The Charlotte News

Thursday, July 23, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: We understand that after being locked up, the papa said to his children whom he had chained in the backyard that they could keep the quarter.

We also understand that their collective reply was: "Say, boss, you're in a hell of a fix now. So you can keep the two bits because it won't change our opinion of you anyhow."

Anyway, that's what Tom Joad told us they said.

"When the Sun shall com to L the Point of Contingencie...then the Shadow of the Style shall cut the Horizon in M."--J. Gregory, Posthuma, 1646

Commander Bower rose to say that such was quite one of the contingencies of which he spoke and thanked us for it right honorably.

The Right Hon. Gentleman Mr. Carroll of Cheshire, however, wished to express a different opinion on the matter, that it was determined long before by the slithy toves when, gyring, they gymbled by the wabe near the tulgy wood, and thus there could be no alteration of the course, such contingencies notwithstanding, for the stars being unalterable in their courses and so too the sun around its axis, except by their own resistless movements mutually repulsive of one another by their relative masses and inherent magnetic forces thus providing a perfect balance of power for the nonce until they themselves resolved differently, hence that of the earth also more or less fixed and immutable in its orbit; and so the Commander remains mistaken in his assumption of the contingencies, which could not exist for long in any democracy in peacetime, for the spirit of individualism within the people, by demonstrated analogy for time immemorial, so inured to such demonstrations of adherence to past principle were they, would remain an indomitable check against such post-war abuse. The Wrong Dishonorable Mr. Hitler of Berchtesgaden, per the example provided, would not be envious of the Home Secretary's relative subservient powers: Mr. Hitler instead sought of his own will to manipulate that of others by the devices of coercion, violence, and murder, the omnipotent forces reserved only to nature, to effect change to these familiar, exacting clockwork movements thus explained, which inevitably would, in turn, jealous of their keep, actuate their universal polar forces to effect his removal to the vacuum, as they would any such strutting, poor, egoistic player's force on the stage seeking thus to effectuate that reserved to the impulsion of the gods themselves.

Commander Bower then stood for a moment in contemplation and thereupon found himself in complete agreement with the Right Honorable Mr. Carroll's explanation whereupon he desisted from further dialectic circumlocution on the subject.

Speaking of which, we add to our example of a "true threat" that context and inflection, of course, always must be taken into account to limit even that exception to freedom of speech, the actual threat or "fighting words". For if the speaker in our example had prefaced his remark by saying, "I am going to hit you with a lawsuit. I'm going to hit you if you don't bug off," then the latter statement becomes at very least ambiguous and thus not with reasonable probability a threat and so not amounting to probable cause to effect arrest, unless the latter statement were so inflected, perhaps coupled with a sudden physical gesture of aggression, to communicate to the officer a reasonable belief that the words were threats of imminent touching, thus true "fighting words" giving rise to self-defense. But, by the time all of that analysis was done in the brain, no properly trained police officer would be reactive enough to want to fight usually anyway, and so.

But, caveat to the wise: be careful of your movements, as any slight twitch or raising of the eyebrow might suffice in some cases with some officers as sufficient provocation.

The front page reports that the British were now hot on the heels of the Nazis before El Alamein. The Nazis were collectively yelling, "Run away." Dust storms hid the fighting from RAF prowlers.

Czar Petrillo, head of the musicians union, was at it again, trying to stop the music, this time having stopped the broadcast on NBC of a high school band lest they pay Czar Petrillo the radiator fees he demanded, as well trying to stop affiliated musicians from recording for radio and other non-private play.

Czar Petrillo would have felt largely at home today on the AM dial, where proliferates mostly the gibberish of talk radio possessed of no muse at all save subjective interpretation by idiots wishing to hear the sound of their own voices while anyone with sense laughs.

The Attorney General had sued to obtain an injunction against the orders of the Czar pursuant to laws forbidding monopolistic practices. In other words, the A.G. suggested that you can't buy love and thus may not be forced to pay for it.

Just why the Navy chose to grant full military honors to 29 U-boat crewmen sunk off the coast of Virginia and bury them in Hampton is beyond our understanding. Perhaps, in light of the recent incident in North Carolina where the Coast Guardsman shot the U-boat captain for slapping another Coast Guardsman, there was an attempt to ameliorate the pervading atmosphere of disrespect toward German prisoners.

But, perhaps this gesture went too far the other way. They were, after all, Nazis who had another choice, even if not a pleasant one. They could have chosen either to emigrate or refuse to fight for the Reich and accept the consequences of sure torture and death.

A Federal grand jury had indicted Dizzy Miss Lizzie Dilling for violation of the Sedition Act for printing matter obstructing the war effort.

A better service to the country might have been performed by giving her a choice, indictment or three years locked up at Morganton in the insane asylum where, especially in her case, she properly belonged.

In addition the indictment named William Dudley Pelley of Asheville and George Sylvester Viereck, a couple of other loonies equally fit for Morganton. They, too, would have enjoyed the White Horse gravy with rat on the side.

On the editorial page, one letter writer tells of her tenderness toward her wastepaper basket, not wishing to spoil its otherwise blissful contents with that of her unsolicited, complementary issue of The Vindicator which, she reports, had charged, among other things, that HUAC Chairman Martin Dies of Texas was getting ready to reveal a plot to destroy the United States by Frank Graham and others. Nevertheless, her first emotions at reading the rag overcame her empathy for the poor basket.

Of course, no one could charge Bob Reynolds with libel because, no doubt, it accurately represented the intent of Chairman Dies to destroy the reputations of good Americans out to destroy the "U.S."--that is, United Sycomancers.

The quote of the day was: "We lived for days on nothing but food and water." --W. C. Fields

And so it was. Ah yes. But on the third day they found through adulteration by resort to child-like imagination a way to enhance the spirit of the water.

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