The Charlotte News
Monday, November 20, 1950
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page
reports that tank-led American infantry of the Tenth Corps of the
Seventh Division had surged eleven miles down a snow-covered North
Korean valley against little resistance to within two miles of the
Manchurian border at Hyesanjin
British commandos had joined U.S. Marines in the push for the Changjin reservoir in the central mountains. The Marines advanced two miles along the east shore of the reservoir.
South Korean troops fought up the northeast coast under cover of U.S. naval guns, and other South Korean troops advanced up to three miles unopposed in the northwest sector, where the enemy had fought stubbornly until Sunday.
The commander of the Philippines troops, charged, along with the U.S. 187th Airborne Regiment, with guarding a vital supply line, asked that they be returned home as they were not fighting as a unit.
Maj. General Hobart Gay, commander of the U.S. First Cavalry Division in Korea, had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his flight in an observation plane on October 21 to coordinate the juncture of the Division's task force "Roger" with the 187th Airborne Regiment north of Pyongyang. He dropped messages to both forces from the aircraft.
The U.N. General Assembly was expected this date to reject the Soviet peace proposal, which carried several conditions, including admission of Communist China to the body, prohibition of the atom bomb, and a pledge not to try to obviate the Security Council veto in the Assembly—conditions preliminary to Soviet acceptance of Trygve Lie's proposal for a twenty-year peace plan. Nine nations had advocated splitting the Lie proposal into its constituent parts and letting the appropriate committees discuss and evaluate it. The U.S. endorsed this latter plan, and it was expected to be adopted.
The Communist Chinese delegation, en route to New York to participate in U.N. Security Council discussions of the Chinese intervention in Korea, arrived in Prague this date.
Democrats, led by Senators J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Harley Kilgore of West Virginia, were seeking to build up support for Secretary of State Acheson to counter Republican efforts to overhaul foreign policy. Secretary Acheson had said in response to Senator Taft's call for re-examination of foreign policy that "re-examinists" were just like isolationists. The President had assured that Mr. Acheson would remain as Secretary despite Republican demands that he be replaced. Senator-elect Herman Welker of Idaho had joined the chorus of such demands.
The President wanted the short session of Congress, to be called after Thanksgiving, to extend rent control another three months, until March 31, 1951. Under existing legislation, local governments could opt to extend it six months beyond the end of 1950, when, otherwise, it would expire.
House Ways & Means Committee Democrats refused to hear testimony on a Republican-proposed substitute to the Administration's proposed four billion dollar 75 percent excess profits tax on profits over and above those averaged in the period 1946-49.
West German Socialists, opposed to creation of a new German army to bolster Western defenses, won a weekend election victory in the U.S. occupation zone, as voters in two states, Wuertemberg-Baden and Hesse, rejected the powerful Christian Democrats who dominated the West German Government. Based on the victories, the Socialists called for new elections in West Germany.
Robert Hanes, quitting as head of ERP in West Germany, said in New York that Western European rearmament could aid greatly in restoration of Germany's economic position, improving its bad trade deficit and utilizing its unused pool of skilled workers, perhaps a million in number. Mr. Hanes was returning to his position as president of Wachovia Bank in Winston-Salem.
Prices on cotton futures reached an all-time high on the New York Cotton Exchange, with December deliveries opening at prices as high as 44.03 cents per pound. The record had been 43.75 cents in July, 1920. As reported Saturday by Tom Schlesinger of The News, if cotton prices rose above 45 cents per pound, according to Agriculture Department officials, it could mean inadequate cotton to supply the war effort in the event of general war with China or Russia.
Through the Central Valley of California, from the American River in Sacramento in the north to the Kern River leading to Bakersfield in the south, two thousand families had to flee their homes from flood waters damaging property, crops, highways and livestock, the worst flooding in central California history. The rains and unseasonably warm weather had melted the new snow pack in the Sierras. At least one elderly man had drowned in bed in the Sacramento area and another elderly man died of a heart attack while being rescued from his inundated home in Kernville. An estimated 75,000 to 100,000 turkeys, fattened for Thanksgiving tables, had drowned in the Centerville area. There was an expected temporary break in the storms, but no significant clearing was in the forecast.
In Woodbury, N.J., Ernest Ingenito, confessed killer of five persons in his estranged wife's family while wounding with gunfire four others, including his wife, the prior Friday night, had called a hunger strike in jail on Saturday, which he then ended this date. He appeared in a good mood this morning after having breakfast. There were no cornflakes or eggs on the menu, only prunes, fruit juice, coffee and toast. Not even a coffee roll. Since his arrest after a police chase, he had made no further efforts to commit suicide, but was under constant surveillance at the jail.
He needs a better diet.
In Chattanooga, Tenn., police officers sought to enter a houseboat afloat on the Tennessee River while patrons of the boat fled via rowboats to nearby land and took to the woods. About fifty escaped while the police captured thirteen, after finally bridging the gap between the police rowboat and the houseboat. Two women were charged with vagrancy and two men, with public drunkenness. The police were looking for the captain of the houseboat as they had a warrant charging him with selling beer without a city license.
Maybe, this is dedicated to the fifty?
In New Delhi, an ad appeared of a "European businessman" seeking an "attractive widow or divorcee occupying own flat", with the object of matrimony. It added, "Please send full particulars of flat."
The "Our Weather" box tells of warm and cold air not mixing, much as oil and water, causing the warm air to rise, squeezing out its moisture, producing rain or snow, depending on temperatures.
But what happens when, as a weatherman once reported on a Raleigh television station, you have developing a "warm ass of mair"? Where does the cold front go then?
Probably, we would think, to Access Hollywood, to make the rounds for fifteen minutes of fame and book-fortune, making all manner of accusations, mostly, on their face, reckless and absurd.
Ladies and gentlemen, get a grip. Learn either to walk away and complain at the moment to the "groper" or dust away your unpleasant memories and shut the hell up. We don't wish to hear any more from the Gropees or the Groupies who suffered their "gropes" in silence for ten or twenty or thirty or forty years before suddenly having a flash of revelatory enlightenment that So-and-So was actually a "predator" preying on the peculiar susceptibilities of those seeking power through tagging along with fame. We do not wish to hear from media outlets trying to outdo Fox News at their own game regarding these stories—and that includes the Washington Post of late—, all to acquire readers and listeners, as the case may be, in furtherance of the now-sacred god of Infotainment, from among the proletariat most apt to be roped by the sensationalistic lariat.
It is getting old and ridiculous, while serving as great distraction from the troubling behavior of the Groper-in-Chief—whose minions, we suspect, for the typical political orientation of most of those who have been accused of these gropes from many years in the past, have stimulated the accusations, probably in most cases through intermediaries. If you have legal claims, present them and leave the rest of the country out of your mess many years after the fact. It is tiresome and absurd, posits the gropee as superior to the public interest in hearing about things which actually matter to all citizens, such as foreign interference with our elections, about which the Republican Congress, after superficial and short-lived hearings, has ducked responsibility, and whether North Korea can penetrate American missile defenses anytime soon. It should not be the business of news outlets to present accusations of people from many years past regarding such conduct. If it happened yesterday, it is news. If it happened ten or twenty years ago, it is junk filler to sell cornflakes. We care more about the substance of the reports than about who might be reporting them in the news, whether years ago the reporter might have "groped" someone under circumstances to which none of us are privy.
Every one of us, at one time or another, women and men, has probably had an unpleasant experience with someone, either of the same sex or the opposite sex, groping or making suggestions of a lurid and unwanted nature. Your long after-the-fact claims, exaggerated, no doubt, by inevitably fogged memories, highlighting only a specific instance of behavior, forgetting the context and perhaps the gropee's stimulation of that behavior, are as old as mankind. It is why we have statutes of limitation. Grow up and stop trying to drag the nation down into your personal soap opera because you failed to get the part you wanted in the play of life.
There are a lot more important issues at work in our world than "groping". Before long, people will refrain from touching anyone else, whether they know them or not, for fear of accusation of something "unwanted" through hazy memories 20-30 years from now. Moreover, the gropees will begin to influence American politics and voicing of opinion, for fear that sticking one's neck out will wind up prompting an accusation from years earlier of unprovable conduct, taken completely out of context, yet destructive of one's private and professional life and livelihood. Young people, especially, will grow up being afraid to state their minds and their case, will, indeed, not even become aware of an alternative viewpoint to that which is generally accepted by the mass media and its mass audience of brainwashees as true and correct—which is, as often as not, pure junk, corrupt and asinine opinion passed off as "fact", in any objective frame of mind.
"Back in ought-ought, that So-and-So groped me so hard I could not stand up straight for weeks, but being only 40 years old, in my time of youthful indiscretions, I was surely afraid to report it to authorities for fear of reprisal, 'cause they never do prosecute the celebrities or powerful politicians."
We except out, of course, those in childhood and early adolescence from the above, as sexual touching and lurid suggestion is verboten per se when an older person is involved. But most of the sources of these claims are not in that category.
Act maturely in your post-adolescence and seek not fame and fortune at any expense and you might get more sympathy. As it is, these stupid claims undermine and trivialize legitimate claims of rape, incest, and sexual molestation, a serious issue when it occurs.
A kiss, for instance, during preparation for a skit for a USO show and a simulated groping for a joke picture during the same USO tour, occurring 11 years ago, do not constitute grounds for the resignation of a United States Senator or merit any news coverage whatsoever, no matter what his or her political stance may be vis-à-vis the Groper-in-Chief, Fox News, and the other liars who lie when truth suits the best. The real question is why would anyone make such a silly allegation, either contemporaneously or years later. Who is pulling the strings? (We are astounded to read, even in ordinarily respectable and responsible publications, the particular allegation in question here being reported as a picture of a "grope" rather than that of a simulated grope, as it plainly was to anyone who is not blind or simply lying to sensationalize the account for the unwitting. It is this type of "reporter" who ought be summarily fired at once for engaging in libelous claims in reckless disregard of the truth.)
In any event, just refrain next time from going on the USO tour or ask around about what happens during those tours typically with those Hollywood types, if in fact you are that ridiculously naive as an adult.
Stop playing "babe in the woods". It is not a suitable role for an adult, even a young adult.
There is only one Groper-in-Chief who openly invited Russian intervention with our electoral process last year, urging their eavesdroppers on private e-mail servers to release the "missing" e-mails of his opponent, aiding and abetting thereby criminal conduct, despite desperate efforts to change the subject and make it appear that everyone so Gropes. If you cannot win legitimately, seek to drag everyone down to your level of tawdry politics to neutralize the playing field, to make everyone in the opposition appear as bad as you, the continuing theme of the Groper-in-Chief's reality show—just as Mr. Nixon and his coterie of corrupt advertising men sought to perpetrate on the gullible part of the country from 1968 through mid-1974, stimulating all manner of rumors about the Kennedys, those living and those not.
Pull back from this silly mess of underwear, bedroom and backstage moves being paraded before the public by prim and proper nincompoops posing as Simon-Pures and Nice-Nellies, and look at it as a whole. If it were not for a grope or two, none of us would be here. It is ridiculous that adults are watching, reading about it and listening to it, in a world with serious issues to address. We can understand twelve-year olds being upset by this "news", but not adults. We can also understand the die-hard Trumpettes being upset about all the terr'ble lib'rals, but, as we know, they are retarded, do not have the ready means of reflection to understand that our country is based on a Constitution which is one of the most liberal documents ever produced in the history of mankind.
Is Jeanine Pirro, one of the chief nuts remaining at Fox News, who regularly engages in slander, going to be fired by that organization for admittedly speeding in New York at 119 mph, while claiming that she did not know she was going that fast? obviously either a lie or the product of someone who was high on drugs at the time. Is she? That is far worse misconduct than anything of which Charlie Rose and others who have been summarily fired or terminated from contracts of late, have been accused. Her conduct endangers the public. Speeding at 119 mph is reckless driving, if not a felony. Will she be fired?
Or do lying little hellions like her get to do whatever they want without being removed from the public airwaves?
On the editorial page, "The New Parking Authority" praises the five volunteers of the Charlotte Parking Authority appointed by Mayor Victor Shaw. They were well qualified by their prior positions in business and the law, and it advises that the City Council should confirm them forthwith, as much groundwork needed to be done to persuade the General Assembly when it began its 1951 session in January to pass or amend laws necessary to allow the downtown off-street parking plan to be implemented, to resolve one of Charlotte's most pressing problems.
You could just erect a wall around the city and make everyone park on the outskirts and ride the bus into town.
"State Responsibilities" informs that Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina had said that the State Constabulary was investigating all breaches of the peace and would protect all of the state's citizens. He was referring obliquely to the recent Klan violence in Horry County.
While the action of the Governor was helpful, it finds a different kind of leadership necessary from his successor, James Byrnes. A vigorous campaign was needed to wipe out the Klan mentality in South Carolina, eradicating the thinking which made men susceptible to the Klan entreaty to secrecy and violence. Such things as tolerance, understanding, and respect for the law and rights of other citizens were necessary to inculcate in the citizenry. The Governor had a responsibility to lead the way in this regard, with the same oratorical fervor he used to favor states' rights.
When the State failed to uphold the laws, the helpless citizens had nowhere to look other than to the Federal Government for enforcement.
"The Effect of Crime Comics" finds that the way the headlines read, "Comics Cleared as Cause of Crime" and the like, one would think that the crime "comic books" had been boosted to a place alongside Pilgrim's Progress and The Little Red Hen. Yet, no one had ever contended that such "comic book" fare caused crime, rather that it contributed to juvenile delinquency.
It believes that such comic books did contribute to delinquency, as violence was the prime meat of their content.
The piece says that it is against most censorship but found it paradoxical that censors could intrude on the area of sex while leaving alone the publications which glorified violence.
The New York Times had recently suggested that when Mecklenburg County Welfare superintendent Wallace Kuralt—father of Charles Kuralt—urged educational institutions to include in their curricula courses designed to help children and parents understand the responsibilities of parenthood, he was speaking to the point of prevention of emotional disturbances in childhood which projected into adolescent delinquency and adult mental illness.
A piece from the Charleston News & Courier, titled "Byrnes' Opportunity to Serve", tells of Governor-elect Byrnes of South Carolina, accompanied by the budget commission, visiting several State institutions to get a first-hand impression of where State money was being spent. The Governor and the commission would determine which agencies would have their budgets expanded, as requested, and which would be cut. Mr. Byrnes opposed socialism and high Federal spending. He had a lot of experience while in Congress and as War Mobilizer during World War II with budgeting practices.
The piece suggests that because of his national prestige, having been FDR's right-hand man during the war, a member of the Supreme Court for a year and then Secretary of State under President Truman, Mr. Byrnes would possibly exert more influence than any past South Carolina Governor in recent history. The Legislature would be looking for him to lead the way on certain prominent state issues which it lists.
Y'all theya in Charlotte, you grew up with all that South Car'lina stuff around ye south of the borda, didn't ye? It's no wonda.
Drew Pearson finds that the Government was lagging behind in civil defense preparedness, with Russia building up its atomic stockpile to an estimated 28 bombs. The President had not appointed a civil defense chief, with present planning temporarily vested with Stuart Symington's brother-in-law, the inexperienced J. J. Wadsworth. The American Municipal Association had prepared a survey critical of civil defense plans at the Federal level, showing that 150 cities were going ahead with their own local planning. Norfolk, Va., and San Mateo, California, claimed to be 75 percent ready for atomic attack. Meanwhile, such large cities as San Francisco, San Diego, Schenectady and Wichita had hired full-time defense directors, while smaller towns, including Wilmington, N.C., had volunteer directors. El Paso had made a pact with Juarez, Mexico, across the border for mutual aid in case of atomic attack. (They could not do much now with a wall intervening.)
He provides details of preparations for several towns and cities. Many cities and states believed that there was a lack of coordination, however, missing a Federal manual on preparedness.
Admirers of Anna Rosenberg, the first woman to become Assistant Secretary of Defense, wanted her to be appointed as the first female Supreme Court justice. Those admirers included India Edwards of the DNC. General Walter Bedell Smith, new CIA director, had recommended Ms. Rosenberg to Defense Secretary Marshall for the Defense Department spot. Republicans were preparing to attack her confirmation, but she had strong support among the Rockefellers and at R. H. Macy Co., where she had worked as a businesswoman.
He notes that Ms. Edwards was opposed to appointment of Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to the Supreme Court, as she thought that he had loafed too much as Attorney General.
Problems had come up in enforcement of the McCarran anti-subversives act. For instance, former President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela recently had been denied an entry visa to the U.S. because the Government of Venezuela was now a dictatorship, despite the fact that he was trying to organize a Western Hemispheric peace conference to offset phony Communist propaganda for peace. Finally, the State Department had intervened to allow a 30-day visit for this close friend of the U.S. But Sr. Betancourt then closed his house in Washington and moved permanently to Havana.
Likewise, Emilio Suri Castillo, speaker of the Cuban House of Representatives, had been denied a visa because of prior membership in the Communist Party for a brief period in the 1930's. Ironically, he had authored Cuba's anti-Communist law, written at the request, in part, of American officials.
Joseph & Stewart Alsop tell of the President's first press conference after the midterm elections having conveyed a sense of unreality for the fact of the President's irrepressible cheery demeanor during it. For his normality, even cockiness at times, it was hard to believe that he was the commander in chief of the armed forces in time of war, a war which had the potential to become world war at any time.
He had been tersely abrupt only when asked whether Secretary of State Acheson would remain in the post, to which he replied loudly, "Yes," and when asked whether the troops in Korea had adequate winter clothing, to which he responded that General MacArthur had informed him that they did, that the problem exclusively was outrunning supply lines in the fast advance to the Manchurian border. Those were the only two occasions when foreign and defense policy were remotely raised.
The euphoria which had seized the President after his unexpected 1948 victory and return of Congress to the Democrats was, however, somewhat muted, as his broad grin had been replaced by only a half-smile. The Korean war had dampened the prior year and a half of supreme confidence. Those who knew him said that behind the scenes he was desperately worried and at times heartsick.
If that was true, the Alsops suggest, it was a healthy sign. For at such times of great worry, he was capable of demonstration of great courage. He would need that courage in the months ahead, as would the people of the country.
Marquis Childs tells of the building up of the nation's military readiness through expanded National Guard units and universal military training, in addition to the draft. General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, would seek to persuade the new Congress of the soundness of the National Guard-UMT approach to maintaining much larger peacetime forces than ever before.
By the following July 1, the three services would have 2.7 million men, with three million or more being the target for sometime in 1952. National Guard units would be placed at one hundred percent officer strength and fifty percent enlisted strength to help achieve those figures. The four National Guard divisions, however, would still be below combat readiness, instead would form a "readiness reserve". The transition would begin in October, 1952. It was hoped that UMT would also be implemented by that time to the extent of 100,000 18 and 19-year olds to form a part of the readiness reserve.
The design of the reserve would enable it to proceed to combat within days rather than months of training. It would remove, in part, the necessity of maintaining a large peacetime contingent in uniform for an indefinite time.
Robert C. Ruark, in Birmingham, tells of Charlie Boswell, who played golf well and had a duck named Willie Quack, loved to laugh and drink bourbon, and knew all about sports and Broadway plays. He had been a great halfback for the University of Alabama and had played in the Rose Bowl.
He had been a captain in the Army and during World War II, in 1944 in the Ruhr, his tank was hit, splattering shrapnel into his face from which he was blinded. The doctors told him initially that he would see again, but after six months he still was blind. Eventually, all hope was abandoned for restoring his sight.
He refused a seeing-eye dog on the basis that it required one to get up early in the morning to feed it and also occasionally wash it. If it got sick and died, he would be left alone and dependent. He also refused to use a cane.
He was able to shoot golf in the 80's. He worked at a department store managing the buying. He had a pregnant wife and two children, and the pet duck.
Mr. Ruark promises more on Mr. Boswell, whom he finds to be remarkable.
Framed Edition
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