The Charlotte News

Monday, November 22, 1937

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: "And Where Was MAFLO?" tells a story eerily remindful of Mr. Nixon’s Congressional aid lent the doleful fellow, one of his financiers who got the slush-hush--"I know where we can get a million"—fund going, who lost his $4,200 playing cubolo at the San Souci in Havana in April, 1952, as reported by Washington Merry-Go-Round in October, 1962.

We told you Harley and Dynaflo might show today.

And to supplement, and oddly fit, the puzzle of this date’s page, we offer this:

What is it? Answer, later. (Should you know: not a word!)

The puzzle incidentally is an easy one. Just remember Cinna, the poet.

Wr-rink.

The People Petition

One of our favorite reading spots is that portion of the Congressional Record which is concerned with petitions presented to the Senate. For instance in last Wednesday's issue we find this gem:

He (the Vice President) also laid before the Senate a letter in the nature of a petition from Charles G. Rennar, of Jersey City, N. J., praying for revision of the monetary system by increasing the amount of money in circulation to the total value of the national wealth...

Mr. Rennar's got something there. It reminds us of a line from a song that used to be popular: "The rich get richer and the poor get"--paper. Anyhow, thanks to Mr. Rennar for his suggestion, and now we shall pass on to the next petition:

"The Vice President also presented a resolution adopted by the Queens County Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of Jamaica, N.Y., favoring the enactment of Senate Bill 153, to prohibit the trade practices known as block booking and blind selling in the motion-picture industry..."

Now, however did that happen? We thought the White Ribboners were devoted wholly and entirely to putting down the Demon Rum and the lesser imps of beer and wine. But here's a chapter all hot and bothered about trade practices in the movie business and demanding that they be prohibited. Ah, well; sometimes we don't care so much about being a Congressman.

One More Uncertainty

Washington Merry-Go-Round, which has gradually matured from a keyhole column to a remarkably reliable report of inside Washington--the President himself has acted on the strength of facts it dug up and brought to public attention--flatly predicted yesterday that there would be no tax revision in the special session of Congress now going on. Indeed, the story goes that though all hands are ready to amend the undistributed profits tax, no bill to that effect has been prepared and the President is in no hurry for one. Anytime before March 15, when income tax returns must be made, will do.

The strenuous exception which has been taken to the undistributed profits tax is that it compels companies to pay out their earnings in the form of dividends or to pay certain taxes upon them. The distribution, according to the terms of the law, must be without strings to it and must take place in the taxable year, which for most companies means before December 31. Plainly, therefore, when December 31 rolls around and this law is still on the books, business men are going to be in a dilemma as to whether to pass out the last penny of their profits--"hot" money by the New Deal's definition--or to take a chance on a new tax law made retroactive to the calendar year 1937.

Thus there will have been created, needlessly and inexplicably, another waxing and upsetting uncertainty. It is not, we feel sure, the sort of thing that group of leading economists had in mind when they advised the administration to "do something to encourage business."

Site Ed. Note: We admit that we first interpreted the little squigglies after "keyhole" to be "dolusan", and so first uploaded the piece yesterday with that bunch of squigglies in its place. Just what "dolusan" should mean, we had no idea, never having before seen it ourselves. But the absence of a particular ordering of letters, even in the most thoroughly unabridged of dictionaries, didn't always prevent Cash from making occasional neologistic combinations into word forms, such as "moompicter", which we ran across middle of last year, and, for the life of us, had no idea of its meaning as well; that is, until, like a thunderbolt traveling at mach III, or even V, it suddenly struck one day last December. And when it did, it proved very moom to us, even picaresque.

So, then, as to "dolusan", we thought we shan't give up the ship so simply, merely because it proved difficult of hindsight and imagination in foresight to conjure. And, sure enough, upon consulting trusty Knight Oxford, we found the obscure word dolus, meaning, not as you might expect, some latinized form of dolor, but rather that which usually causes dolor, fraud or deceit, albeit coming in two forms, dolus bonus and dolus malus, the first being deemed by the law harmless or even justifiable deceit, justifiable when deceit is used to unwit a thief or traitor, for example, the latter being the bad form, material lies, lies, lies. (But query, parenthetically, whether in utilizing dolus bonus, one is not tempted for the sake of chicane machination and intrique, the thrill of the chase as it were, or acquiring donus bonus, political booty, the hissing sound as 'twere, to spot down the object of the hunt and label it at will that which is convenient to one's subjective ulteriors, the mere disagreeably liberal Liberal one decides then expediently to label instead a communist Commie, and should the Commie deny it under the trap of oath, then also a perjurer of the pumpkin the Bolshie Bolo becomes, in the bargain. --Pardon our digression.) Also, dolus, we discovered, still with trusty Knight Oxford, must be distinguished from culpa, utilized in the common law to mean blame for negligent, as opposed to intentional, conduct; that is, when the law, through the beginnings of the last century, still insisted upon utilizing a lot of arcane latin phraseology, less so as the years have diminished the preponderance of classical education. (Now, we encounter many young lawyers who simply insist on saying "Cool" for every bonus or even bono thing. Sometimes, they say nothing, just instantaneously crank up their cellphones and excitedly tell their friends.)

Well, so, what would be "dolusan" extended out of the root dolus? we pondered for some minutes. For "-an", as a suffix, means "of or belonging to" the root object, as in partisan, meaning of the Party, very much so in fact. Then, suddenly, after some degree of deliberate cogitation, we decided we had hit upon it, the brass ring, that is: a "keyhole dolusan" was what "Merry-Go-Round" had been, though of which variety, bonus or malus, had been left for us to divine by the witch of alternating compass; and, now, adding by dovetailed complement to the credit of our assumption of the squigglies, the next phrase had it as becoming something more respectable, perhaps even more than the moompicters.

Then, later yesterday, not yet satisfied with our interpretation, we looked at those squigglies again, as sometimes a fresh viewing, when the eyes have rested from the confusion infused to the brain by all the diffusion suffused in the nexus of the print surrounding a set of them, an individual bunch of little squigglies suddenly make their appearance as a whole and quite common part of the English language--order engendered from chaos, the gaping chasm of discontent.

This, then, was our experience on Thanksgiving night, as we suddenly discovered we had been a Turkey all day, and the word was simply as it appears above.

We still, however, like "dolusan". Ergo, we just might use it ourselves, sometime. If we do, you will know it by its dolorous color--verdure.

Note to Santa Claus*

Dear Santa:

We see by the papers that this Friday evening you will arrive in Charlotte by reindeer express from the general direction of the North Pole, and that there will be, properly, a parade in your honor. The time of your arrival has been fixed at 7 o'clock--7, that is, in the evening.

Now, Santa, you know, if your reindeers have forgotten, that all good little boys and girls are in bed by 7 o'clock. You've been telling them, vicariously, for weeks already that they should be. And according to the solar conditions, prevailing locally, Santa, with which a resident of the North Pole may be unfamiliar, the sun at this stage of the year goes early behind the hills, so that 7 o'clock is really night time, and the blustery winds come out of hiding and nip the ankles and the ears of small travelers late abroad. November's 7 o'clock, Santa, is like May's 9 o'clock; and by 9 o'clock at any time of the year the diminutive folk from whom your most satisfied clientele is drawn are all abed and should be.

It would be a great disappointment to these excited objects of your thoughtfulness, dear Santa, if by their zealousness in observing every precept and their seasonal responsiveness to parental suggestions they should miss this celebration in your honor, all because it is to take place at a time when, by the very rules issued in your name, they are required to be either snug in bed or at least within doors. If the hour cannot be changed to an earlier, dear Santa, we are very much afraid that most of the little ones will have to be kept entirely in ignorance of your visit.

Site Ed. Note: We should note that, theoretically, there is no time at the North Pole, just as at the South Pole. There is also no time zone. So, should we live there, and not first freeze to death, would we not age? Perhaps, we shall have to consult with Admiral Byrd on that one.

And Where Was MAFLO?

A bird, with a yen to get some money without working for it took $400 to one of the booky joints and started playing the ponies. Soon he had $00, and he squawked. MAFLO, the guardian of our morals and the preceptor of our behavior, swung into action.

This is one of the characteristics of MAFLOISM which stultify it and all it stands for. Obviously, this fellow is no more sinned against than sinning. He was an adult. He knew the odds. If the bookies hadn't got his roll, somebody else probably would have. In any case, it's a pretty piddling sort of cause, this of keeping suckers and their money from being parted, that MAFLO has taken up. If the "best elements" which compose that organization would like to render comparable service to society, why don't they take out after the real crime with which the city is overrun?

And as for what real crime is, here's a sample. During the trial of a Negro in police court for assault with a pistol, the graver charge materialized that he had assaulted an eight-year-old colored girl and that she is now suffering from a venereal disease which is said to have developed shortly afterward.

And did the father of this injured child run to MAFLO and bespeak its advice and assistance? Has MAFLO's executive committee called a meeting to consider this outrage against a human being and to throw the weight of its influence and its legal talent behind the prosecution of the malefactor? More important still, has MAFLO given perturbed thought to the conditions in which such crimes are bred?

We all know that it hasn't and that it won't, unless provoked into it. It's too busy breaking up bingo games.

Making Huey Life-Like

Louisiana is going to put up a monument to its late patron demagogue, Huey Long. Its base will be a 30-foot shaft on which will rest a 12-foot bronze statue of the one-time cake flour salesman who became a governor and a solon.

Well, if Huey is Louisiana's idea of a hero and a famous man, we can't help it. Anyhow, Huey was a politician, and it is probable that politicians who owe their rise to him have appropriated the wherewithal to build the monument and voted the authority to place it in the grounds of the capital. But the monument, even so, will need to be more than just a figure of a man on top of a shaft. It will need detailed embellishment, symbols of significant incidents in Huey's career.

By all means there should be upon it somewhere a notary public's stamp to show how Huey got out of going to war by pleading that he was a state official. One of Huey's eyes should be black as a memento of the washroom at Sands Point, when for once he got what was coming to him. Huey's pockets should be bulging with currency, which was the liquid and untraceable form in which he accepted and kept his--er--cut of public moneys. And Huey should be cast in two poses, one standing out defiantly and insulting his betters, the other running away from retribution as fast as his legs and his short breath would carry him.

And most appropriate of all is it for the figure of Huey to be surrounded almost to the point of completely concealing it, by a bunch of armed toughs. In fact, Huey just won't look natural standing up there all by himself and unafraid.

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