The Charlotte News
Tuesday, April 17, 1956
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that Republican Congressional leaders had called on Democrats this date to rally behind the President's new soil bank program if they really wanted to help farmers, in the wake of the President's veto of the farm bill the previous day, a bill which had included the soil bank proposal but which had also included the Administration-opposed return to fixed 90 percent of parity price supports to replace the Administration-favored flexible price supports. The Republican leaders had issued the call at a press conference at the White House following their weekly meeting with the President. Democrats, meanwhile, reacted coldly to the proposal. Senate Minority Leader William Knowland of California and House Minority Leader Joseph Martin of Massachusetts predicted that the President's veto would be sustained in both houses, requiring a two-thirds majority to be overridden. Mr. Martin said that there was a possibility that a majority of House members would support the soil bank proposal, and Senator Knowland said that the Senate could pass such a bill within a week or two and that he believed many Democrats would support the President's position once the "temporary flurry" over the veto had passed. The President had said in his radio and television broadcast the previous night explaining the veto that he would resist any attempt "to make the farmer and his problems a political football" and that he had no choice but not to sign the bill into law because it was "a bad bill" which would have hurt more farmers than it would have helped in the immediate months ahead, and in the long run, would have hurt all farmers. The soil bank program would pay subsidies to farmers totaling as much as 1.2 billion dollars per year for taking land out of production which normally would be planted with crops already in surplus. The President, in his veto message, had added a new feature to the program which he said would provide farmers an extra 500 million dollars during the current year.
In Palmdale, Calif., it was reported that several hundred persons, including the largest gathering of press of its kind on record, had witnessed the Lockheed F104A Starfighter, a manned missile, flying more than 1,000 mph, the fastest an aircraft had ever flown before a large audience. It was also the first public showing of the new craft, which Air Force chief of staff General Nathan Twining had called "the fastest and highest flying fighter anywhere in the sky." The exact speed of the plane remained a secret. The pilot of an F94C jet fighter reported that he had been flying 500 mph when the pilot of the new craft, Herman (Fish) Salmon, was heard to reply over his radio, "I am doing better than twice that fast," the basis for the estimate of the plane's non-disclosed speed. Two models had been flown, the original XF104, powered by a Curtiss-Wright J65 jet engine, and the production model F104A, which had a lighter and more powerful engine, the J79 manufactured by General Electric. General Otto Weyland, commander of the Tactical Air Command, announced that his command would be the first to receive the fighter, and that the first plane soon would go into operational squadrons, though the first units to receive it had not yet been determined. The most striking thing about the new fighter was its resemblance to a missile, largely because its wings were so short and stubby that they hardly appeared to qualify as airplane wings.
In Atlanta, singer Nat King Cole had canceled an appearance in the city, telling the promoter that he would not appear there "for a million dollars". The promoter had talked to Mr. Cole the previous night in Winston-Salem, saying that the singer had told him that he was "afraid to come to Atlanta". The promoter said that he had stated to Mr. Cole his assurance that the Atlanta police chief was going to provide adequate protection during Mr. Cole's visit, with the promoter quoting Mr. Cole as having said in response: "It's not a matter of police protection. Someone might try it again, even with a hundred policemen on hand," referring to the onstage assault by six men during his performance in Birmingham, Ala., ten days earlier. There had been an active police presence in Birmingham at the time of the performance, after there had been forewarnings of the possibility of a disturbance by those objecting to the presence of a black entertainer. The six men had been charged with assault with intent to murder, after knocking down Mr. Cole, who was not seriously hurt. The promoter said that Mr. Cole had told him that he had been to Atlanta many times previously and would like to visit again, but that at present, he was not in any shape to go through the ordeal again. The promoter said that he understood that the rest of the entertainment troupe normally traveling with Mr. Cole would perform in Atlanta, and stated that the program would go on without Mr. Cole, with refunds available to those wanting them. Mr. Cole had received an ovation from an audience of about 6,000 persons in Winston-Salem the previous night, and there had been no incidents. He said that he would go on to Louisville for the next performance.
In Gastonia, a foster father, a 21-year old farmer and textile worker, was being held without charge in Gaston County jail this date in connection with the alleged beating of a 14-month old girl at their home the previous night. A detective of the sheriff's office said that the man had told him that the child "was mean and wouldn't sleep", that she was waking him up at night, had torn up his newspaper and books every day, and was always wanting her mother to hold her. The detective recounted that the child's mother had taken her daughter and run to a neighbor's house after the beating incident, and was then taken to the doctor's office and to a Gastonia hospital, from which she had been transferred to Charlotte Memorial Hospital, which had described her condition as critical.
Dick Young of The News reports of an operating surplus of nearly $66,000 having been shown by the Charlotte Coliseum and the David Ovens Auditorium during their first six months of operations, the complex having opened the prior September. The total gross income had been nearly $122,000, with operating expenses of nearly $56,000. The expenses had included repayment of more than $13,000 advanced to the Authority by the City Government for operations until revenue began flowing. The City had appropriated $20,000 for the purpose, but the remainder had not been needed. Other details of the accounting are provided. The figures had been supplied by the chairman of the Auditorium-Coliseum Authority, indicating that total attendance in both buildings for the period had been 366,000. An official audit would not be completed for several days and the figures had been based on a report from the Coliseum office. Following approval by the people, the City had issued a 4.7 million dollar bond to construct the two buildings, and because those were general obligations of the City, the indebtedness was not reflected in the statement.
Following the proposal the previous day by City Manager Henry Yancey to save money by adding wings to each side of the City Hall Square rather than purchasing new land for a new building, a proposal was made for placing the planned Health Center in one of the wings, eliminating the necessity for expenditure of funds to purchase another piece of property for that project.
Harry Shuford of The News reports that on Beachwood Road in the western outskirts of the city, six nearly new houses were suddenly in the way of progress, conflicting with the planned route for the new Highway 29 bypass. The houses had been built in 1954, and the current residents had occupied them in October of that year, after which the State Highway Department had informed the owners that they were in the middle of the new right-of-way for the bypass. Four of the six homeowners had already turned their property over to the Department and some had moved out. The other two were still undecided as to whether the take the Department's offer of compensation or wait and have the property condemned and thus appraised for "just compensation" under the Constitution. Meanwhile, bulldozers and cranes were preparing huge columns for bridge supports over adjacent railroad tracks and some of the columns were in the middle of three backyards of the houses, one of which had been turned into the office for the project's resident engineer. The Department was still busy trying to purchase the other houses in the path of the roadway, but the people on Beachwood Road were having to move before the others because the work on the structures, such as the overpass of the railroad, preceded regular grading. The new houses being condemned would be sold to anyone who wanted them, either to move them to new locations or to raze them for their materials.
In Lexington, Ky., a woman paid $3.40 to file suit against the General Telephone Co. for a quarter, which she said she had deposited in a pay telephone the prior December 14 and had received no service in response, following complaint on which, the company had refused to refund her quarter.
In Monte Carlo, it was reported that
the diamonds, lions, limousines and other wedding gifts sent to
actress Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III, scheduled to be wed in a
civil ceremony the following day, would easily reach the million
dollar mark in value, that when all the gifts were in, they could
open an adequately stocked jewelry store, a used car lot, an antique
shop, a liquor store, an art gallery, zoo or specialty shop for
oddities. The jewelry already was being valued at $300,000, including
$150,000 worth of matching baubles from the citizens of Monaco and a
$40,000 diamond and ruby item
We are looking through
On the editorial page, "Farm Bill Got Treatment It Deserved" supports the veto by the President of the farm bill, which would have reimposed 90 percent of parity price supports, eliminating the Administration's flexible price supports passed by the prior Republican Congress. It finds that it would have encouraged surplus production and produced a dual formula for determining parity, with multiple price systems for wheat and rice, while coupling with it the desirable soil blank program favored by the Administration, designed to cut surpluses, with every imaginable incentive, however, incorporated to encourage them.
It finds that it had resulted from the desire to win votes by politicians from the farm-belt at the expense of sound economics, and that it would have been unthinkable to allow the bill to be enacted into law. It would have also cut the ground from Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, who had opposed the bill, plus two-thirds of the Republican Party, including the Republican Congressional leaders.
Despite the President's appeal the previous night in his radio and television broadcast explaining his veto and despite his hasty adjustments under existing law to "improve farm income" at present, the President had exposed himself to direct political criticism, as Democrats were now planning an active campaign strategy surrounding the veto, designed to appeal to the farmers. It even had a name, "Operation Transfer".
Until the present, Secretary Benson had received the brunt of the farm-belt criticism, it having been suggested that the Administration was happy to have him as a convenient scapegoat, but now the President, himself, was the prime target for having killed the price-lifting bill, and he would now have to take the consequences. It predicts that in the months to come, there would be heard much about "high parity" and "political betrayal", but that the complex problems involved were not reducible to such simple slogans, as the American people had to realize, after being exposed to such sloganeering in the past. The farm problem, it suggests, was complex and could be solved only by complex means, not by slogans, and urges that if members of Congress attended to their responsibilities to the nation as a whole, they would reach a rational resolution of the farm problem.
"Parris Island: Job for the Generals" discusses the death of the six Marine recruits at Parris Island, S.C., a week earlier on Sunday night, after their drill instructor had led them on a forced march into a tidal stream adjacent to the base, where they had drowned, all in an effort to "teach them discipline".
It finds that the deaths had "lifted the rug" from incidents of brutality which had to concern even the most ardent admirers of the record of competence and courage of the Marine Corps. That record had shown that during the previous 15 months, nine drill instructors had been court-martialed for mistreatment of recruits at the same base, that one of the six instructors convicted had been accused of jumping on a recruit's stomach 19 times to toughen his stomach muscles, "mule-kicking" another recruit in the chest and striking a third 19 times with a swagger stick. In addition, a letter which had been written by one of the drowned recruits on the Sunday afternoon before his death that night during the forced march, had written home telling of his drill instructor having forced him to drink 19 bottles of pop after he had drunk one at the PX, when soft drinks were forbidden to recruits.
It suggests that the reason for those incidents had to be a dual system of laws operating at the base, with the official regulations forbidding cruelty while the unwritten code of drill instructors permitted it, with the official rules taking precedence in the case of incidents which went too far, such as drowning of recruits. It finds that such a system resulted in injustice to both the recruits and the drill instructors.
It indicates that the tragedy on Ribbon Creek nine days earlier doubtless would subject the drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon, to severe and deserved punishment, but that had his "discipline" not been fatal to the six men, the night march would have likely been considered routine. It finds that the system was basically at fault, the responsibility of the generals to protect both the instructors and the recruits from an instructor's zeal turned into fanaticism, weeding out those instructors who could not separate dedication to duty from self-gratification.
It concludes that while the unwritten code of the instructors undoubtedly produced superior fighting men, it also produced cripples and dead men, and that changes could be made to prevent those untoward results. It urges that the generals had to approach that task with energy and speed.
"Inflation Note" indicates that four days after one planning committee had outlined new facilities to take care of Charlotte Memorial Hospital's needs for the ensuing 25 years, another group had proposed a City-County office building which would take care of the community's needs for the ensuing half-century. Undaunted, it remarks, City Manager Henry Yancey had the previous day put forth a plan to serve the needs of City Hall for a century. It wonders who would try for 200 years.
"Reticent Repealer of Income Tax" finds that IRS commissioner T. Coleman Andrews had become a resentful collector of taxes, after having been zealous at the practice for the previous three years. He believed that the Government ought to obtain its money in a less painful manner and that there ought be a law against the income tax. He had said he had his own thoughts about what should be done, but was not prepared to disclose them.
The piece indicates that it had brooded about the notion, concluding that there also ought be a law against a man saying on April 15 that "income tax should be abolished, I've got a plan, and I'm not telling."
Simeon Stylites, writing in the Christian Century, in a piece titled "Lost Family Art", announces "dogmatically" that the king of indoor sports was not poker or Scrabble or watching television, but reading aloud to the family, fast becoming a lost art.
He suggests that he would be viewed by many readers as "a back number", but says that there was a lot to be said for back numbers, as he had a friend who had many back numbers of an old magazine, the Strand Illustrated of London, containing installments of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", which he would match against anything currently reaching newsstands.
He indicates that reading aloud was a great indoor sport, provided any one of a hundred "right" books was chosen and the object was not improvement of the mind but just fun, as, he suggests, nothing could more powerfully draw a family together in a strong bond of imagination. Nothing could match reading aloud for developing imagination, finding it a major mistake for parents to stop reading to their children when the latter learned to read, as they needed training in what Percy Bysshe Shelley had called "to imagine what we see."
He posits that the superiority of imagination over crass detail was shown in Arthur Knight's reflections on the film version of "Oklahoma!" lamenting its firm grasp of the obvious, that the film insisted on the obvious, that the screen could take in miles of Oklahoma, that the song said the "corn is as high as an elephant's eye", and so they would hold up production until the corn got that high, rigorously excluding imagination and fantasy from the equation. He suggests that the youth were being defrauded when everything was spelled out for them, with Superman and the Lone Ranger making a poor showing, compared to the workout the imagination received by reading A Tale of Two Cities.
He finds that there was a point for every parent in the cartoon of a father in a chair in the living room reading a book titled Why Johnny Can't Read, while Johnny was looking at television. It had been revealed recently that already 35 percent of the offerings on television were made up of movies and that in another year, it would reach 70 percent, "a bleak desert of soap and horse opera", with the soap being more deadly than the horse. Another recent cartoon had shown a boy looking at a pair of bookends, with books between them, on top of the television set, asking whether it was a new kind of antenna, to which came the reply that it was a very old kind of antenna, for the reception of ideas.
He concludes: "Let's see, kids, when we left off yesterday Jean Valjean had just turned into a blind alley with the police after him. Let's go!"
Drew Pearson indicates that there was no question that an alert had been sent to the 2nd Armored Division in Germany to prepare to sail to Saudi Arabia within 30 days, and that simultaneously, an order had been sent to the 3rd Armored Division at Fort Knox, Ky., to prepare to move at once to Germany to replace the 2nd Armored, a move which had been scheduled for mid-August. It had also been arranged that the British would support the 2nd Armored with airborne troops. The troops involved had no knowledge as to what their mission would be in the Middle East or whether the orders would be countermanded, with it being speculated that U.S. strategy, if the orders stood, would be to protect U.S. citizens in Saudi Arabia, where between 5,000 and 6,000 Americans were employed in the Arabian-American Oil Co. If the 2nd Armored were to be located at the American colony in Dharan, it would be in a strategic location to intervene to prevent hostilities should war erupt between Israel and the Egyptian-Arab alliance.
Another delicate situation existed in Saudi Arabia, where King Saud was engaged in a bitter dispute with the Sheik of Abu Dhabi over the Buraimi Oasis, one of the greatest oil reserves of the world. Mr. Pearson suggests that intervention there could cause complications, because the British were on one side and the U.S. was on the other, with Aramco backing the King while the British were backing the Sheik, and if the Sheik were to win, a British company would obtain all of his rich oil rights, perhaps the most valuable in the world.
He posits that one reason U.S. policy in the Middle East had been confused was the fact that the National Security Council had been split over what steps to take in case the Israeli-Egyptian dispute flared into all-out war. The Navy, which had in the past heavily utilized Arabian oil, wanted to take strong action to preserve future oil, as did the Air Force, which had an important base at Dharan. But the Army felt differently, as did Secretary of State Dulles, with the Army, which had taken the main beating during the Korean War, being worried about getting bogged down in the desert in a preventive police action, into which the Soviets would throw countless Moslem "volunteers", as had the Chinese Communists in November, 1950 and afterward in Korea.
Secretary Dulles had similar fears, having claimed credit for getting the U.S. out of Korea, not wanting to get the country into another police action which could degenerate into war, especially not during an election year. He argued that if the allied forces were sent to the Middle East, Britain should carry the main burden, at least until the U.S. took official action.
Three unidentified men had sought to discredit Senator Estes Kefauver at the Nebraska Women's Club convention in Omaha, sending an urgent, scribbled note to the Senator while he was speaking, informing him that former President Truman was coming to the meeting and that the Senator ought announce it. He had refused to make the announcement and instead had one of his hostesses call the former President's office in Kansas City, finding out that the note was a complete hoax.
A new series of atomic and hydrogen tests was beginning during the week in the South Pacific.
Joseph Alsop, in London, suggests that it was hard to sum up two weeks of impressions he had gathered from intensive inquiry in the British capital without sounding like a "gloomy lunatic in complacent, prosperous America." Two points had stood out, that NATO was already deeply undermined by the Communists, only because U.S. policymakers appeared to be incapable of making a firm decision about the right way to halt it. He stresses that it could not be stopped by only hoping for the best and vaguely appealing to the U.N.
As one unnamed desperate and weary British leader had remarked to him: "In Washington, they not only don't tell the truth to one; nowadays they don't even seem to tell the truth to one another."
The threat to NATO was dependent on Middle Eastern oil, the lifeblood of Britain, without which, it would go irremediably into bankruptcy, and being bankrupt, it would, of necessity, have to abandon its Western defense responsibilities under NATO and elsewhere, which could lead to a political upheaval for the sake of survival vis-à-vis Communist threats. The Arab-Israeli conflict had already been dangerous enough prior to the Soviet intervention in the Middle East and the Soviet offer of arms to Egypt and other Soviet action in the region had given powerful new impetus and self-confidence to Arab nationalism, presently being led for the most part by Egyptian Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, with the surge of Arab nationalism in turn being directed, as the Kremlin had intended, against what remained of the British imperial position in the Middle East.
The first reaction in Britain had been to try to prop up the familiar order by any means available, the explanation for the present situation in Cyprus, an essential base for future military operations in the Middle East. The tendency of the British Government was to fight Arab nationalism by all means, coming close to a firm commitment to that risky policy, immediately taking the form of a determined attack on the position of Premier Nasser in Egypt. Mr. Alsop guesses that the only reason a firm commitment had thus far not been made was because of the urgent representations of the British Ambassador in Egypt.
There were alternative policies to trying to crush Arab nationalism, all seeking to come to terms with it, but those alternatives were not practical unless the U.S. took a bold leadership stand in the region, promising to reassure Britain against the risks which might be involved in a new way of doing business in the region. But the U.S. was trying to dodge that responsibility, taking refuge in empty optimism and bland generality, recalling the first stage of the Iranian oil crisis, which had been a foretaste of the present one, with the risk this time, however, being much greater than at the time Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, who had nationalized the British-built oil industry, was overthrown in Iran by a Western-backed coup. This time, the entire region was involved rather than just a corner of it and the drift by the U.S. was likely to cause drift in Britain into a policy which was already tempting them, the complete opposition to Arab nationalism. Mr. Alsop suggests that when that might occur, it would be a rude awakening to U.S. policymakers, as the British had nowhere near the resources presently needed successfully to implement such a policy, and Britain was just as important to the U.S. in a strategic sense as was the Middle Eastern oil to Britain in an economic sense. If the British were to become involved in such a way that they could not sustain the effort, the U.S. would have an unpleasant choice between going in to bail Britain out or letting Britain founder, thus permitting NATO, the mainstay of Western defense against the Soviets, to founder as well.
Doris Fleeson indicates that members of the Senate subcommittee on disarmament had been united on the proposition that the U.S. could never again disarm unilaterally, as it had often in the past following wars. There had been a tendency in Washington to relax in the face of changed tactics by the Russians.
Senator and former Vice-President Alben Barkley, who had served in the House during World War I, had recently made a speech on the floor reviewing the long, dismal record of American complacence between wars, vowing that it must never occur again, around which his colleagues had rallied.
Senior members of both parties from the Foreign Relations, Armed Services and the Joint Atomic Energy Committees made up the 12-Senator subcommittee, created by a resolution sponsored by Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who was the chairman. The subcommittee had been demanding a policy of disarmament, but was exploring the problem on a broad basis to ensure that there were no problems in any agreement Congress was asked to approve. For example, its current hearings had revealed that the U.S. presently knew of no method of discovering hidden stockpiles of atomic weaponry, that aerial inspection was valueless, according to Thomas Murray, senior member of the Atomic Energy Commission, who said that the Commission was working on a scientific breakthrough of the problem, but that under the present state of technology, aerial reconnaissance could not properly detect such stockpiles.
The President had proposed mutual aerial inspection to the Soviets, which would detect undue concentration of forces, the usual harbinger of war preparations. The subcommittee, including Senator Humphrey, had praised the President's proposal, indicating that it would have Congressional support provided the rest of the agreement met their approval.
Mr. Murray, who felt the moral responsibilities of his job, had suggested to the subcommittee that the U.S. hydrogen weapons stockpile was big enough that testing of it could be stopped, a proposal about which the Senators on the subcommittee appeared dubious, even if receptive to his basic position, that present nuclear policy was much too rigidly concentrated on large bombs for all-out world war, a war Mr. Murray had described as "no more acceptable than murder or suicide." He said that to disclaim intention of using such weaponry would be unrealistic, as the enemy was not afraid of what the U.S. said it would not use, but rather of what it, in fact, would. He believed that the weapons which could be rationally and morally used for limited wars included all types of tactical atomic weapons, of which the country was not making enough, and that weapons useful in limited military actions ought be stockpiled in great quantities.
Mr. Murray's proposals would not limit U.S. nuclear power, but rather would redistribute it, which he believed would be of more value in that different form. With a large stockpile of tactical atomic weapons, he said, "American and allied forces would be equipped to handle all the various wartime contingencies that might arise."
A letter writer indicates that according to a news story in a Charleston, S.C., newspaper the prior Friday, an Alabama State Senator, who was executive secretary of the White Citizens Councils, Sam Englehart, had announced unintentionally the political affinity of the Citizens Councils, by stating in a telegram to the chairman of the South Carolina Citizens Councils, F. Micah Jenkins, that the recent attack in Alabama on singer Nat King Cole had been "staged by an independent fascist group."
A letter writer says that the present "New Deal Supreme Court", which had ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, had only put forth their opinion, not based on the Constitution. He indicates that all former Supreme Court Justices through time since the founding had supported segregation—an untrue statement, of course, starting with the fact that the grandfather of Justice John Harlan, appointed to the Court by President Eisenhower at the death of Justice Robert Jackson in fall, 1954, had been the lone dissenter in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had established the "separate-but-equal" doctrine overturned unanimously in Brown. And, of course, the writing had been on the wall since 1938 when, in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, the Court had ruled that any state not affording to minority students substantially equal facilities of professional school training to that afforded for whites, ran afoul of the Equal Protection Clause under the "separate-but-equal" doctrine, and would have to remedy the situation either by admitting minority students to the all-white professional school or establishing or upgrading a segregated professional school to a standard of substantial equality in facilities and faculty. The writer continues that there were many other things going on in "free America (so-called) that are unconstitutional of which the present members of the Supreme Court are unconcerned." He asserts that the Constitution gave every citizen the right to work and make an honest living, but that the "labor union dictators" said that no person had a right to work without a union membership card, that the Constitution gave to the states the right to make and enforce their own laws, and said nothing about taking dictation from the Supreme Court—the writer, of course, completely ignoring the Supremacy Clause and the history of the Court, going back to Marbury v. Madison in 1803, establishing generally the concept of judicial review by the Court of laws vis-à-vis the Constitution, and Fletcher v. Peck, the first case in which the Supreme Court struck down a state law as unconstitutional, decided in 1810 when most of the Founders were very much still alive. In any event, the writer stumbles along putting forth his usual gibberish, completely uninformed by any touchstone with reality. He concludes by thanking God for "real patriotic Americans like the Honorable Gov. J. Bracken Lee of Utah, who refuses to pay income tax to support foreign nations. His kind is too scarce in America."
He would fit in well with the new Republican nuts in the House, making asses of themselves daily now that they have voices on prominent committees, insisting on putting forth their scripted "questions" to witnesses while talking over their answers, not allowing response, which they believe is somehow really, really cool and awesome, some form of inquisitional "questioning" which they doubtless learned off such programs as "Law and Order" or the equivalent as they watched too much television growing up, not paying enough attention to the newspapers and well-written books on the subject of government and politics, and how things actually work in this country, not in television scripts, choosing instead to support the easy grasp of webbed conspiracy theories and products of nutworks storming the Capitol during insurrections led by the nut-in-chief then occupying the White House. This writer was born before his time. We name no particular names among the Congressional nuts we reference, as they are simply too numerous to list nowadays and there is no need to give them any more publicity than they already generously obtain almost daily by making utter fools and nuisances of themselves in Washington. Shame on the unthinking, uninformed voters who put these freak shows there, their only apparent raison d'etre being to say or do the ostentatiously bizarre thing, known to attract attention, as with the cut-up in elementary or junior high school, eschewing any semblance of decorum and adherence to rules, enabled in their addiction to attention attraction by the current House "leadership" which effectively condones such behavior at every turn, because they know they need the appeal of these nuts to remain in power, to appear to the nut-based constituency which elects them as really, really cool and super awesome, just like the actors on the tv.
A letter writer, on behalf of the Medical Auxiliary, says that she wishes to express their sincere appreciation to the newspaper for the publicity given to their "Doctor's Day" observance, which they believed had been successful and that the paper's assistance had helped them greatly.
A letter writer thanks the newspaper on behalf of the members of the Catholic Daughters of America, for its coverage of their first state convention of the North Carolina Court of the Catholic Daughters, indicating that the newspaper's cooperation had contributed to its success.
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