The Charlotte News

Thursday, January 6, 1938

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The fact that probably very few people, under the age of 80 anyway, would find even a slight glimmer of recognition in the names mentioned in the first paragraph of "Line's Busy", suggests the absurdity with which Hollywood gossip and Hollywood gossip columnists carry forth their careers unto this day. Much ado about nothing.

Besides, if the ones mentioned had really known what they were doing, they would have made up something better than a mere snub as the object of feigned humiliation and distemper. Miss Bennett would have instead been accused of calling Miss Kelly a hoer of so many gardens that all the green spaces in L.A. were turned to hoed and harrowed dirt; and Mr. Fidler would have reported that gossip had it that the putative calumny was in fact true of the hoer. Consequently, you never heard of these silly ne'er do well wannabes, snubbed not only by one another but finally by Hollywood and the public at large. They were far too inept at the Big Lie.

"How Dear to the Heart--" tells us of The Frozen Pirate. Didn't we recently see a recent movie based in part on that? Sequels...

Speaking of Big Lies and frozen pirates and Queen Bess's admonition,--which we heard one too many times growing up, perhaps leading us, subconsciously, last night to begin the dictation of this day's editorials, only to stop, as we rarely do in the midst of dictation, and without reading any further, just as the viewable page left off at the fold with, "'Never...'", deciding to wait till today to finish it--, we viewed last night the recent film "The Hoax". It's a well made film and we recommend it, full of the wens and warts of the publishing industry, surely a lesson to those gossipers and the purveyors of gossip who might try anything to get published, by way of portraying the principal tale of Clifford Irving's fabricated "exclusive" and "authorized" biography of Howard Hughes, one primarily culled from old newspaper and magazine stories, coupled with a few inside tales acquired by happenstance.

But we quibble on one point, a point which the film itself appears to perpetrate on its audience, even going so far as to claim in the postscripts,--undoubtedly a true claim, but so what?--that the thing was confirmed by "White House aides": that is, the film claims, though in fact disputed now by Mr. Irving, that Hughes himself, or someone within his organization, gave him supposedly secret and sensitive information on the $200,000 interest-free loan made by Hughes to President Nixon's brother Donald prior to the 1960 election, a loan putatively to be in exchange for political favors to Hughes's TWA. The film also suggests, as confirmed by these "White House aides" of Nixon, (in fact, John Ehrlichman's mere speculation), that Nixon was so concerned by 1972 as to what information the Democrats had with regard to this loan, as well as other Hughes payoffs to Nixon in the interim, potentially impeachable, potentially dogging Nixon politically in the 1972 election campaign, that it became the impetus for the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in June, 1972.

First, we note, however, that the loan to Donald Nixon, as made public by no less a revelator than Drew Pearson, was well known before even the 1960 election took place. So the Irving book, a decade later, had it seen the light of day, offered no new revelations on Nixon and Hughes not already long before published, or at least strongly hinted as to the quid pro quo aspects, in the public press. Mr. Irving did not need someone from within the Hughes organization to reveal this information; not that the thing wasn't true regarding the quid pro quo for favorable treatment to TWA. It obviously was. Nor did Donald Nixon need to intercede with either Hughes or Richard Nixon to effect the quid pro quo, just as Donald Nixon proclaimed he had not in 1960; surely no one need be that naive. The loan is made; the favor is played. Simple as that. No intercession necessary. (TWA itself was notoriously corrupt unto its dying days in 1999. As was Hughes, obviously: a cartoon character much larger than life, one who saw people as widgets, one none too bright, who inherited the foundations of his wealth, and not to be admired--essentially a fool full of eccentricities supposedly remarkable of genius, but in the instant case, at least, probably only remarkable of the madness of megalomania emblematic of an egoistic prima donna assoluta, the sure mark of the spoiled fool, not genius, which beset him all his spoiled days.)

Second, White House aides of Nixon, save perhaps John Dean, are hardly to be trusted to provide the public with the straight story on Watergate in their latter years, any more than they were trustworthy on the topic in 1972. It is doubtful anyone other than the burglars, Nixon, and John Mitchell knew of the break-in's purpose, over what and why they were willing to risk the huge scandal it became, to go so far as to burglarize the opposing party's headquarters at a time when national polls showed Nixon overwhelmingly leading presumptive nominee George McGovern in the fall election. Mr. Liddy claims the bounteous object was no more than a list of names employing a call-girl ring, presumably to try to embarrass the Democrats in the Congressional elections. But just what the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, former Kennedy aide and advisor, Lawrence O'Brien, would have been doing with a list of that type and maintaining it at the Democratic National Committee headquarters is a bit hard to understand; more likely a list of Republicans employing the call-girl ring. And with Ways & Means Chairman Wilbur Mills's Reflecting Pool, or rather Tidal Basin, episode hard on its heels, it would appear that the Democrats needed little help from Mr. Liddy and company at exposure of their hidden vices. Moreover, there has never been evidence that Nixon personally, expressly approved in advance specifically the Watergate break-in; though tacitly he did by expressly approving other similar fare, such as that of the Brookings Institution, in accord with the approved overall plan outlined in the Huston memo of 1971. And, of course, it all led back to the Bay of Pigs, as Mr. Nixon himself enigmatically stated privately on the tapes; which was why he needed to employ the CIA to stop the FBI from further investigating the break-in at the Watergate, that bit of attempted intercession becoming the smoking gun leading to the Articles of Impeachment re obstruction of justice and his immediately ensuing resignation, the quitting by the man who never quit, to avoid a trial in the Senate, one with a foregone conclusion.

In any event, clippings from the public press of 1960 on the Hughes loan to Donald Nixon were undoubtedly not the object of the Hunt, leading to such a politically risky break-in. It was clearly something thought to be more deadly to the fame and fortunes of Nixon and his band of merry warriors than either that or a list of names associated with a call-girl ring, whether Democratic names or Republican names, (assuming "Nixon" wasn't among the names).

As we have invited before, you figure it out. But in so doing, bear in mind that it occurred just 46 days after the death of J. Edgar Hoover and the shredding of whatever Washington gossip, the vaunted gossip columnist maintained in his notorious "secret files".

Whatever the case, despite that glaring flaw in the film, "The Hoax", we nevertheless still recommend it as an elucidative and entertaining exercise in the pitfalls and pratfalls inherent in the search for truth, and that even such a hoax as the one perpetrated deliberately by Mr. Irving may reveal a certain kind of hidden truth nevertheless--though we would not recommend it as a fit exemplar for practice, especially as the temptation of the emulator would be, like as not, for absence of a handy bad guy, to find a mark innocent upon whom to perform one's dramatic hocus-pocus hoaxsterism; Mr. Irving, after all, as did the Watergate burglars, went to prison. Theft, or attempted theft, invasion of privacy, and lying to obtain power and money, are no more than piracy, no matter their ends. Makes for fun film fare sometimes, for the comic absurdity of the attempt, but as a reality, there are ways to get at truth which do not just happen to have in the offing substantial ill-gotten gain for the would-be truth-teller, in the end a corruption of whatever small "truth" in the mirror of reality the money-grubbing teller has to tell, whether against a bad guy or an innocent. Truth, for its human messenger, inevitably may never be entirely pure and untainted, but that is not to throw the baby out with the wash basin's discards, and suggest that the essence of it therefore cannot be got at without deliberate deception, especially as practiced by a private party, rationalizing the deception.

Mr. Ervin and his comrades in the Senate were not perfect; but neither were they cheap burglars in silk stockings in the middle of the night rationalizing a crime on "national security", a crime undertaken purely for partisan political gain, subverting democracy and the Constitution in the process. Nor were they murderers, come to play Brutus in the vaunted hope, at the final twisting of the sword with relish, of noble soliloquy for the ages; one such as: "His life was gentle, and the elements/ So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up/ And say to all the world 'This was a man!'" No, not likely, though men they were.

We make note also on this, the Day of the Epiphany, that the heading, "We seek truth, that we may follow it," first appeared above the January 5 column. Whether it had been used prior to 1937, we don't know, but our spot check of the 1937 columns preceding late September do not show it, nor does it show up in the fall of 1937. Whether that suggests that Cash was the person responsible for its inclusion, we also don't know. But it would rest sympathetically with his use of the paraphrased quatrain from Omar Khayyam above the "Moving Row" columns of his earlier career.

The rest of the page is here.

What gives promise of being one of the liveliest, hair-pulling scraps in many a moon is Miss Constance Bennett's, the movie actress, suit against Hollywood gossip broadcaster Jimmy Fidler for $250,000 damages. Mr. Fidler told his radio audience that Miss Bennett had snubbed Miss Patsy Kelly, a movie buffoon who was working in a picture with her, so loudly that it could be heard all over the set. Miss Bennett said it wasn't so, and asked for a retraction. Miss Kelly said it wasn't so, and asked for the same. Mr. Fidler said nothing.

But, alas, exciting as the spats of these glamorous movie folks may be, we can't stop to talk about them. We haven't time. We're too busy trying to decide if Miss Dorothy Thompson, whose appeal is primarily, but not exclusively, to the intelligence, has the right dope when she maintains in her column today, stoutly enough to be convincing, that (1) it was investment in durable goods that was reducing unemployment, until this recession set in, and that (2) it is governmental policies which are acting to shut off investment. She seems to have the goods on No. (1), but her bill of particulars in support of No. (2) is a little weak.

And while we're on the subject of columnists who would save the country, Mr. Walter Lippman is guilty, we believe, of a merely captious criticism of the President's message to Congress. The theme of Mr. Lippman's discourse is indicated by this excerpt:

Well, let's make an investment, just to please Mr. Lippman. Shall we buy a super-farm and raise cotton? No? Shall we erect a textile mill, and add its productive capacity to the over-sufficient capacity of that industry within its present markets? Shall we put up a plant to make machinery for General Motors, or does General Motors' current inability to sell all the automobiles it can turn out with its present machinery darken that investment prospect?

It would be suicidal, on the face of it, for either industry or agriculture to gear itself up overnight to a basis which would increase the country's real income to 100 billions annually. There must be, first, an expanding market, which is precisely what the President is striving for. Whether he is going about it the right or the wrong way, is dev'lishly hard to tell, but that he is going about it in the right order any prudent investor would have to admit.

In our youth when we used to hide out in the barn to read the paper-backed books accommodatingly furnished by the Messrs. Street and Smith at 15 cents a throw, a favorite was one called The Frozen Pirate, by W. Clark Russell of blessed [indiscernible word]. Trash? Anything else, we think now, though our parents in those days lodged that blanket indictment against anything that came in paper covers. A roaring adventure tale, wherein a young man cast away in the deepest Antarctic comes upon a fifteenth century Spanish galleon frozen solid in the ice with the crew standing about the decks and cabins, silently encased in ice and dead four hundred years. By great good luck, he gets a fire going in the stove, and thaws out the pirates--for such they were--and then, did Old Ned pop! We can remember the breathless delight of that book yet.

What set us in mind of it is the announcement that a St. Louis University scientist has succeeded in utterly suspending life by a temperature 300 degrees below zero, and then restoring it again. Are we trying to tell you that probably, after all, the tale of Old Russell was pretty plausible? Of course we aren't. We are merely chronicling a scientific fact--and the fact also that it reminded us of what we still remember as one of the most exciting books we ever set eye into.

President Roosevelt ought to be learning, as good Queen Bess discovered some several hundred years ago, the uses of procrastination. "Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today," is a good enough rule provided it is qualified by two others: "Be sure you're right, then go ahead;" and, "All things come to him who waits."

Thoroughly trounced on the court bill and obstructed in his intention to liberalize the Supreme Court, subsequently the President has seen two Justices resign in three seasons. Both were out of the right wing, the wing that only McReynolds and Butler, sometimes with the aid of the roving Roberts, remain to uphold. The numerical advantage of the conservative bloc has changed into a mortal block for the liberals, and to all practical purposes the court has been unpacked without upsetting the orderliness of procedure that is the appearance of justice.

Furthermore, this change of complexion has taken place without any impairment of the dignity of the court. The single mortifying instance, indeed, came about at the President's hands, when he named Hugo Black to take Van Devanter's vacant seat. And, as luck would have it, he has an opportunity in Justice Sutherland's retirement to atone for that admitted mistake by appointing a truly meritorious man, of which kind there are half a hundred available.

We believe it was the late Senator Bronson Cutting who said one day when he was stung to the quick by a shaft from the right, lethal side of Senator Carter Glass's mouth:

Or words to that effect.

And this was a singularly penetrating observation Senator Cutting made, if it was Senator Cutting. The whole country has a warm spot in its heart for Senator Glass, who this week celebrated his 80th birthday. The whole country esteems one of its few elder statesmen. The whole country sets a great store by his long legislatorial experience, especially in matters of finance, by his character and courage, which come pretty close to being the same, and even by his acrimony, which is a thing to dodge but is Glass in action, nevertheless. The honors this Virginian has received in the course of his long and useful career are not a circumstance to the honored place he holds in the regard of his countrymen. And yet...

And yet Senator Cutting was right, in a measure. Senator Glass's philosophy of government has become second nature to him, and he probably would not revive it if he could. Safe in his own self-respect and aware that his views bear the hallmark of an accredited and beloved sage, he has taken these latter days the place of a purely negative factor in the government of his country. It is his good fortune to be still a force at 80, but a force for things as they were, not as they ought to be.