The Charlotte News
Saturday, July 26, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Cape Canaveral, Fla., that a new satellite, the biggest yet launched from the country, had been successfully placed in orbit. The 80-inch long metal tube, similar in shape to previous Explorers, but about seven pounds heavier, had been launched in a northeasterly direction, whereas earlier launches had been generally along an east-to-west path. Scientists hoped that the satellite would relay back a complete report on a field of intense radiation existing about 600 miles up. The 70-foot rocket had launched in mid-morning and climbed straight up for about a minute, then had curved gracefully toward a horizontal course and streaked to the northeast. The Jupiter-C rocket had been observed from the launching site for about two minutes. On this attempt, a solid fuel propellant had been used in the final two stages to compensate for the added weight and to propel the satellite into a higher orbit. The Army said that details of the new propellant were secret. The Explorer IV had been designed solely for the radiation experiment, carrying two Geiger-Mueller counters and two so-called scintillation instruments to record the radiation completely for the first time. The first two Army Explorer satellites had indicated that cosmic radiation, in what came to be known as the Van Allen belt, was considerably higher than anticipated, but had lacked instruments to provide full information. Scientists hoped to learn what caused the radiation and whether it emanated from the sun or interstellar space. The new satellite would travel as far as 1,750 miles from the earth and follow an elliptical orbit to as close as 175 miles. During its first orbit, it was expected to cross Newfoundland, England, Central Europe, Turkey, India and Australia, then would loop across the Pacific, crossing the U.S. West Coast near San Diego, travel across the country in a southwest to northeast direction, carrying it over more land masses than any previous U.S. satellite. It was equipped with two battery-powered radios expected to last about two months, with the highest powered unit, operating at 108.03 megacycles, able to be received by ham radio operators, while the lower-powered set would broadcast at 108 megacycles. It would be observable in orbit only with special instruments. Three other satellites were presently orbiting the globe, the 3,000-pound Soviet Sputnik III, the 30.8-pound Explorer I and the Vanguard, the Navy's 3.75-pound satellite expected to spin through space for two centuries.
Also from Cape Canaveral, it was reported that a Thor IRBM had broken apart with a violent roar high in the sky early this date shortly after its launch, breaking into two pieces, according to a brief announcement by the Air Force, indicating that a malfunction had occurred 70 seconds after the launch and that the reason had not yet been determined until data could be evaluated. The launch had been witnessed by 12 members of Congress on a tour of the Missile Test Center. Three previous test flights of the Thor had apparently been successful. This missile had carried a blunt nose cone, a prototype of a Thor tactical warhead, but no recovery operations were planned for it.
The President and Prime Minister Kwane Nkrumah of Ghana had agreed this date that Middle East problems ought be solved within the context of the U.N. They had also agreed that any solution ought preserve the independence and territorial integrity of both large and small nations.
In Bonn, West Germany, it was reported by the Soviet Embassy that the Soviet Union this date had protested against West Germany allowing its airfields to be used for the movement of U.S. troops to the Middle East.
Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas had cautioned the President this date against entering the proposed Middle East summit conference with an attitude of reluctance.
In Beirut, it was reported that Lebanon was braced for new skirmishing between Government and rebel forces this date, as the political battle which had started the rebellion moved even further from a settlement.
In Colombo, Ceylon, troops had been rushed to East Ceylon this date to quell new communal clashes between Tamils and Moslem descendants of 13th and 14th Century Arab traders.
In Tokyo, it was reported that the death toll from a typhoon and three days of torrential rains and its aftermath had risen to 33 this date, as Japan got ready for yet another storm. The National Police said that rains had killed 12 persons and injured 17.
In Argentia, Newfoundland, it was reported that an airliner carrying 45 persons from New York to Lisbon had landed safely this date four hours after engine trouble had almost forced it to ditch in the North Atlantic. The Pan American Airways DC-7 had experienced trouble in one of its four engines about 350 miles southeast of Newfoundland and 450 miles from the U.S. Naval Air Station at Argentia. The captain, who had been flying for more than 20 years, radioed five hours after departure from New York's Idlewild Airport that his right inboard engine was running out of control at high speed and eight minutes later, reported an emergency and prepared to ditch. A nearby Coast Guard vessel stood ready to search for survivors. The plane had descended from 17,000 to 6,000 feet but then began to regain altitude, with the captain deciding that he had a chance to nurse the plane back to Argentia, which he and his eight crew members managed to do during the ensuing four hours, as half a dozen planes flew alongside just in case. Seymour Berkson, vacationing publisher of the New York Journal-American, had been aboard and said that the captain was "brilliant", that the crew had been "perfect", that the captain's voice had been calm when he spoke periodically on the intercom and that the passengers remained in high spirits when they arrived. The passengers were set to start for Lisbon on another plane this date. The captain's wife had not learned of the issue until after the plane had landed safely, saying that she had slept through the whole thing and had just remembered that the previous day was her husband's birthday.
In Atlanta, it was reported that a freak accident near Zebulon, Ga., this date had produced a fire in an automobile which burned to death three children, raising the state's two-day traffic toll to 11.
In Poughkeepsie, N.Y., an automobile, occupied by three residents of New Orleans, had crashed through an iron fence this date, plunged down a ten-foot embankment into a cemetery and caught fire, with all three occupants escaping with only bruises.
In Washington, a new trial might be ordered by Army authorities for Sgt. Ambrose Cates, a native of Roxboro, N.C., who had been convicted of slaying another soldier in a barroom argument near Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
In Gastonia, N.C., it was reported that an Air Force C-45, with four persons aboard, had crash-landed in a field about five miles northeast of the city shortly before noon this date. The Charlotte Municipal Airport control tower said that the plane had made an emergency landing, apparently safely, the controller not knowing whether there were any casualties. The Gaston County Lifesaving Crew and Highway Patrolmen were searching for the plane shortly after noon, with private planes also joining the search. The tower did not know the plane's origin or destination, describing it as a twin-engine Beechcraft.
In Charlotte, it was reported that a 25-year old from the city had been killed early this date when his car had overturned on Highway 21 south. Police said that he was driving a 1940 Ford which had overturned several times and thrown him some 30 feet from the car. There were no skid marks on the road and the car was not on a curve at the time.
John Kilgo of The News reports that a survey had been made this date by State highway engineers of the severe damage from flooding in the Beechwood Acres section of Charlotte. The Highway Commission public relations officer told the newspaper that work to alleviate the flooding problem would get underway early the following week, probably by Monday or Tuesday, that there were plans to enlarge a Piedmont & Northern Railway culvert, the central drainage facility, to afford more drainage for the residential area. He said that they were drilling rock around the railway tracks this date to see what type of foundation would have to be provided and that all work on the survey would be completed by the afternoon, after which they would begin as soon as possible the work to alleviate the flooding issue.
Emery Wister of The News reports that the Manger Hotel Corp. would erect a 1.5 million dollar motor-hotel on North Tryon Street at the intersection of 10th Street across from the Sears Roebuck & Co. store, climaxing nearly two years of negotiations and planning. The firm said that it would be one of the most magnificent in the country, with 147 units and construction scheduled to start in the fall and to be completed by October, 1959. It would be built on stilts with the first floor to be used for parking and the upper two levels consisting of rooms, also having a 350-seat banquet hall and a coffee shop capable of serving 125 persons. It would have a kidney-shaped swimming pool set in a fully landscaped area within the court formed by the three sides of the u-shaped building. We can't wait to see it. Bet you can't either. Stay there just before Christmas, 1959, and sing "Away in a Manger", then walk across the street to Sears and see Santa Claus. That'd be cool, huh?
In London, it was reported that a pair of blue and white-striped pajama pants had fluttered this date from one of the ancient towers of Westminster Abbey, unprecedented in the hundreds of years of its history. It was the locus of William the Conqueror's investiture and that of nearly every monarch since. Scotland Yard concluded its investigation quickly, finding that the nearby Westminster Boys School, one of the oldest in the world, which would shut down for the summer on Monday, had supplied the culprits. One of the school boys had confessed that he knew who had done it, but that "wild horses wouldn't drag his name from me."
In Hollywood, it was reported that Harry Warner, 76, a Polish immigrant boy who had become one of the giants of the motion picture industry, had died the previous night at his home. He, along with his brothers, had pioneered the use of sound in movies and revolutionized the industry with the production of Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer" in 1927. He had been ill for several months and death was attributed to a cerebral occlusion. He had retired two years earlier after 30 years as president of Warner Brothers Studio, but remained a member of the board at the time of his death. His brother Jack was now president and another brother, Albert, was in charge of film distribution. The three, along with brother Sam, had been the sons of a Polish immigrant family who originally came to the U.S. in 1887.
In Long Beach, Calif., it was reported that Miss Colombia, 19-year old Luz Mariana Zuloaga, had been crowned Miss Universe the previous night, the second time a Latin American had won the title. Her predecessor, Gladys Zender of Peru, had been present the previous night and was the only person on stage who had cried when the winner was announced. The four runners-up appeared delighted with the outcome, including Miss Brazil, Miss Hawaii, who had received eight different offers for television, movie and nightclub opportunities, Miss U.S.A. of Louisiana, happy to be third runner-up after not having expected to win, and Miss Poland. Movie talent scouts were busy backstage after the contest. The winner, as with her mother, spoke no English and accepted the crown only by saying "thank you" in English. Her mother had ensured the press through an interpreter that her daughter had no aspirations for a stage or screen career, indicating that she had only the love in her heart for the man she would one day marry, who had not yet come along. She had boyfriends but no fiancé. A coronation ball this night would complete the week-long pageant, and starting the following day, the contestants would be heading for home, at least those who would not be stopping by the movie studios to discuss contracts.
Under Trump, no doubt, ICE agents, armed, wearing military gear and masked like a bunch of third-world creeps, or Proud Boys or Oath Keepers, some of whom, for all we know, may now be populating that group, would be roaming the Municipal Auditorium during the pageant for possible "illegal immigrants" who might bear tattoos of "terrorist organizations", and would be tackled and thrown to the ground, pepper-sprayed and hauled away bodily into awaiting U-Haul trucks, headed for El Salvador in large transport planes, irrespective of court orders to the contrary, by nightfall the following day, that is, if routines during the previous eight months of this despicable Administration and its despicable Leader, would be holding true to form.
We are constrained to note, speaking of same, some language of the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, for whom, it should be noted, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist clerked in 1952-53, regarding selective prosecution of personal enemies:
"If
the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can
choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the
prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get,
rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books
filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair
chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the
part of almost anyone.
In such a case, it is not a
question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking
for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man
and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work,
to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the
prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to
embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks
for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting
power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the
real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or
governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or
being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor
himself.
"In times of fear or hysteria political, racial, religious, social and economic groups, often from the best of motives, cry for the scalps of individuals or groups because they do not like their views. Particularly do we need to be dispassionate and courageous in those cases which deal with so-called 'subversive activities.' They are dangerous to civil liberty because the prosecutor has no definite standards to determine what constitutes a 'subversive activity,' such as we have for murder or larceny. Activities which seem benevolent and helpful to wage earners, persons on relief, or those who are disadvantaged in the struggle for existence may be regarded as 'subversive' by those whose property interests might be burdened or affected thereby. Those who are in office are apt to regard as 'subversive' the activities of any of those who would bring about a change of administration. Some of our soundest constitutional doctrines were once punished as subversive. We must not forget that it was not so long ago that both the term 'Republican' and the term 'Democrat' were epithets with sinister meaning to denote persons of radical tendencies that were 'subversive' of the order of things then dominant.
"In the enforcement of laws which protect our national integrity and existence, we should prosecute any and every act of violation, but only overt acts, not the expression of opinion, or activities such as the holding of meetings, petitioning of Congress, or dissemination of news or opinions. Only by extreme care can we protect the spirit as well as the letter of our civil liberties, and to do so is a responsibility of the federal prosecutor."
It is precisely this very type of personal vendetta campaign in which, in 2025, Trump's personal attorney masquerading as "attorney general" and her Department of Justice are engaging, activity which we believe ought ultimately endanger if not lead to the forfeiture of her license to practice law, as well as the license of any individual attorney who undertakes such purely selective and vindictive prosecutions, as little could be more dangerous to our democracy and due process. The graduate of the 100th best law school in the country appears, however, to differ, while proclaiming herself superciliously to be a "career prosecutor" to whom not even United States Senators, many of whom, themselves, are former experienced prosecutors at the state and/or Federal levels, may lecture or take exception in the context of the Judiciary Committee with oversight responsibilities vis-à-vis the Justice Department—nothing new, of course, as such oversight has regularly taken place by any vigorous Congress conscientious of its duties for about as long as the nation has been extant. (We state that latter point for the Magaville, USA, residents who have never met a civics lesson they liked and have consequently learned all they know of government and how it works from Magaville's propaganda ministry and whatever extension classes on Fox Prop and News Maximus-Minimus-Mendacious they have time to catch in a given day, resulting in their standards, moral and ethical, by which they judge things generally to be benchmarked by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and latter-day Communist China and North Korea, perhaps a few of the oilier Arabic world states, such as Qatar, or as it is now known, Qatar-Idaho, FIST, thrown into the mix.)
It does not matter one whit that those targeted thus far, with one exception, are Republicans, the strategy of the Administration having been obviously to start with Republicans and work their way down their enemies list to Democrats, each of whom they find distasteful for having either openly criticized His Majesty after having served under him or, in the case of the Democratic Attorney General of New York, because they do not like the fact that she successfully brought a civil case for fraud against His Majesty, for which he owes a fair piece of money.
The very point of the statement of Justice Jackson, while he was Attorney General under FDR in 1940, is that party affiliation or inimical stances to an administration or "subversive" positions in the view of the government, are irrelevant and unethical criteria for determining whether to prosecute a given case, while actually taking aim at a given defendant. Prosecutions, in other words, should start with violations of the law and proceed to find the perpetrator, not start from targeting an individual and then seeking to find something, anything, on which to hang that person out of political spite or selective targeting of one sort or another. That is contrary to due process and fairness under our system of jurisprudence. Were it otherwise, such vindictive prosecutions would be never-ending from administration to administration. Such is consistent with the Justice Department's Justice Manual, section 9-27.260.
In the criminal and civil cases against Trump, he openly committed the alleged offensive conduct or it came to light in the context of other cases being prosecuted civilly or criminally. There was no effort to target him and then go looking for any offense he may have committed. In other words, no prosecutor directed that an investigation of Trump be opened to look for the factual basis for charging him with a crime; rather the factual predicate was known prior to the opening of the investigation further into it.
Parenthetically, to alleviate confusion in Magaville, the New York Attorney General had nothing directly to do with bringing the Manhattan criminal case on which His Majesty was found guilty of 34 felony counts of false accounting entries for a criminal purpose, that is hiding an illegal campaign contribution in the form of payment of money to a woman (actually to two women) to keep in the tabloid's safe, just before the election of 2016, one or more press stories of assignations of several years earlier, only occasionally attending that trial for her own professional reasons. Those Magaville residents, incidentally, who think that was a bogus case should reflect on how they felt about the prosecution for the exact same conduct, absent the state law false accounting entry charge, of former Senator John Edwards which took place between 2009 and 2012, acquitted in Federal court partially and having a hung jury on the rest because it was not shown in that case beyond a reasonable doubt to the jury's satisfaction that Mr. Edwards had knowledge of the illegal campaign contribution in the form of hush money to benefit his campaign. In the Trump case, the evidence showed him on tape indicating his awareness of the payments for hush-money and other evidence showed his knowledge of the false entries to cover it up. The Edwards case, incidentally, involved the same special prosecutor who was prosecuting Trump at the Federal level for his abuses in the District of Columbia on January 6, 2021 and, in Florida, for the retention of classified documents and lying about it after numerous attempts by the National Archives to work out the cooperative return of those documents, the property of the United States Government.
Sorry to be so condescending, Magaville, but you seem not to retain most of the important and distinguishing parts of this basic information, probably the result of your Fox Prop and Co. civics primer work. It all fits together rather nicely when you abandon your Fox infotainment quota for the day and attend instead to real civics lessons for a change, ones you have to read. For those of you not challenged in that latter department, read it to your challenged friend. We can empathize, as there was a time, even here in 1958, when we could not read. We remember well enough the problem, how that limits one's perception of the world, having to rely on what others say and tell you for your informational input, trying to check information given by one person or another for reliability against the accessible pictures to determine the better persons on whom to place such informational reliance, even so, winding up sometimes confused on the details, which is where the devil always is.
We note also that Justice Jackson was one of the lead prosecutors in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal in 1945-46.
Incidentally, when the masquerading "attorney general"—who apparently spent most of her time during her legal education out on the Florida beaches—asked a Senator and former Federal prosecutor whether he had a law degree, even if in the context of the preceding question, appearing to communicate by implication her need to plead the Fifth Amendment privilege while not doing so explictly, nevertheless obstructing justice in the process, she should have properly directed the question, non-rhetorically, to the chairman of the Committee, the first chairman in the Committee's history never to have attended law school, though having served in that role from 2015-19, as ranking member for six years and as a member since 1981, and who is obviously in his dotage at 92—a dual status to be tolerated only in the decrepit latter-day, fundament-oriented, Republican Party. Corn-husking and croc-hunting on the bayous are fine for musical plays, such as "Oklahoma", or as a stand-up routine, such as that of Will Rogers, or, in more recent times, on reality tv, but such corn-pone scripted "wisdom" stripped of the evident scholarship to support, at least a little bit, the folksy act put forth for the dummies in the viewing audience, is not acceptable for the United States Senate when the obvious result is a country which has allowed itself to drift into a fascist state, on the verge of neo-Nazism.
Only Nazi Germany, among the world's
powers through time, has ever previously managed to elect a convicted
felon as its leader, one who led an attempted seditious overthrow of
the lawfully elected government on the notion that it was weak, a thought worth keeping, even for
the corn-pone pushers and hemp-growers from Kentuck' and rasslin'
coaches from Ohia, for anyone who genuinely cares about the country
and what is remaining of its nearly systematically paper-shredded
democracy. For those too young to recall with any clarity 1968, the
reason this song
On the editorial page, "Local Politics Is a Private Affair" indicates that a local Democratic legislative nominee, John Kennedy, had the idea that Governor Luther Hodges might issue a statement that "no major legislation passed in the past 50 years has been introduced by a Republican", in an effort to defeat the demonstrated popularity of his Republican contender, Charles F. Coira.
It interprets it to mean that it was a way of saying to the politically strong Governor: "Let's you and him fight." It indicates that it was not ridiculing Mr. Kennedy or any other Democrat, that Mr. Kennedy's strategy made sense, as the few Republicans who got into the Legislature wound up sealed off in a type of political limbo, thus making it the natural reaction for the majority Democrats to deny Republicans any credit, prominence or influence, persuading the voters that sending Republicans to the Legislature, while possibly respectable, was wholly unrealistic. It finds that it followed that it was natural for local Democrats to forgo a discussion of issues and avoid replies to Republican attacks on the Democratic record, suggesting that Republicans could not get anything done in Raleigh for the constituents.
It finds that while it made sense to the candidates, it did not necessarily to the voters, some of whom wanted to vote for the candidate they desired and resented being told what was good for them, believing that nourishment of the two-party ideal was worth enduring the inevitable retaliation involved. They believed that to accept the practicality of sending only Democrats to the Legislature also represented a surrender to the disadvantages of one-party rule and the perpetuation of those disadvantages.
It finds realism in both arguments and that voters could choose either course with justification as long as both sides presented reasonably intelligent and alert candidates. But it also finds the overall situation bad, leading local Democrats to emphasize their party affiliation rather than their own opinions and records, cutting off discussion which provoked public interest in and consideration of public affairs. It suggests that it would be much better for all concerned were the competition between candidates waged more on the basis of convictions and issues and less on party affiliation.
"Oil Is an Ingredient of Freedom" indicates that some critics had suggested that oil was what Secretary of State Dulles had in mind when he discussed the necessity of "preserving the independence and territorial integrity" of the Middle Eastern nations, and that the fiscal integrity of the oil companies was the real reason behind the movement of the Marines and the 6th Fleet into Lebanon.
It suggests that while there was no lack of hypocrisy in the foreign policy of the country or of any other nation, the threat to the oil supply from the coup in Iraq had increased substantially U.S. interest in the "independence" of Lebanon and it was silly to suggest that the Marines had been sent to prevent the oil companies from losing their investments, which were only incidental. The oil, itself, was all important, for the industries and military forces of the Atlantic allies could not operate without it.
The Soviets, which did not need it, could not be allowed to control it directly or indirectly if the West were to survive. It finds that the Administration could be criticized properly for failing to protect the oil through diplomacy and the use of troops had undoubtedly created new problems for the country in the region. The action had been taken in desperation but the simple argument that "we were just trying to save the oil" overlooked the fact that oil was an indispensable ingredient in freedom, and, by extension, in the independence and territorial integrity of all free nations.
"Finally, All the Senators Sat Down" indicates that Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota had asked to be recognized on the Senate floor. Pennsylvania Senator Joseph Clark, to whom Senator Humphrey delivered about 200 words of praise, ending in the denial that he was praising him, said: "I thank my good friend for his kind remarks," to which Senator Humphrey said that all which he said had been true, prompting Senator Clark to respond: "I cannot refrain from interjecting this point … to say that my friend [has been led] to go further than the facts would justify [in his exercise of Senatorial courtesy]. Nevertheless, I am very happy to have his comment." Senator Humphrey then discounted the disclaimer.
Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois then asked to be recognized and congratulated Senator Clark for what little the Senator had said about the matter under discussion, after which Senator Clark called Senator Douglas a "tower of strength", saying that he was flattered "to have him here during the course of these comments and to engage in colloquy with me. It has been my great pleasure to follow his lead…" in the matter under discussion.
Senators Douglas and Clark, the piece comments, could not have been following his lead because it was the latter who had been the leader.
Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin was the only other Senator present, presiding over the session. The other three had then sat down.
The subject had been bureaucratic delays and political foot-dragging involved in getting on with an effective public housing program for the country.
A piece from the Richmond News Leader, titled "Cork Sinks out of Sight", indicates that slowly, according to the Wall Street Journal, the cork industry was sinking out of sight as new plastics and techniques of packing and sealing had almost replaced the familiar cork stopper and in a few years, if the trend continued, all of the corkscrews would be obsolete, leaving cork to be used only for insulation.
It suggests that apart from a natural sympathy for the poor cork growers of Spain, no particular emotion had been evoked by the news. As recently as 1946, the U.S. had imported 11,000 tons of cork, but it had now been reduced to only about 3,370 tons per year, causing individual growers to claim a high price on what they could sell.
It indicates that it had originally thought to write a nostalgic piece about the old days when the cork stoppers once were placed in the jug of white lightning, but had decided that it was too difficult to obtain nostalgia from cork and so decides to provide one of the only two clean jokes it could remember on the subject.
There had been a passenger train rolling along through the West in the evening and a young man had entered one of the coaches, cleared his voice, and had inquired politely: "Is there anyone in this car from Albemarle County—from Albemarle County, Virginia?" Hearing no response, he thanked the passengers and went on to the next car, repeating the inquiry, and so on through five cars down the line, until finally receiving a response: "Yes, suh, I'm from Albemarle County. Could I assist you?" The young man, at once respectful and confident, said in reply: "Pardon me, sir, I hate to trouble you, but might I have the loan of yoah co'kscrew?"
We don't get it. Guess you had to live in Virginia. If the piece had originated, say, with the Louisville Courier-Journal and had instead involved Harlan County, or from the Winston-Salem Journal, and had involved Wilkes County, we would readily understand. We assume, therefore, through a process of inductive reasoning, that Albemarle County was a place where stills once existed in plenitude. (We know of Harlan only from twice-told tales of our eighth-grade health class teacher who hailed from Harlan and regularly regaled the class, alternating with gym every other day, of its still past. Stories of Wilkes, if memory serves, abounded not only in rumor but in the Journal from time to time. We never had any desire to experience the kick of a mule, any more than we did the wooden hole-drilled paddle in gym, something which we were taught only a damned fool desiring early death, would. We managed to avoid both. Maybe therein there is another joke, but we suppose one would have to have had the quick-kick of the still's mule or, at least, a few swats with the wooden hole-drilled paddle, the holes said to be present to inflict deeper swat and thus pain, properly to appreciate it beyond the mere word play.)
Despite the seeming contradiction conveyed by this story, developed in part from a touchdown-saving tackle scored by a police officer who was the brother of one of the future football coaches, renowned in our time to have a hard paddle, at our eventual high school located not far from the scene of the takedown, we were not reading then, honest Injun, though we make room for having heard of it briefly on the local nightly news and then having reposited it safely away amid the other carefully forgotten data accumulated of yore's lore, some unconscious note retained in our synaptic chemical trails, together with many synopses, perhaps because it took place only about a mile from where we were newly residing, maybe then noted by our papa or older brother—perhaps to conjoin later along the same trails with our memory of one snowy evening in January, 1966, as we walked alone to an intersection a block away on Stratford near enough to Avon
Drew Pearson indicates that while the near-war in the Middle East, the pending summit meeting at the U.N. Security Council, and the prospect of a replacement for Sherman Adams as White House chief of staff might all be important, there was also an important election taking place in Texas, where Henry Gonzalez was the first Mexican-American ever to run for governor of Texas, so proud of his Mexican ancestry that he spelled his name with two z's instead of one. His father was editor of the Spanish paper La Prenza in San Antonio, and he had been a Texas State Senator who had filibustered on immigration. His race for governor was significant, not because he would win, but because of the growing Mexican and black blocs of voters in Texas. The Mexican-American population was approximately 1.5 million and the black population, about one million. A lot of those citizens had not in the past registered to vote, but in the current year there would be an extra effort for them to do so. Mr. Gonzalez had said recently in Houston that, according to some, he did not have "a Chinaman's chance" of winning, but that he did not want a "Chinaman's chance" only a "Mexican's chance". He was facing in the Democratic primary incumbent Governor Price Daniels, running for a second term, as well as former Senator and Governor "Pass-the-Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel, the former flour salesman who had previously sold himself with a hillbilly band accompanying his campaigns, the latter possibly forcing Governor Daniels into a runoff, but inevitably winning in the end.
Another election in Texas involved William Blakley, a millionaire businessman dressed in chaps and sombrero, spending more money to get elected to the Senate than had once William Vare of Pennsylvania. Mr. Blakley owned a lot of oil, a good portion of Braniff Air Lines, and much of downtown Dallas, was listed by Fortune Magazine as one of the 75 wealthiest men in the country, having bought so much television time that during one show from the Rice Hotel in Houston, he had run out of things to say and had to spend the last seven minutes shaking hands, there having been not enough well-wishers present, however, and some had to repeat the process to fill time. He was not worried about the Middle East, a summit conference or the depression, only about labor and blacks. When he had served for 90 days in the Senate as an interim Senator, he had worried only about the Federal Trade Commission, and when Edward Tait had come before the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee, he had heckled him unmercifully, though usually such an interim Senator did not butt into a confirmation hearing, allowing the others on the committee to ask the questions. He had asked Mr. Tait all kinds of questions about the Commission's rights to supervise insurance companies and decide whether their advertising was deceptive. Finally, Senate colleagues had come to understand his concern, that one of Mr. Blakley's insurance companies, Guardian Insurance, had been cited by the FTC for false and deceptive advertising and that Mr. Blakley, himself, had been cited by the Commission. He was now running against Senator Ralph Yarborough, who had little tv money to spend but was visiting almost every town and city in the state.
We note that the Rice Hotel in
Houston was where President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy stayed, albeit
briefly, on November 21, 1963, before they attended a dinner
Joseph Alsop again looks at the situation in the Middle East with U.S. Marines in Lebanon and British paratroops in Jordan, though with neither nation, he posits, having a Middle Eastern policy, "the only way to sum up the unhappy results of widespread inquiry in authoritative quarters". He asks the question: "Where do we go from here?" and says that no one could get an answer beyond "vaguely mumbled prayers that somehow or other, some day or other, the combination of the Marines and special Ambassador Robert Murphy will achieve a political compromise in Beirut."
He indicates that some apparently believed that such was a workable policy for the region, able to compete with the "cruelly shrewd, arrogantly bold policy of Nikita Khrushchev." He finds the widespread belief only to be a testimonial to the Administration's success in "blurring or concealing all the facts that count." He suggests that it was hard to believe that the President had purposely misled the Congressional leaders at a meeting on July 14 when he had first revealed his intention to send troops to Lebanon, but that the President, who left the day-to-day policy-making to Secretary of State Dulles, could quite easily misconceive the choice he had to make when confronted suddenly with a quick, hard decision. Regardless, the misrepresentation of the situation in the Middle East had begun, he finds, with that meeting when the President had said that he had received an "ultimatum" from President Camille Chamoun of Lebanon, threatening the effective abdication of his Government should the Marines not be sent within 48 hours.
In fact, the President had long promised President Chamoun to send troops to Lebanon, provided the Lebanese Government invited him to do so. President Chamoun had only requested that the President keep that promise, warning that the coup in Iraq would quickly destroy the Lebanese Government unless the promise were kept, seeking the answer within two days.
In addition, the President and Secretary Dulles had thrown CIA director Allen Dulles to the wolves by intimating to the Congressional leaders that the Administration had been taken by surprise by the Iraqi coup, leading to the present Senate investigation of the CIA's apparent failure to provide that intelligence.
But in fact, the President and Secretary had long been warned that indecision regarding Lebanon would lead to a coup in Iraq, those warnings having come not only from the CIA but also from the murdered Iraqi leader, Nuri Pasha, from the governments of Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, and from many other sources. While the CIA had not stated that on a particular day, a military coup would be organized, there was in fact no surprise when it finally occurred.
Third, the President had indicated to the Congressional leaders that the American problem was centered in Lebanon rather than in Iraq. While it was true that the President had to make an immediate choice between maintaining his promise to President Chamoun or dishonoring the word of the U.S., that could be solved only as it had been, by sending in the troops when the latter requested it. Nevertheless, the heart of the problem still was Iraq and not Lebanon. Britain and the U.S. had jointly decided not to attack Baghdad and the consequences of that decision had to be faced before the two governments could fill the gap, their present lack of any real policy for the region.
The first consequence of that drift concerned Lebanon and Jordan, with the only potential compromise to be reached regarding Lebanon being the withdrawal of the troops on some pretext, in which case, Lebanon would surely succumb to the pressure of Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, as Lebanon could not survive that military pressure, just as Jordan under King Hussein could not once the British paratroops departed that country. Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf coast oil-sheikdoms, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, were also set to succumb to the next Nasser-led conspiracy.
Under those circumstances, Mr. Alsop posits, only three courses of action deserved consideration as a Middle East policy, defiance of Premier Khrushchev while dealing sternly with Premier Nasser, defiance of world opinion and hanging on barely to the oil in the relatively easily defended Persian Gulf region, or taking the bold and painful measures inside the Western Alliance which might protect the West against the worst effects of the continued progress of the Nasser-nationalism. "Those are the choices. Take your pick."
Tom Turner, a North Carolinian living in Vienna and Paris, had checked foreign publications entering the U.S. during the week and had found certain provocative opinions, one being that Americans were afraid of love, which he regards as a distressing conclusion reached by the talented French author and playwright, Marcel Ayme, as expressed in an interview in Arts, a middlebrow Parisian review. The latter had said that the American "dominates the world, sends rockets to the moon, flies faster than sound … and has invented everything but happiness." He believed that the drama, tragedy and life of the American derived from the difficulty to cultivate tenderness in "the kingdom of Frigidaires and hygiene." He believed that Americans' "true disease is fear. It's their moral polio. I can't propose a vaccine… Unfortunately there are things that even dollars can't buy."
M. Ayme pointed to the large crowds in Times Square on New Year's Eve guarded by mounted policemen, blowing paper horns and shaking wooden clackers, suggesting that it was easy to guess what each one was saying to himself: "A thousand horns! What fun, since we're here together making all this noise!" He found noise to be "a sort of production, and production is the true idol of Americans, served by the high priests of hygiene, efficiency and realism." (It should be noted that while the French for many years postwar, despite the export of French perfume in floral profusion, were noted, presumably primarily for economic constraints, for their eschewing of deodorants and other such normally hygienic Western toiletries and underarm accoutrement, he appeared, by the quoted material relayed by Mr. Turner, to be referring instead to "moral hygiene", also perhaps, vis-à-vis the French and, for instance, the notorious menage a trois of the not entirely bourgeois—mayhaps also deriving ultimately from dire economic straits—, standing in stark Puritanical contrast to that of the Left Bank—which is where, incidentally, viewing from the rear, the Third Cylinder weakness was for its blockage from proper air flow by the under-shrouded oil cooler, one of several Achillic facts not recognized in June, 1940 when the capitulation took place amid the pompously ostentatious strutting paper-hanger's show before the railcar near Compiegne.)
Nicole Grandin, a movie reviewer of Marginales in Brussels, had stated, "Long live the Americans!" in tribute to the American movie musical, which she found was to the Americans what the films of Alec Guinness were to the English, "a national product, a form of humor they have in the blood, and that they know how to push to the limits of burlesque and tomfoolery without stumbling into the many pitfalls along the way."
Canadian Frank Underhill, writing in the Ontario Library Review, in an article titled "How to Defend Ourselves against the United States", had suggested that those who carped about the "cultural vulgarity" of the U.S. had taken aim at the wrong target, that it was actually criticism of the 20th Century. He said that in Canada, there was more "bellyaching" than at any time he could remember about the United States and "its sinister influence upon us and the world in general." He said that the Canadian felt a little overwhelmed by American culture and that Canada's national identity was in danger of being swallowed up, reducing Canada to the role of satellite. But he found that America's cultural invasion of Canada in the form of comic books, jukeboxes and soap operas, and of the world in general, was merely the march of time, that if Canadians persisted in looking on those influences as American, they were "failing to see the most important thing about them. They are really 20th Century… The United States has gone further into the 20th Century than the rest of us—that is all." He found Canada in second place in the rush toward "this homogenized culture, this uniform conformist society", only because it bordered the U.S.
Belgian Albert Gerard, in the Belgian review, Syntheses, had found that the U.S. had plenty of home-grown gadflies who believed there was still room for improvement, stating, "America's most biting critics are found among her own children."
Crapouillot, a Parisian "nonconformist" magazine, had nicknamed the U.S. "Mater dollarosa".
Australian Maj. General A. G. Wilson, CBE, DSO, writing on public relations in an article in the Australian Army Journal, titled "Let the Trumpets Sound", said that Americans knew how to blow the loudest, stating: "All the books and most of the articles on the subject I was able to dig out were of U.S. origin. The U.S.A. has led the field in public relations for many years."
A letter writer suggests that the answer to the editorial titled "Question", appearing July 21, was that a gentleman was a "worn-out wolt" or "a wolt with patience".
A letter writer indicates that the numerous crimes appearing in the newspaper had usually liquor to blame. She had seen reports that several people could go into the local ABC stores and purchase a gallon apiece of liquor for a party—actually the policy being that one person could purchase up to five gallons after obtaining a special party certificate, as long as that person made individual trips at a gallon per trip, even though loading the result into one vehicle. She suggests that there were people at the party who would take their first drink, and then follow it with more drinks, with some winding up as drunks. She posits that those who sold liquor and those who had passed a law making the sale possible would one day have to answer to God. "This rotten stuff destroys homes and lives and leaves many a mother with a broken heart. Taking taxes from whisky is just like taking blood money."
A letter writer hopes that the Civil Service Commission would check carefully anyone recommended to fill the vacancy in the Police Department's traffic division, indicating that the person ought be selected and investigated by the City Council and on no other recommendation, and that there was also a need for a highly recommended person as chief of police and assistant chief. "Let's clear the top ranks."
Framed Edition
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