessary beyond respect for the Supreme Court. In a few instances, desegregation had occurred from litigation involving pupils versus school boards, with a great amount of such litigation still pending. Still, while school boards were resisting in some instances, it was a legal matter and the normal amenities were being recognized.
But, it finds, there was a point at which the communities in such litigation would come to feel that the law was a tyrant rather than an institution which had to be respected, and that point would be reached when the executive branch, sensitive to politics, began to initiate lawsuits at a wholesale rate. A belief that the South had been singled out as the target of a force bill would be engendered quickly, and increased resistance, rather than submission, it asserts, would result.
It suggests that there would be a significant difference between litigation involving pupils versus school boards and the Federal Government versus school boards, that black students now seeking admission to white schools were doing so as individuals alleging denial of their individual rights, but that the newly proposed bill, led by Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, apparently was seeking authority for the executive to seek forced admission of students, not as individuals, but as members of a race.
The executive branch had spent more than 3 million dollars on troops at Little Rock and was afraid to withdraw them completely for fear of the consequences. The 13 Senators were thinking of legal force, but in the present situation, the distinction was not worth making.
It suggests that the process of desegregation thus far involved the courts, pupils and school boards and that its further progress could only be obstructed by the addition of a group of political appointees from within the executive branch.
Poppycock. This newspaper, for the most part, has a great blind spot when it comes to integration, while always piously maintaining its support for equal opportunity and civil rights. Just be patient, it advises, and all will work out in time. Just wait a couple of hundred more years and in the meantime, stop being so damned uppity...
"Leadership: Less Profile, More Courage" indicates that at the mention of "foreign aid", two-thirds of Congress was apparently gripped by an awful compulsion to bolt for the exits. The time was rapidly approaching when some courage would have to be exhibited in Washington on that issue and on a few others.
Foreign aid had never been a vote-getter in an election year, and it was somewhat less than greatly popular in the hinterlands at present. But it was one of the realities of survival in the space age, where a certain amount of technical and economic assistance would have to be allotted to friends and allies abroad if the Western bloc was to have a minimum of security.
Yet, members of Congress were not willing to make a firm commitment on the subject.
But Senator Thomas Hennings of Missouri had finally shown some affirmative courage, writing a letter in which he stated: "To be blunt, it is my intention to support a substantial program of foreign aid—or mutual security, as it is more accurately called—with emphasis on economic rather than strictly military aid. This aid should go not only to our present allies in the free world, but also to the vastly important uncommitted nations of Asia and Africa. I want you to know why I am going to support this costly program." He had gone on to say that it was a time for "hard truths", that foreign aid involved a lot of money and sharing of some of the nation's resources with the less fortunate nations, that it had often been called a "give-away", but he disagreed with that terminology. "The Communist threat cannot be met by rockets and missiles alone. We can ready our defenses and arm our allies but still lose the struggle…"
It finds that it was the kind of plain talk and political courage which the nation needed at present. Bryce had written in American Commonwealth, "The American statesman is apt to be timid in advocacy as well as infantile in suggestion." It finds that the calculated slur had never been closer to the truth as at the present, as timidity had become a way of life in Washington.
But before there could be courage in Washington, there had to be courage in the American people, and it hopes that they would have the good sense to nurture courage in their own psyches and encourage it in those among the anointed members of Congress, as "the chain reaction could work wonders at a time like this."
A piece from the New York Herald Tribune, titled "Parkmanship", finds something "almost awesome" in Huntington Hartford's new garage on West 42nd Street, capable of parking and unparking automatically more than 200 cars with only a single human attendant needed to supervise the operation. Once the car had been driven to the proper spot, a key was turned in a slot, setting in motion metallic fingers which would carry the automobile into an elevator and conduct it to its own locker, with the process reversed at the point when the driver returned to pick up the car, with the time elapsed and the parking fees recorded automatically.
It finds that even a Sputnik would not be much help in trying to park a car in midtown New York and that if the Russians had the same parking problems, they might have concentrated on such a device as the automatic parking machine and let outer space go.
Parkmanship, it finds, was a fascinating subject, as most men and all women had trouble parking a car, an art which could be mastered only after much arduous practice and many dented fenders. The automatic parker was able to park all cars at all times without denting or scraping any of them. While automation was often a subject for jokes, if it could beat the parking problem, it obviously could do anything.
Drew Pearson indicates that while the AFL-CIO was protesting against rising unemployment, it had added to the unemployment problem by summarily firing over 100 of its own workers, in some cases with only a week's notice. The discharged employees, some of whom had been veterans of 20 to 30 years, were complaining that they would have thrown a picket line around any company which gave them similar treatment. The firings, extending from the front office to the janitors, followed the heavy loss in dues resulting from the ouster of the Teamsters from the organization. The top official to be fired was Lew Hines, special AFL-CIO representative, who was provided eight days of notice. He had spent many years as a troubleshooter for the late AFL president William Green and had also served as Pennsylvania's secretary of labor and industry between 1939 and 1943. The organization's secretary-treasurer, acting for president George Meany, had tried to present Mr. Hines with a gold watch as a "retirement" present, and a photographer had been called in to take pictures of the ceremony, with the secretary-treasurer explaining that Mr. Meany was sorry that he could not attend. Mr. Hines responded, "If he is so sorry, why don't we go down to Miami and have the ceremony there?" The secretary-treasurer tried to soothe Mr. Hines and finally pulled the gold watch from his desk to present it, to which Mr. Hines snapped: "You're not going to give me any stinking watch. You're not going to add insult to injury. You can take your watch and stick it back in the drawer." (He should have said something also about not needing any stinking badges.) Mr. Hines then said angrily: "The way you've handled this has been perfectly lousy." He then walked out, leaving the secretary-treasurer dangling the watch.
Mr. Pearson notes that protests against the summary dismissals had been so heated that the one week of notice had now been extended to 30 days.
Movie actress Gina Lollobrigida had done at least one thing for Congress, causing the big-city Congressmen from the East to get to work on Monday, as they usually took long weekends from Thursday to Tuesday. She had been the center of attention at a luncheon given by Representative Peter Rodino of Newark for Italian-American Congressmen, who formed quite a group in the House. They had seemed to enjoy the luncheon more than the Italian actress, though she had been a good sport about it. Representative John Dent of Pennsylvania, whose Italian ancestors were named Dente, had asked her for an autograph for his granddaughter, and said that his brother had asked that he bring her home. As Mr. Rodino had introduced Ms. Lollobrigida, Mr. Dent jokingly offered to meet her later and translate Mr. Rodino's remarks into Italian, prompting Ms. Lollobrigida to say, "I am sorry my English is not so beautiful." Mr. Dent had replied, "You make up for it otherwise." She said that she had once tried to study English, "but the teacher when she go away from my home, she speaks more better Italian than I speak English."
Marquis Childs indicates that the President's plan to reorganize the Defense Department to obtain greater unity and reduce interservice rivalries had now taken shape and was being given serious consideration by a top-level committee named by Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy to make recommendations to the President. While the committee was not bound by the President's thinking, the main points of the President's outline coincided with the basic views of the committee members.
Those close to the President had placed stress on the importance of his succeeding in getting Congress to approve a reorganization of defense, with the President having been advised that while the opposition would be tough, he could have his way if he was willing to take his case to the people. He had been reluctant to do so in the past, but now some of his warmest admirers were saying that if he failed in an area where he was considered to have specialized knowledge and long experience, his reputation in the Presidency would suffer perhaps a fatal blow.
There were three principal points which had figured in the President's discussion of a new attempt for unification, the first of which was that general officers of the Army and the Air Force and flag officers of the Navy would in the future be officers of the Armed Forces rather than of a particular branch, even though continuing with their separate uniforms and ranks. In arguing the need for the change, the President had pointed to the practice prevailing when he was a young officer of having a chief of infantry, a chief of cavalry, and a chief of artillery all within the Army. The young officer was beholden to the chief of his branch rather than to the commander of the battalion or the corps in which he served, and the commanders were thus seriously handicapped in getting unity of action. As chief of staff of the Army, General George Marshall had abolished the separate chiefs and the President regarded the detachment of flag and general officers from their services as a logical next step.
A second aspect was that the units in a unified command were to be made organic units, whereby the commander of the unit in which all three services might be serving would have full responsibility for promotions, demotions, trial by court-martial and every other detail of service existence. At present, the Army officer might be serving under a Navy commander in a unified unit, but still looked to the Army for promotion. The key word used by the President was "organic". The Continental Air Defense Command was a prime example of a unified command which was not organic. Located at Colorado Springs, its organizational chart, according to those who had taken part in the White House discussions, was a crazy quilt which split authority a dozen ways.
A third aspect of the President's plan was that the administrative control of the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was to be greatly strengthened, the most drastic change advanced in the White House talks. The Joint Chiefs would have a separate planning staff independent of the services, and strategic plans would both originate and end with that staff. With such a staff, the Joint Chiefs chairman would bear the burden and accept the consequences in a kind of partnership with the Secretary of Defense. The President was impatient with those who argued that such an independent strategic planning staff was unnecessary, since the present Joint Chiefs, with Army Navy and Air Force representing their respective services and arriving at strategic objectives, had demonstrated that they were unanimous 90 percent of the time. According to the President, it only meant that they did not put the tough issues, which could not be resolved unanimously, to the head of the Joint Chiefs.
On that latter point of an independent strategic planning staff, responsible only to the Joint Chiefs chairman and the Defense Secretary, the opposition in Congress would be heaviest. It went against the longstanding convictions of Congressman Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and others who had sworn to block any plan which seemed to be leading in the direction of a single chief of all the services.
But those close to the President said that his attitude also was stiffening and so it could be expected that there would be a fierce struggle in the weeks ahead on the matter. On the other hand, if the President accepted the Congressional blockade on the issue, he would have to foreclose any further opportunity to do the job he believed he could when he came to office.
The Congressional Quarterly indicates that five months after the Little Rock, Ark., school integration crisis, the "corpse" of the Republican Party in the South was alive and kicking, despite its obituary having been written after the President had deployed Federal troops to police the integration of Central High School. Republicans were optimistic about their long-run chances in the region and the current year's midterm campaigns would be essentially a holding action, designed to preserve their foothold, a holding action which Republicans were confident they could win.
There were ten Republican Congressmen from the South, and even the Democrats conceded that it would be hard to defeat any of them. Five of the seats were in areas with substantial Republican strength, the first and second districts in Tennessee, served by Republican Representatives Carroll Reece and future Senator Howard Baker, and in Kentucky's eighth district, served by Representative Eugene Siler, which included the upland territory where the Republican traditions had gone back to the Civil War. Representative John Robsion of Kentucky was from a Louisville district which had been Republican since 1946, and Representative Page Belcher of Oklahoma represented Tulsa and other Republican areas in the northern part of the state, a district which had been virtually conceded to the Republicans in the 1950 reapportionment.
Those five districts were not particularly "Southern" in their viewpoint. Messrs. Siler, Robsion and Belcher, for instance, had voted for the civil rights bill the prior year.
But the other five Republican seats in the South were Representatives Joel Broyhill of Virginia, from the Washington suburbs, Richard Poff, from the Roanoke area of Virginia, Charles Jonas of North Carolina, from the Charlotte area, William Cramer of Florida, from the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, and Bruce Alger of Texas, from Dallas. Those districts had no long tradition of Republicanism, with substantial Republican organizations having been created in them for the first time in the presidential campaign of 1952. The President had swept all five districts carrying with him Messrs. Jonas, Broyhill and Poff, the latter two by very narrow margins.
In the midterm elections of 1954, they had been re-elected with larger majorities and Messrs. Cramer and Alger, building on the Eisenhower organizations, had joined them. They had all been re-elected in 1956, but were in a vulnerable position for the midterm elections in 1958.
Officials of both parties, however, told Congressional Quarterly three reasons why they would be hard to beat, the first being that all five had voted as Southerners on the sensitive civil rights issue, that they had backed the jury trial amendment offered on the House floor by Mr. Poff, and voted against the 1957 civil rights bill. All except Mr. Alger had signed the Southern Manifesto of early 1956 and they were in a strong position to maintain the stance, at least as far as they were concerned, that civil rights was not a partisan issue.
The second reason that they would be hard to beat was that after four or six years in office, Democrats conceded that the five Congressmen were stronger than their party in their own districts, having identified themselves with causes and projects which commanded broad support, such that their margins as a result had increased in 1956, ranging between 13,000 and 36,000 votes.
The third reason was that all five had reputations as moderates within their districts. If the Democrats were to try to beat them with extreme segregationists, the Republicans would likely gain some moderate or liberal Democratic votes.
Republican leaders had scant hopes in 1958, however, beyond holding those current seats from the South. Little Rock, they reported, had made it hard to build organizations or find new candidates in segregation-conscious areas. But for 1960 and later years, they had big plans, their reasoning being that aside from civil rights, Republicans nationally were much closer to Southern conservative states' rights thinking than the national Democratic Party.
Enter, eventually, in 1963-64, Senator Barry Goldwater. In your heart, you know he was right, but in your gut…
A letter writer wants to ask several questions concerning the television controversy, the first being what was free television, when it was commercially sponsored, the second being whether present television programming, practically controlled by the interests of David Sarnoff, president of NBC and RCA, was also guided by Mr. Sarnoff, and if so, whether a trust-busting investigation was not in order to see why Mr. Sarnoff was so opposed to pay-TV sponsored by the Zenith Radio Corp. and possibly others. His third question was, if free television prevailed as it now appeared, what could be done to induce the monopolists in that field to give better free TV. He also wants to know the answer to three other questions, which you may read.
Gee, pay-TV has gone so far in giving us so much better entertainment than commercial television ever has, hasn't it? Wow, all those great reality shows and soap operas. Whew, it don't get no better than that, do it? It even gave us this here whizbang moron in the Oval Office in 2025...
A letter from J. R. Cherry, Jr., says that at long last, the liberal establishment in and around Mecklenburg County was coming out of its corner to stand up against him, a "nasty ole 'reactionary', as he had stepped on the toes of "liberal deities like Truman, F. P. Graham, E. Roosevelt, Harry Ashmore, etc." He says that one previous letter writer had come out swinging against his "satire" on Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he believes had instigated a successful fight to admit "the notorious Red agent, Gerhart Eisler," to the country. He promises never to allude to her again as "Seabiscuit" and would henceforth be more decorous, giving her the name which columnist Westbrook Pegler had used, "big mouth". He says that he was flattered that his "juvenile" literary style had caused the mature mind of his critic to flip into a convulsion or two. He also addresses a second letter writer critic who had referred to him as a "jolly good fellow", and so he returns the compliment and believes that he likes him. "Furthermore, if there is a more adept double-talker and beater-around-the bush in liberaldom than that gent, I don't know who he is or where he's at?"
That J. R., he is certainly a real knee-slapping comedian while providing such astute social commentary.
A letter writer says that much talk, much hate, between the North and the South had transpired, counseling to forget the Civil War and start a new, bigger and better one than the last, better because the South would win the new one. "Hundreds of thousands of Yankees will fight for our cause now. They are beginning to see the light."
What is the cause? Are you suggesting a return to slavery for all, only the plantation this time being supplanted by the large corporation?
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