The Charlotte News
Wednesday, April 2, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had asked Congress this date for an extra 1.45 billion dollars in defense appropriations, mainly to acquire B-52 bombers and to build more missile-firing submarines, his request having come in the form of a memorandum to the House Appropriations Committee seeking an increase of that amount in the defense budget for the ensuing fiscal year, beginning July 1. If granted, it would boost fiscal 1959 defense appropriations beyond 40 billion dollars. Of the amount requested, 218 million would be for the Army, 180 million for outer space research programs, 206 million to build two additional Polaris-firing submarines, and 518.5 million to build more big bombers and plane-refueling tankers. The Army's allotment would be used primarily to speed up missile programs. A large share of the Navy's appropriation would be for anti-submarine warfare programs. The President had said at his press conference this date that the Soviet Union's unilateral nuclear test ban announcement was just a gimmick and should not be taken seriously, but that the assessment should not cause the U.S. to stop trying to find common ground for agreement with the Soviets. He recalled repeated U.S. efforts during the years to seek agreement with the Soviets on disarmament, nuclear testing and in other fields. He said that the U.S. should continue to try to win such an agreement. He said he did not believe that there was any justification for labeling the U.S. position a negative one just because it was being firm in the interest of the U.S. and the rest of the world. The President was in a cheerful, jaunty mood during the conference, which had also touched, among other topics, on the recession, with the President saying that careful thought ought be given to the idea of an anti-recession tax cut.
In Havana, Fidel Castro's rebels had cut off communications to Santiago this date and his patrols had clashed with Government forces in other sectors in the war against El Presidente Fulgencio Batista. Rebels had clashed frequently with Government troops around Manzanillo and Bayamo, the Army reporting 16 rebels having been killed during the previous 24 hours. In Pinar del Rio Province in western Cuba, rebels had shot and wounded the secretary-general of the Transportation Union, as he had entered his home, and a female neighbor had been wounded. Sr. Castro had launched his offensive by stepping up attacks on transport and communications in Cuba's easternmost Oriente Province, where his sixteen-month old guerrilla war was strongest. Communications continued to be normal outside that province, and Havana businesses had operated as usual. El Presidente's troops and police, on almost continuous alert for months, had braced to meet the rebel threat. The supporters of the rebel leader said that total war against El Presidente would be extended to the rest of Cuba after midnight on Saturday, the rebel deadline for El Presidente to quit his office. Roving rebel bands had cut telegraph lines to Santiago, fired upon transport moving in the area and spread oil and nails on the roads. Most bus and rail workers stopped work around Santiago and highways were almost deserted. Rebels had blown up eight high-voltage towers in the province and burned a Sinclair Oil Co. gasoline tank trailer. Clashes between Government troops and rebels had been reported near Santiago, Varacoa, and Holguin. The 31-year old Castro planned to call a general strike. Some sugar mill employees in Oriente Province had already joined transport workers in walkouts. El Presidente obtained from his Congress further dictatorial powers for the ensuing 45 days, as set forth on the front page of the previous day.
In Miami, Fla., ten Cuban rebel sympathizers continued a hunger strike this date, and 22 others had been released on bond after an anti-Batista demonstration at a Miami railroad station. The hunger strikers were encamped in the lobby of television station WTVJ, the management of which said that they might stay as long as they were orderly. The hunger strike would continue, according to the Cubans, until 36 other rebel supporters were released from jail in Brownsville, Tex., where they were being held on charges of running arms in support of the Castro rebels. The Texas group also had gone on a hunger strike since being arrested by the Coast Guard the prior Thursday, with 14 of them having been fed intravenously in a hospital. The group had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to violate the U.S. Neutrality Act after their converted fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico was seized, found to be carrying the arms. In another development, a cache of more than 900 hand grenades had been found in a Biscayne Boulevard office by sheriff's deputies in Miami, the sheriff indicating that the office had been rented to rebel sympathizers already in jail in connection with the discovery the previous week of 600 sticks of dynamite in an apartment.
Builders and housing officials predicted this date that the 1.85 billion dollar Housing Act would help increase home construction, but emphasized that it was no panacea for the recession. The President had signed the Democratic-sponsored bill with a demand that Congress quickly correct some provisions of it which, he said, conflicted with the private enterprise system and burdened the public purse. But the Federal Housing Administration sped orders to its field offices liberalizing down payments, as permitted by the law. Some builders had notified FHA that they were waiting to advertise the new terms to prospective home buyers. The 3 percent minimum down payment provision of the new law applied to FHA-insured mortgages of up to $13,500 instead of the previous $10,000, while on mortgage principal above $13,500, the down payment remained at 15 percent, and, above $16,000, 20 percent. It meant that a $14,000 dwelling, which FHA called the "typical" new home, could be bought for $500 down instead of $900 under previous law. FHA commissioner Norman Mason said that the lower down payment requirements and the removal of discount controls would be "a boon to home buyers and the home building industry." He did not mention the billion dollars earmarked to support the mortgage market, which Congress had added as "an immediate stimulus to home construction."
A Senate Judiciary subcommittee this date approved the President's nomination of Gordon Tiffany to be staff director of the Civil Rights Commission, created by the 1957 Civil Rights Act the prior fall. Mr. Tiffany was a former Attorney General of New Hampshire.
In Athens, Greece, King Paul this date signed a decree dissolving Parliament, paving the way for a general election on May 11.
In Budapest, it was reported that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had flown to the city this date and said that the Soviet Union and Hungary were firmly united against the "imperialists".
In Geneva, a new principle of international law had been approved this date, in effect legalizing passage of Israeli ships through Arab waters to Israel's southern port of Eilat.
In Vatican City, Pope Pius XII had held a Holy Week general audience for more than 10,000 persons in St. Peter's Basilica this date, as many more thousands of tourists and pilgrims gathered in Rome for Easter.
In Detroit, the International Union of Electrical Workers had teamed up with Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, in demanding this date profit-sharing from G.M.
In New York, it was reported that the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Corregidor had suffered a crack in its hull in heavy seas in the Atlantic the previous night, reportedly taking in some water but in no immediate danger of sinking.
Also in New York, it was reported that the 21-year old son of humorist S. J. Perelman, in trouble repeatedly since he had been 15 years old, had been arrested again early this date and charged with attempted rape and robbery attacks on two women. Following the arrest, officers quoted the son as saying that he was the victim of a "compulsion". (Don't despair, kid; you could grow up to be El Presidente by 2017 and again in 2025, despite being by then a convicted felon.)
In Minerva, O., four Federal crop surveyors were rebuffed by 200 "wheat rebels" when they had come to measure wheat acreage on a Columbiana County farm owned by a local physician who farmed as a sideline. He had been waging a long fight against Federal wheat controls and was president of the Independent Farmers of Ohio. He owed the Government $530 in penalties and costs for overplanting his wheat allotments in two previous seasons on his 150-acre farm. The agents had taken one look the previous day at the milling crowd bearing picket signs and had driven away. A spokesman said that he would report the incident to the chief of the Ohio Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Committee in Columbus. A sign in the farmer's yard had warned the Department of Agriculture employees to keep their distance. The farmer-physician had said that he had not made it convenient for them to survey his acreage. The crowd of farmers present, numbering 215, who arrived in 98 cars, had kept the agents from entering the property. Finally, the farmer, himself, approached the spokesman for the agents who had gotten out of his automobile and introduced himself, announcing his intention to conduct the survey, the farmer responding, "I sure as Sam Hill protest that." When asked whether he refused, he said that he did "with all the determination at my command." The farmer's supporters convinced the Federal agents for the time being anyway to stay away. The next step might be a Federal injunction against the farmer. Some of the picket signs had read: "Keep Benson and vote out the control-minded congressmen", "25 years of government farming is too much", and "Take the police powers away from the ASC".
In San Francisco, it was reported that without time to mop up after one heavy downpour, much of California had braced for another deluge this date, with rivers already brimming, lowlands flooded and coastal highways cut by mudslides. A combination of high tide and overflow from the Guadalupe River had forced evacuation the previous night of some 900 residents of Alviso, one of the state's oldest and traditionally one of its wettest communities. Thirty families had stood their ground in the town at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, while the rest had moved into motels and Red Cross shelters in the nearby San Jose area. A number of Alviso homes had been flooded. Seven other rivers, in addition to the Guadalupe, had reached flood stage or were overflowing. A 24-hour rainfall by the early morning hours of this date and measured 1.4 inches in San Francisco, 1.63 at Fort Bragg to the north, 1.51 at Sacramento, 1.52 at Santa Maria, 1.02 in Los Angeles and 1.08 in Fresno. The Fresno River and its tributaries had crested the previous night and begun slowly dropping this date after flooding an estimated 4,000 acres of farmland in the Central Valley southeast of San Francisco. With the snow level down to 2,800 feet in the high Sierras, there was a fear that the new rainstorm or a sudden warming trend would bring new flood threats from melting snow. High winds ripped up and down the coast, uprooting trees and taking the roofs off houses in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, with a 75-foot water spout having wrecked the patio of a home at Laguna Beach. A slide had blocked the eastbound main track of the Southern Pacific near Martinez in the San Francisco Bay Area for several hours the previous afternoon. It might be noted that April 2 was getting quite late in the rainy season for such a downpour, typically amounting to little more than drizzles by that point. Was it an early warning of climate change brought on, in part, by the proliferation of nuclear testing in the atmosphere?
In Salisbury, N.C., police had quoted a Purple Heart veteran as saying that he had pumped four shots into his estranged wife in the kitchen of her home early this date. His 40-year old estranged wife had been pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital after an ambulance answered a call from her husband, 44, a food department employee of the Veterans Administration Hospital. The man was a master sergeant in the Army Reserves and a veteran of World War II. He had told police that using a .22-caliber, nine-shot revolver, he had shot his wife four times in her kitchen and then called an ambulance from a nearby payphone. He then had gone to the home of a friend and told her husband that he had shot his wife, leaving the revolver there and departing. The police chief said that an alarm was broadcast for the man, who was picked up in High Point in the wee hours of the morning, about an hour after the shooting, and then was returned to Salisbury. He said that the revolver contained five bullets. The couple, who had been separated for some time, had three grown children.
In Gastonia, N.C., 19 roomers had escaped safely early this date when fire had destroyed a 16-room, two-story boarding house. Two roomers had been injured when they jumped from windows. The owner of the boarding house said that it was covered by $25,000 in insurance. Firemen said the cause of the fire had not been immediately determined.
Julian Scheer of The News writes again, as on the previous day, of the two families whose home had been burned to the ground after an Air Force trainer jet had crashed into it the prior Saturday while, for want of fuel, trying to conduct an emergency landing in fog at Douglas Municipal Airport in Charlotte, with the families now facing the possibility of a long delay in getting reimbursed for the loss of their personal belongings. Air Force officials said that they were prepared to process claims as soon as possible, but that the procedure provided little hope for a quick payment. There was the prospect of Congressional action being required if the claim amounted to more than $1,000.
In New York, the cops were being indoctrinated in man-in-the-street Spanish to make conversation easier with the city's growing population of Puerto Ricans and other Latin Americans. Broadway had reached the Police Department.
Also in New York, the age of wood had come to an end on the City transit system, at least almost, with the last 50 of the all-wooden cars used on an elevated line in Brooklyn to be retired on April 11. The cars had been built in 1904 and replacing them would be other cars built in 1905-06.
On the editorial page, "The South Is Not THAT Misunderstood" indicates that the story of a white boy who had risked his life to rescue an elderly black couple from a burning house in Memphis, as told by the Chattanooga News-Free Press, had said "here's a story in race relations they won't understand, or won't want to understand, up North…"
It wonders why they would not understand it in the North or for that matter anywhere else. The boy had saved the lives of two helpless people. Black citizens had raised $200 to reward him. "No one can be impervious to the goodness and human warmth of this story unless his mind has been atrophied by the vitriol of political messiahs or the self-righteous rantings of racial propagandists. More and more, we're inclined to the view that the vitriol works more violently on those who spill it, than on the masses that are subjected to it."
It admits that race was still a large and far-reaching issue in American life, but that it had not yet become the divisive and rancorous issue which it was made to appear. Although there were some propagandists in the North and South who would have it so, Northerners did not picture Southerners as "members of a vast family of Snopeses feeding on the dirt and wild roots of bigotry. They will understand the story of the boy and the burning house in New York, in Milwaukee and in Detroit."
It finds that more often in high office than in Southern folkways had the reputation of the South been made to suffer. There were Klansmen somewhere conceiving atrocities and occasionally committing one, but punishment by Southern juries had become the rule rather than the exception in such cases, and the Klan could be regarded no longer as a significant Southern folk movement. The grist for the Northern propaganda mills came primarily from such incidents as the firing of a veteran white schoolteacher for permitting a white student to ride home on a black school bus, as had been reported recently, by mob violence encouraged by the actions of a governor, the denunciation of "'niggers'" from campaign stumps, and the efforts of a legislature to restrict basic freedoms.
It indicates that it could be argued that officeholders and politicians merely reflected the views of their constituents, but they did not always reflect them accurately. Wisconsin had sent Senator McCarthy to the Senate but the reckless fanaticism which he peddled could not be found in the folkways of Wisconsin. Nor had been the late Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi accurately reflected in the morality of that state when he addressed a woman of Italian descent as "My Dear Dago…"
"Human beings, North or South, white or colored, partake of the same strengths and weaknesses. That Northerners have become convinced they are more righteous or more inclined to humaneness than Southerners is too much for us to believe."
During the week, the segregationist Richmond Times-Dispatch had quoted from the integrationist New York Post to demonstrate the similarity of human reactions to racial differences. Stan Opotowsky of the Post, in a story about Harlem, had stated: "It is strange to find intolerance in a community that has suffered so much from blind bias. Yet intolerance is there, just a mite beneath the surface. In some instances old prejudices are fading, only to be replaced by new prejudices… The Negro leaders want integration with everybody… But alas, the leaders are not always followed. Some Negroes don't want integration. They have their prejudices against whites, too."
It concludes that in due time, as the preachments of the self-righteousness receded in the press and political offices, Americans who were more aware of their likenesses than of their differences would compromise and settle the race issue. "The brave boy in Memphis already has helped to do the job."
Unfortunately, ten years later almost to the day, a coward or group of cowards, acting in stealth in Memphis, would seek to undo the progress of the previous dozen years, and, indeed, of a whole century, with a brutal, senseless act of violence against a man who preached non-violence—a precursor to which would take place in Harlem just a few months hence, when a crazed black woman would plunge a letter opener into his chest, missing his heart by only a sneeze.
"Upward into a City's Wild Blue Yonder" indicates that Charlotte was progressing quite nicely, that first had come the Federal approval of an arrow-straight superhighway to Canton, O., and now the Civil Aeronautics Board had awarded Eastern Air Lines its long-sought nonstop flight between Charlotte and Chicago, with there only remaining, to add symmetry to the scene, perhaps submarine service between Morehead City and Le Havre in France.
It finds the CAB action as welcome as the arrival of spring, as the nonstop air route to the heart of the Great Lakes region was recognition of the great growth and importance of the Charlotte area, to help to catapult Charlotte toward even greater economic progress.
Historically, every city's progress had been geared to transportation, as civilization depended on it. It suspects that the airport was the foundation on which Charlotte's economic prospects would be built, and that every improvement in service and reduction in red tape and bottlenecks would bolster those prospects.
The new nonstop service, to start within 60 to 90 days, was not a small contribution to progress but a large and promising one.
"The Voices of Spring: A Nocturne" provides memories of springs spent as a youth, hearing mother inside the house washing the dishes and sister talking in her high-pitched voice and baby crying when father jerked a toy playfully from his reach.
You may read the rest for yourself, as spring passed toward summer and into fall...
John Steinbeck, writing in the Saturday Review, in a piece titled "'A Monkey Dressed in Silk'", indicates that one of the most charming games in Spain and many Spanish-speaking countries was the conversation or contest by "dichos", roughly translated as a "saying", that in Spanish, however, it was much more than that, the reduction of a situation, an idea, a question or a philosophy to one short, pithy sentence.
"The 'dicho' is comment, usually satiric, and always true. For hundreds of years the Spanish have been the unrivaled masters of the 'dicho'. Many of our most cherished 'sayings', which we think of as our own, are really translations of older Spanish 'dichos'."
He provides a sample from his
collection: "A thistle is a salad in a burro's mouth. A little
pot get hot quick. The smoke of a man's own house is better than the
fire of another's. He who licks his own dish can give little to his
servants. A bean while free is better than a feast in prison. Little
dogs start the rabbit, but big dogs catch it. If you wish good advice
consult an old man. A monkey dressed in silk is still a monkey.
Better a burro that carries me than a horse that throws me. When all
men call you a burro, it is time to bray. Be not a baker if your head
is butter. Bananas are gold in the morning, silver at noon, lead at
night. He who has love in his heart has spurs
Drew Pearson indicates that when Aled Davies, lobbyist for the meatpackers, had stood at the bar at the National Press Club and boasted regarding his close friendship with Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, he had not done himself much favor, but had done some good for the American public. Bill McGaffin of the Chicago Daily News had promptly written a story about the boast of Mr. Davies, even though the latter made big noises about having Mr. McGaffin bounced from the Press Club.
The farmers who looked to Secretary Benson for support had not entirely realized before that he was more the friend of the meatpacker and big processor than of the dirt farmer. His close friend, Mr. Davies, for instance, was presently lobbying against a bill introduced by Senator Joseph O'Mahoney of Wyoming to transfer antitrust jurisdiction over the meatpackers to the Federal Trade Commission. The Senator knew that the consumer would receive little protection from the Agriculture Department and so wanted the FTC to act instead, Mr. Davies opposing that transfer. Mr. Davies was also the lobbyist working to stop the Humane Slaughter bill, already passed by the House thanks to Congresswoman Martha Griffiths of Michigan, a bill which would require hogs and steers to be given a dose of gas before they were hammered over the head in the packing houses. He indicates that in some cases, dazed steers, knocked on the head but not killed, went careening around the slaughterhouse before they were finally butchered. Mr. Davies had been working with the Republican members of the Senate Agriculture Committee to hold extensive hearings on that bill, even though hearings were held two years earlier. Thus far, Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, the chairman of the Committee, had resisted taking action.
Meanwhile, Secretary Benson was reported to be hesitant about his earlier plan to appoint Mr. Davies as a delegate to the British Food Fair, to take place between August 28 and September 11 in London. (We hope they give away a new Pontiac like the one up the street from where we shall be living by late summer. Maybe a Ford or Plymouth...) The previous year, Mr. Davies had gone as a representative for the American Meat Institute, but in the current year, Mr. Benson was planning to make him an official delegate of the Agriculture Department until Mr. Davies received publicity over ghostwriting Mr. Benson's statement that he would not resign as Secretary of Agriculture.
Some Congressmen wanted to know whether dictator Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic was using American aid money to finance a home for dethroned dictators. El Presidente was presently host to Juan Peron of Argentina, Marcos Perez Jimenez of Venezuela, and Antonio Kebreau of Haiti. El Presidente was reported to be interested in the least known of the trio, Brig. General Kebreau, who had been kicked out of neighboring Haiti recently by President Francois Duvalier. El Presidente was reported to be amenable to financing a Kebreau-led revolt against the democratic Haitian Government. President Duvalier was concerned over the bad publicity which Haiti's hired influence peddlers had received in the U.S., the list including John Roosevelt, the Republican son of the late President, Charles Willis, former aide to President Eisenhower, who had married the daughter of tire king Harvey Firestone, Doug Whitlock, who had helped arrange the President's inaugural celebration for the RNC, and Wesley Roberts, former RNC chairman, who had been booted out after an expose of his lobbying activities in Kansas.
Marquis Childs quotes a Latin American diplomat, a friend and defender of the U.S., as having said that the U.S. had taken Latin America for granted for so long that time was "quickly running out", something which Latin Americans had been saying for many years. Now, in the shadow of the threatening economic crisis, the country's oldest friends were asking embarrassing questions.
The previous week, the President had called for a further 15 percent reduction on the voluntary import quota on foreign oil, meaning a drop in the revenues for Venezuela, where a struggle was ongoing to restore democratic government following the overthrow of the corrupt dictatorship, underscoring the politics of oil, one of the sources of discontent.
Shortly, the U.S. Tariff Commission would decide whether tariffs ought be raised on lead and zinc, with the Commission likely to recommend an increase, which would have more explosive repercussions than the new oil quota. The mineral countries, Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico, had been suffering from the drop in commodity prices, and erecting a tariff fence to keep out their minerals would produce a shockwave of anger throughout Latin America. Yet, with miners out of work in the U.S., the Tariff Commission was likely to do that, and the pressures on the White House were such that the President would feel that he had to go along.
"Thousands and thousands of families in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia are dependent on the normal production and exportation of lead and zinc," according to Bolivian Ambassador Victor Andrade. He went on to say that they were now faced with the threat that a tariff might make it impossible for most of the mines to be able to continue to operate, and that he was sincerely alarmed not only by the damaging impact of such a situation but also by the strange feeling of distrust which could grow in large communities of Latin America, a feeling which would undoubtedly be utilized by the enemies of freedom and democracy.
In countries where coffee made up more than 60 percent of the dollar exports, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala, the swift decline in coffee prices was bringing trouble, as there was virtually no market for coffee futures and governments were trying to hold back big surpluses.
The effect of the U.S. recession, along with perhaps an inevitable decline in the world boom, had been multiplied many times in Latin America. Old grievances and complaints, such as why the U.S. gave all of its aid to countries in Asia and Europe while ignoring Latin America, had taken on new urgency.
Vice-President Nixon was going to undertake a good will tour to Latin America. Mr. Childs suggests that while good will was nice, as Lorelei Lee had indicated in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", "A diamond bracelet lasts longer than a kiss on the hand." A program of action both in North and South America looking for remedies to the economic troubles, he offers, would have to go along with the good will.
A letter from Clarence Streit, editor of Freedom & Union, indicates that the record would show that his publication had long insisted that depression was a more imminent danger than world war and that the country could no more prevent a depression than a war by purely national measures. He says that Russia was determined to win by fostering economic depression rather than by risking military aggression and that Moscow was much more aware than the U.S. that Atlantic disunion made for depression, and that depression made for worse disunion. Heavy doses of inflation could normally be counted on to postpone depression, but the present were abnormal times. He finds at least four neglected factors present which could cause it to fail, inter-Atlantic chain reactions, deliberate Kremlin boat-rocking, contrariness, and fallacious figuring. He only touches on the first, indicating that there had been a time lag between the the Wall Street crash of October, 1929, and the worst breaks in Europe, beginning in Austria in May, 1931, when many had thought the U.S. had turned the corner in the depression, before it rapidly had spread to Germany and Britain, deepening thereafter more sharply in the U.S. He says that the true cause for purely U.S. remedies having failed at that time had been the economic trouble not being confined to the U.S., as it was not at present. It affected all of the Atlantic democracies, but they still lacked adequate machinery for common action against it. The result had been that it would be worsened by national remedies which were bound to conflict. He indicates that the American public had been assured for years that its economy was so strong and that of Britain, France, Germany, etc., so relatively negligible, that the U.S. could handle economic trouble by purely national legislation. He finds that the assumption was as widespread at present as it had been that the U.S. could keep out of a world war by national legislation, such as the Neutrality Act, Cash-and-Carry, etc., prior to World War II. That war had killed that fallacy and U.S. policy was presently based on the belief that the U.S. could keep out of a war only by NATO machinery permitting action by all Atlantic states if there were a breakthrough in the community's smallest nation. In economics, a similar fallacy remained dominant to the present, and unless abandoned, it would produce a catastrophe economically as it had politically during World War II. Whereas a military threat in the West tended to unite the Atlantic democracies, economic depression tended to divide them more than ever, and the U.S. thus could not expect to improvise the means of common Atlantic action after the U.S. had suffered an economic Pearl Harbor. He urges beginning at present to work out, through the proposed conference at the citizen level, the economic, political and military Atlantic Union, which alone could turn the mounting tide of danger. He says he would be glad to provide further thoughts on the issue for those who wished it.
A letter writer says that she was
heartened by reading two recent articles in the newspaper drawing
attention to the prevalence of bad grammar, and fully agreed that
television and radio announcers with insufficiently high standards
were helping to make the situation worse. She says that unfortunately
she had gone on to read Julian Scheer's column and came to the
conclusion that television and radio were not the only, or even the
worst, offenders. She found "gonna" in company with
"wanna"
The editors note that Mr. Scheer had replied, with a twinkle in his eye and a tongue in his cheek: "Somma us wanna be cute at times and we kinda take liberties with the English language. I'm sorta sorry, too." They add that perhaps fans of Finley Peter Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" would understand what he was talking about.
At least the letter writer apparently found no example of "dunno"
We'uns disagrees with all that gobbledygookin, miscreant misanthropic messin's. That tv don't do nothin' to mess your language mechanisms nor logic beans in yer cranial cortical layers of crepe paper, leaving it all for plentiful potpourri to pour into from yer cornucorpic melange obtained osmotically through the waves
Being overly punctilious has its drawbacks, especially if accomplished by an ostensible plebeian or precociously, lending the appearance of a bloviated parvenu whose accustomed purlieus and apparent station in life match not his or her seemingly affected baroque, baronial presentation in obvious substitution for a forerunning patois
As to the column of Ms. Vanderbilt, incidentally, her correspondent is completely correct in distinguishing between "imply" and "infer". The two words are not interchangeable, their sometime usage so notwithstanding, the former meaning to suggest by logical inference drawn from the words comprising the putative suggestion, and the latter meaning to derive from logical deduction or induction.
We note that, in addition to proper enunciation in accordance with standard orthography and correctly accented syllabication, it also helps to learn at a young age in the first instance to pronounce words in accord with accepted convention—"Penelope", for instance, not pronounced as "envelope", and "Persephone", not as "versa-phone"—, and thus to be able to read them with correctly heard and understood precision over the air should one aspire to and become subsequently a tv news broadcaster one day. Just today, for instance, we heard someone delivering the news, reading from a response to an executive order, pronounce "forbade", as if to rhyme it with "portrayed", which is a bad portrayal of the English language, forbade by proper pronunciation. Unless one is a cad, do not pronounce it other than forbade, for to pronounce it "forbade" is, a la Jack Cade, to disobey the right rules of the house in demonstrable dishonor of the right honorable body politic and assume a role for which one is quite unqualified by heritage and education—much as the producer of the executive order in question, quite aside from the reader who read the word utilizing a secondary and disused pronunciation, probably not heard much since the groundlings of Elizabethan England. Shakespeare used "forbid", in context, acceptably, even aside from its rhyming couplet, to accommodate "lid", or vice versa, as "forbade" would have been the wrong tense in any event, even if "forbidden" would have been the proper way of it—but then he would have needed to create a suitable ending for the couplet to match the witches' incantation, such as "upon his penthouse litten"?—nonsensical since he was consigned, spellbound, thereby to darkness by being trucked with riddles and affairs of death—but then leading to some further spells involving cats and kittens, to which then, as with rabbits, there would have been no end in the fruitless multiplication out to the crack of doom, and, after all, they were witches and thus not given to proper use of English anyway, being beldams as they were, of the lower orders of nunnery, which then gets into barred borders and mummery, leading fast to "Project 2025", not to mention gross overpopulation and ultimate starvation for the masses, as exhibited in Malthusian starkness on the front page this date.
A letter writer urges that it ought be remembered by the American people as they went to the polls in the coming Congressional elections that the Republican Party had originated from the philosophy of Alexander Hamilton while the Democratic party had originated from the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, with the basic difference being shown by the following exchange: Mr. Hamilton: "The people, sir, are turbulent, changing. They seldom judge or determine a right." Mr. Jefferson: "The years, Mr. Hamilton, have not enriched your judgment in this matter. I have unlimited faith in the people, in their common sense. I believe that human nature is indefinitely perfectible." The writer also finds that it was emblematic of the basic political difference between the two political parties.
A letter writer indicates that he
was disappointed after spending all of Saturday afternoon at the
Coliseum watching some acts which were fugitives from "Fish-eye"
Sullivan's
A letter writer indicates that if the people who were doing all the complaining about public education would just give it the money it needed to do the job, there would be nothing left about which to complain.
You'll need to do more than that in
future. Start by not curbing your youngsters' tv viewing and radio or
phonograph listening habits, letting them find out on their own the
inevitable detriments to be incurred thereby from its indulgence in
excess to scholastic work, and the eventual boredom from seeing and
hearing the same old plots, lyrics, etc., played out, while finding
in scholastic work an endless, boundless scape from which to envision
the past, present and future with more certitude and articulate
expression than available from passive viewing and listening to any
media presentation, though the latter might be stimulative of further
dedicated research, yet never an end in itself, lest the result be
utter ennui, the sure ticket
to anomie, individually and en masse, and ultimate failure as a human being, that is a mind, perceiving itself to be boundless in scope for its normlessness, which actually has no
ability to think beyond the limited script placed before one's
blinkers, a robotic reactor ultimately reduced to little better than
a machine reciting rote material, just alternative rote material not of a piece with any recognized reality and thus worthless. Making available for the budding youth plenty of reading material in the home, including old, heavy books, newspapers and magazines, independent of the internet, provides a passive stimulus to self-initiated passage by the beckoners
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.