We will not elaborate further on this outdated notion because the simple remedy would have been to integrate the city's hospitals, a radical concept, however, vis-à-vis the general attitude of the population, not only in Charlotte, in North Carolina, in the South, but throughout most of the country, in 1953.

We might note, given that there was a major story the previous day and this date regarding the release of William Oatis of the Associated Press by the Czechoslovakian Government, in combination with this local piece on the hospital, that today, June 19, 2020, it was announced by the Associated Press that it was changing its style policy to usage henceforth of "Black" in reference to black persons, on the theory that "black" is a color and not a person. We shall, however, continue at this website to express the term in the lowercase for the simple reason that to render it uppercase means that "white" would also need to be capitalized for the sake of equality of application and symmetry of language, consistent with the U.S. Constitution. But to start using the term "White" could be interpreted to suggest, when rendered alone, without "Black" as a concomitant, that the writer is impliedly suggesting white supremacy, and so we shall stick to the traditional use of the neutral terms "black" and "white" to refer to African-Americans and Caucasians, respectively, when, that is, the story in point requires for its sense identification of the racial identity of an individual.

We note that many black authors through time have capitalized Black, notable among them having been the late James Baldwin, one of the nation's best contemporary writers in our opinion, and that adaptation was well and good, as Mr. Baldwin had begun his writing career primarily as a novelist, and the novelist's tools permit such creative use of the language to communicate a point, that point not having been in the least offensive or inappropriate coming off the pen of Mr. Baldwin, given the troubled times in which he wrote and the subjects of his writing, being usually concerned with economic, judicial or social oppression of black citizens of the society.

We do not quibble with the Associated Press decision to change its policy, which is, of course, its right to do, but we do question the rationale behind it and find that the reasoning we have explained above appears much more sensible than that expressed by the A.P. (We note that the A.P. piece announcing this change stated that there had been a longstanding controversy regarding whether to capitalize the word "black" in reference to African-Americans. We have been quite sensitively mindful to the issue of race and racial divisions in this country for many decades and have never been aware of any such controversy in that regard—sounding more as a controversy dreamed up on some recent blog or by some contributors to Wicked-pedia, than anything actually obtaining in reality to any pervasive extent in the society. Candidly, if we should see "Black" in juxtaposition to "white" in current times and in general print media, we shall stop reading the particular story, on the assumption that the author of the story is an insensitive individual who places the rights of black Americans ahead of other Americans, just as violative of the precepts of the Constitution as the converse and just as reprehensible, leading only to reaction, not constructive discourse about race or any other topic. Such use of language will also inevitably play to the regressive hand of the Trumpies, armed, self-proclaimed militias, anti-government "Boogaloos" or their like, and generate reaction, perhaps even violence, ultimately. It is a form of reaction stimulative of further reaction. It is also more than a little condescending to black citizens to make special reference to "Blacks", approximating a reversion to the use of "Negro" when that was considered inoffensive but having become, by standards in place since the 1970s, unacceptable as condescending. In fact, the new A.P. policy strikes us as downright uninformed and anachronistic, decades behind the times, as if time has stood still since 1965 or so. It is akin to referring to "Special Children".)

In the end, such conventions of language, as with statues which people pass every day without noticing or contemplating anything racial or particularly symbolic about them, are merely ephemera, changes in which will do nothing to change attitudes in the long run, indeed might even produce backlash of a negative sort, which only serves to widen racial divides rather than heal and bridge them. Beliefs change attitudes over time, and beliefs are changed, not by enforcement, whether of language, particular categories of statuary or other enforced accouterments or artistic artifacts in society, but rather by recognition simply of certain basic principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and in most recognized religions, the central tenet of which is that all people are created equal. Once that concept has not only been spoken but also internalized and understood from early childhood onward such that it is regularly practiced, one need not worry too much about what language one uses to express certain concepts. Enforcement of particular words or absence of same to express ideas is fascist in its origins. Indeed, in these times, we find that those persons who are the most subject to charges of racism in fact, by their beliefs, attitudes and practices, are the very ones who are most sensitive, most defensive and most concerned about such trivial pursuits as the type of language used and statuary presented. They cannot amend their racist conduct or past associations and practices and so seek to demonstrate their "coolness", their expiation of past sin, by adopting certain conventions of prescribed language and conduct for the nonce, while it is "cool", so as to be above reproach in their daily business associations, simply to avoid being fired or losing business, not because it is right and just, an ephemeral reaction which will not last through time unless accompanied by deep understanding through education, not enforcement of certain transitory norms, which ultimately only breed rebellion to and ridicule of those same norms later. When students are in high school, certain words are positively sanctioned and others negatively sanctioned, only to have those students, when they are freed from those restraints, more often than not rebel by using the prohibited words and cringing at the use of the required recitations, to the point, sometimes, of deliberate abuse of the language as a form of rebellion to their formal, albeit limited and often inchoately misunderstood, education. It is the way of things. America was founded in rebellion and Revolution. People the world over and through time, unless held in check by the most rigidly enforced proscriptions through threatened retribution for the most minor trangressions from the norm, tend to rebel against established convention after the once novel becomes commonplace and overly accepted to the point of enforcement as a norm.

That said, we again raise our middle finger to the unknown idiots, semi-retarded, historically speaking, as they appear to be, who tore down a statue of George Washington in Portland, Oregon, last night, just as we raised the one-finger salute earlier to two white young men who were photographed taking down a statue of Thomas Jefferson last week in the same city. All of those idiots ought to be prosecuted for vandalism, as that is what that act is, cheap vandalism for the sake of vanity of those wanting to take advantage of protests to engage in lawless conduct, perhaps even intending to spawn more division and hatred in the society in the process. And any official governmental entity which would tacitly or expressly approve such conduct ought be driven from office at the next election for having expressed contempt for the Founders and thus the Constitution.

As to Thomas Jefferson, one only need examine his memoirs to understand that he was a strong advocate from the time of the Revolution onward, through the remainder of his life, of the abolition of slavery, but also understood that, given the times, it had to be done in a way which would compensate slaveowners for their loss, however repugnant that concept might at first appear to those unthinking persons who attempt to engraft modernity and its mores onto times two and three or more centuries earlier, completely out of context, focusing on one person at a time as if that person existed and grew in an autocratic vacuum while everyone else in the society was "cool" and exemplars of modern attitudes. While some of Mr. Jefferson's suggested solutions to end slavery, which included deportation of slaves, after they had reached majority as freedmen while still living with their mothers, to Santo Domingo, which was willing to accept them and pay for their transportation, would smack of lack of modern understanding of the problem, he was, as everyone, a product of his age and operated on by the forces of his time, as was George Washington, and no one but idiots who failed to understand history in school except as a timeline full of particular events and persons to memorize by rote for a test rather than as a continuum of human progress to learn for the sake of individual progress and understanding of trends and changes of societies and cultures, try to transpose historical figures into present times, with full understanding of present problems or else condemned to perdition as "racist" or "sexist" or some other "-ist". The principles for which these two men and the other Founders fought and gave up very substantial lives of relative luxury, indeed risked their necks to the gallows for treason to the Crown, to pursue and ensure to the future of American society, are the important things. It is those principles for which they are remembered and honored historically through time in this country, through statues, monuments, names and as the Founders and Forefathers of the country. To condemn them is to condemn our democratic form of government under the Constitution.

Anyone engaged in tearing down or taking down, even under local authority, statues of those two men, Washington and Jefferson, are undermining the very fabric of this nation and its principles for subsequent generations to understand. That both were slaveowners is quite beside the point. One can look deeply into history at any historical figure of any race or color or creed and find clay feet of one sort or another which would subject that person to dishonor and obloquy, especially when their ascribed actions or statements are viewed through a narrow, myopic lens, microscopically examined as if a bacterium on a slide in biology class, apart from the temporal context in which those acts or statements arose. No one is perfect, and most people are quite imperfect. That sort of examination serves nothing but to communicate the utter stupidity and self-righteous hypocrisy of those stressing such clay feet. Read Jefferson's memoirs for further understanding.

We suppose next, since President Kennedy once said that no group of men had ever dined in the White House with more collective wisdom than when Thomas Jefferson dined alone, there will come an effort to try to rename any and all edifices named for President Kennedy, and otherwise to besmirch his memory as having aligned himself with a "racist" in giving such a plaudit to Mr. Jefferson.

Such idiots need to take history again and stop rejecting both history and science, which some of these nuts in the streets, of both and all sides of the political spectrum, appear to do, especially evident over the past three months during the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, the present protests and rioting appear to be in large part resultant from the lockdown necessarily produced by the coronavirus pandemic, with some young people having an overriding desire to get a release from home lockdown by taking to the streets and acting like utter fools, on the excuse of celebrating in the process the lives of some very questionable individuals, with criminal backgrounds of a serious nature, who met tragic ends at the hands of very questionable conduct by poorly trained, selected and assigned police, too eager to shoot first and ask questions only later in the name of officer safety rather than maintaining uppermost the concept of public service and protection in policing the streets of the land. All of a piece, whether those idiots demonstrating against the coronavirus lockdown, especially those idiots who came to the rallies armed, or those idiots presently protesting in the streets violently against unnecessarily violent police conduct, all in the wrong. Guns and their proliferation and adoration in the society, to the point of becoming a virtual religion for some with the gun substituted for a deity, over the course of several decades have a lot to do with these consequences.

The systemic problem causing police misconduct is not so much racism as it is that trained tendency in too many police departments across the land to shoot first and shoot fatally, on a hair-trigger, at the first sign of resistance or a willingness of the detained person to escape the scene of a non-serious crime or traffic stop, after the officer has identified the person detained and after, in certain circumstances, they have been determined to be unarmed and not the subject of wants or warrants for violent crimes.

Go home, chill out, and get some rest. Then read some good, solid books on both science and history, re-educate yourselves, and stop watching so much television. Just as with the Wall Street protests of nine years ago, nothing much is going to change for the better as a result of such street protests today, and a year or two from now, no one will even much recall what the current protests were about or the names of the officers or the dead detainees, just as, already, few people recall the death in North Charleston, S.C., of Walter Scott, wanted for nothing and stopped in broad daylight for a simple taillight violation, in 2015, for which the officer who killed him by shooting him in the back as he fled on foot for unknown reasons, today is spending a 20-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to Federal charges of violation of Constitutional civil rights, following a hung jury on the State murder charge. Mr. Jefferson, incidentally, along with James Madison, another Virginia plantation slaveowner, were almost solely responsible for those civil rights, even if, through little or no fault of their own, it took quite a long time for most of their fellow countrymen to recognize them for all citizens. Mr. Scott, we offer, is far more worthy of recognition for a life well-lived than any of the killed detainees whom the current protests and rioting claim principally to honor, though we do not thereby propose to judge them as human beings. But to accord them greater honor than either John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., received after their tragic deaths trounces on absurd ground and dishonors the memories of the more deserving members of society who have died tragically, whether white, black, brown, yellow or any other color. Skin pigmentation is not the issue.

No one, of course, except someone resisting violently by use of deadly force, should die in police custody by use of deadly force exerted by police officers to effect a detention. But it is also very good advice not to resist police physically in any manner, if one values one's hide, during a detention or arrest, no matter how degraded, humiliated and unfairly treated one feels at the time. Let the attorney and the courtroom be the means and forum of expression of resistance, in the form only of legal and factual argument, to police overreaching or mistakes in enforcement, not providing the poorly trained officer with any excuse to whip out his or her hair-trigger final form of enforcement of The Law and Order—which he or she, or his or her training officers, done prob'ly growed up seein' on the tv 30-40 years ago and can't help, therefore, their reflexive response, it being thus ingrained. One viewing of "Dirty Harry" too many, maybe, and the desire, unfortunately, to emulate the corrupt cop with a bad attitude thus displayed as a folk hero of sorts. Pity those officers who prefer image to reality and lack full understanding that actions have consequences on all sides, that the streets are not actually a battlefield in which sides are staked across a barricade, good guys and gals versus bad guys and gals. Don't provoke him or her into their preconceived fantasy games of heroism in the face of perceived threat to life and liberty.

Charlotte did not need a new black hospital in 1953. It needed integrated hospitals which recognized equality of rights for every patient and every visitor. That is in accord with the Constitution, with which Thomas Jefferson had a great deal to do in its conception and ratification, and any idiot who tears down his statue might as well be attempting to tear down the Constitution, needs to sit in jail for a time, alongside the poorly trained and overly reactive former police officers, to consider what they have done and how to remedy their own corrupted thinking to prevent similar acts in the future. Until that is done, such vandals, in our opinion, are just lawless idiots, to be classed in the same category with the Rushing Lamebrains and the Fox News nuts of the extreme right, indeed, are probably one and the same type people at the end of the day, emotively reactive, intellectually impeded by their subjectively staked opinions reached without reason. All of a piece, all in the wrong. They only breed division and hatred, and division and hatred have a tendency to breed more such division and hatred, sometimes lasting generations. Education, late-night burning of the old midnight oil in reading of substantial old books, and not the easy tv indoctrination of modernity, is the only way to stop it and cut the tension on the rope drawn too taut.

During the 1950s, we used to have two of several dogs in our household, one named "Blackie" and another "Whitey", for their coloration, though we had nothing to do with the naming—which also included "Milwaukee", then home of the Braves, and "Bambi", the chihuahua, resemblant to a little deer, though no Boston. Based on our recollection, both Whitey and Blackie got along fine, never imparted unkind utterances to one another or even fought over bones, both equally understanding, apparently, mutual dependence on their Masters for sustenance. They presented probably a good object lesson.

To those who live and thrive too much by their iPhones or their functional equivalent, we commend to you this instructive video and ask you to ask yourselves who is supporting forms of "slavery" overseas today, not 155-200 years ago? The same question might be asked of those self-righteous crusaders against statues who insist on having new Nikes in their wardrobe. We hope, for the sake of intellectual honesty and consistency, you will proceed henceforth barefooted and without any videophones.

"We're Still Waiting To Hear Clark" indicates that during the previous year several witnesses before Congressional committees had stated that former Attorney General Tom Clark, since 1949 a Justice of the Supreme Court, had mismanaged his office, with the latest such witness having been immediately former Attorney General James McGranery, who had testified the prior Friday that the Justice Department had undertaken unusual procedures to dismiss the Kansas City mail fraud case in 1946, when Mr. McGranery was the number two man in the Department. He said that ordinarily all such major cases came across his desk but that he had not been informed of the mail fraud case until he became Attorney General in spring, 1952, when apprised of the fact by a Congressional committee.