The Charlotte News
Thursday, June 14, 1956
FIVE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that the President had told West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, in a ten-minute hospital meeting this date, that he hoped for early action on reunification of Germany "to liberate the 17 million Germans" in the Eastern zone. The President, clad in pajamas and sitting up in a chair, still convalescing from his surgery the previous Saturday morning for ileitis, had received Chancellor Adenauer in his room at Walter Reed Army Hospital, in his first meeting with anyone outside of his personal and official families since the surgery. Doctors had said he had spent his best night since the surgery the previous night. Chancellor Adenauer said that he had asked the doctor to explain "this miracle" and the doctor had said in response that it was "a healthy organism". Secretary of State Dulles said that the President had personally brought up the question of German reunification, that it had been a very good talk, in which the President had expressed not only the sentiments which he felt toward the Chancellor and that the American people felt toward the German people, but also the hope that action would soon be taken to liberate the 17 million Germans in the Eastern zone. Chancellor Adenauer said that he was happy to have had the talk, which gave him a chance of seeing the President "in such excellent shape". He said that he would not have thought it possible that a person so soon after an operation could look "that way, talk that way and participate so vividly in a conversation." His brief visit with the President was expected to bolster his chances in his election campaign the following year against formidable opposition. Chancellor Adenauer was 80 years old at the time.
In Columbia, S.C., attorneys were considering whether to appeal the dismissal of the civil suit brought by Sarah Mae Flemming Brown after U.S. District Court Judge George Bell Timmerman, for the second time, had dismissed the matter, granting, upon reconsideration, the defense motion for a directed verdict, after having initially denied same the previous day. The judge ruled that the plaintiff had not shown that the bus driver or the bus company acted under color of state law, as required by the civil rights statute under which she was proceeding, to enforce the segregation statute when the bus driver allegedly had violated her constitutional rights in June, 1954 by having ordered her to move from a front seat to a rear seat on the bus and then having ordered her to exit via a rear entrance rather than the front door, punching her in the stomach with his fist in the process; and, furthermore, that the company could not be held liable for damages for acting under "valid and subsisting" State segregation laws still on the books at the time of the incident. (Eventually, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals would, the following November, again, for the second time, reverse the District Court and remand the case for retrial, rejecting the contentions of the lower court on the basis that there were triable issues which could go to the jury regarding damages, as Ms. Brown had indicated she had been punched in the stomach, which would constitute an ordinary battery, regardless of claims of violation of civil rights, and because Brown v. Board of Education had already been decided on May 17, 1954 and by the time of the incident in June of that year was well promulgated, thus finding no absolute defense to the claims available that the company and its driver were acting in "good faith" under constitutional State statutes by that point.) Ms. Brown had sought $25,000 in damages against the South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., operators of the Columbia buses.
In Kingstree, S.C., the sheriff ordered an investigation to determine who fired shots into a religious meeting being conducted for blacks by the Catholic Order of Our Lady of Springbank Dominican Friary.
In St. Petersburg, Fla., the Reverend Enoch Davis, leader of a black citizens cooperative committee in that city, had requested a meeting with the City Council to discuss equal seating of all races on City-owned buses, to avert a boycott similar to those which had been initiated in Montgomery, Ala., the prior December, after Rosa Parks had refused to surrender her seat on a municipal bus at the direction of the bus driver in compliance with an existing City ordinance, and another in Tallahassee, Fla. In Miami, the NAACP issued a statement the previous night advising "all citizens to comply with existing city and state laws governing seating on buses."
The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia had tightened entrance requirements, following reports that several blacks planned to seek admission to the white Georgia State College of Business Administration.
In Baton Rouge, La., the NAACP appealed a state court ruling which outlawed the NAACP in Louisiana pursuant to a law originally aimed at the Klan.
In New Orleans, the pro-segregation Citizens Council of New Orleans called on the FBI to investigate un-American and subversive charges lodged against it by the Commission on Human Rights of the Catholic Committee of the South, a group of laymen studying social structures in the Southeast.
In St. Louis, Matthew Connelly, former appointments secretary to former President Truman, and Lamar Caudle, former head of the Justice Department's tax division during the Truman Administration, had been convicted this date by a U.S. District Court jury of conspiring to fix an income tax evasion case. A third original co-defendant in the case, the attorney for the man who had been accused and pleaded guilty in the tax evasion case, had been dismissed from the case earlier because of health issues preventing him from continuing in the trial. Sentencing of the two men was set for July 19, the same date on which the court would hear motions which the defense said it would file, seeking a new trial. The potential sentence was up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. Mr. Caudle, from North Carolina, said to reporters as he walked from the courtroom that his conscience was "so clear and so open that when I face God, sweet children and my friends, I will have no apologies to make for anything I have done." His attorney expressed his belief in Mr. Caudle's innocence and said that he hoped and prayed that the time would come when he would be vindicated. Both men had been accused by the Government of taking bribes from the attorney for the accused tax evader in the form of oil royalties under contracts formed by the attorney in their names. Mr. Caudle had testified that he exploded when he found out about the contract and demanded that his name be removed from it, but the Government introduced evidence that he had nevertheless accepted two payments under the contract. In the end, the accused tax evader had pleaded guilty, but had received no jail time, only a fine, based on his fragile health condition. Mr. Connelly told the press that he had no comment after the conviction, appearing shaken by the verdict. Both men remained free on bond pending sentencing. The jury had deliberated for eight hours and forty-three minutes. Eventually, both men, after protracted appeals, would serve portions of their sentences before receiving commutations, Mr. Connelly, by President Kennedy, and Mr. Caudle, by President Johnson.
In New Orleans, it was reported that the Coast Guard this date had rescued four men missing in the sinking of a tugboat in a tropical storm, with the last survivor rescued this date expressing the belief that two of the remaining three men missing from the tug had drowned. The three others had been rescued earlier this date. The last man rescued said that he had definitely seen one man drown and that another was critically injured and probably had drowned. The tug had gone down off the Mississippi coast the previous day and rescue ships had searched during the night for survivors. At the time, tides had reached the highest point since a disastrous hurricane in 1947 in the Grand Island Channel. The tug had sunk while trying to rescue seven men from a barge in distress, after the tug was swamped and its eight-man crew thrown overboard, along with the seven men from the barge. Among those rescued was the tug's captain, who had been swimming near a beacon light.
In Honolulu, it was reported that
two teenage stowaways, with less than four dollars between them, had a
plush day of living in the city before heading home by plane the
previous night. The two youths, one a 17-year old girl from East Palo
Alto, Calif., and the other, a 17-year old boy from nearby Redwood
City, had departed with new toothbrushes, bathing suits and a few
apprehensions. Their parents had paid about $300 each for their brief
trip which had started Friday aboard an ocean liner. The girl's
mother said that she admired the pluck of her daughter, as she had
wanted to do that all of her life, even though the girl, herself, had
expressed the fear that it would not be easy to face her parents or
the kids in school. Both of the youths were to be graduated from the
Menlo-Atherton High School this date. They had gotten aboard the
liner in San Francisco "just to look around", thinking that
they could get off on a launch by the Golden Gate, but it had not
worked out that way. They had been chaperoned by a wealthy
vacationing Los Angeles businessman, who said that he wanted them to
see a little bit of Hawaii while there and so had treated them to
lunch at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, including providing them with
bathing suits, swimming and surfing at Waikiki, followed by dinner.
They had also met Governor Samuel Wilder King, who wished them good
luck. The businessman said that he wanted to show a couple of
teenagers a good time before they went home and faced the music. He
said that his chaperoning had included getting them on the plane even
if they had to handcuff them. The girl said that the only money they
had between them was four dollars and they had spent some of that for
toothbrushes. This may have been the prequel to "The Graduate",
titled simply, "Aloha: When They Were in High School", with, in lieu of "Mrs. Robinson", a soundtrack refrain throughout of...
Charles Kuralt of The News reports of a Charlotte bridegroom who had opened an airline door and hurtled 6,500 feet to his death, having apparently been drinking heavily before boarding the plane, according to the Cleveland County sheriff, who said that the flight attendant had told him that the 40-year old man appeared intoxicated upon entering the plane with his wife of one day. The sheriff said that there were too many things yet to find out to venture an explanation for what had occurred. The man had left his wife's side 20 minutes after departure of the Piedmont DC-3 from Charlotte Municipal Airport, telling her that he was going to the men's room, at which point he apparently opened the wrong door and stepped into space, while his wife continued in her seat, "afraid to look back." The flight attendant said that he was passing out magazines when a passenger had asked him what the temperature was in Charlotte, and that when he walked into the cabin to ask the pilot, the copilot had shouted that the red light was on, warning that the rear door latch was open, at which point the flight attendant and the copilot rushed back to find the door open and the man gone. The man's body had crashed into the yard of Zion Baptist Church, 5.5 miles north of Shelby. His wife denied that the two had been drinking prior to boarding the aircraft. The man had been a former short order cook at several local grills and was working before his marriage as a surveyor's assistant. He had been convicted in City Recorder's Court during the previous year of assault on a female, fornication and adultery, and drunkenness. His wife said that they were starting over, "going to have a new life". Both had been previously married. An investigation by Piedmont Airlines had shown that the door mechanism was in "perfect condition", and the plane had been returned to service during the morning. It had not been determined whether the man had purchased airline insurance prior to boarding. A passenger seated near the door said that he saw the man "struggling to stay inside" a split second before he fell out. Piedmont might consider attaching a prominent sticker to the door which says something to the effect: "No, this is not the restroom. Enter only at your own risk, as, during flight, this is the Eternal Rest Room, and there is no way back of which man is yet comprehensibly aware." It, of course, might be abbreviated, but out of decorum, we leave it to the imagination of you Sherlocks.
Jim Scotton of The News reports that a Confederate battle flag, which had defied Nazi shot and shell and the ire of a Yankee colonel during World War II, now waved over Charlotte once more this date, having served as a rallying point for thousands of Southern soldiers in the U.S. Army in the fight for Europe. It had been raised during the morning in celebration of Flag Day by its owner, who had kept the flag carefully preserved and displayed it on various holidays. He said, "The Germans never did manage to hit the flag, but that Yankee officer almost brought it down," referring to an incident when they had crossed from Holland into Germany, when he had run up the flag on the turret of an old German castle and a colonel came charging up to order them to get it down fast. He said that he was a "Southerner all right" but was only a master sergeant and the other man was a lieutenant colonel, and so he started taking down the Stars and Bars in a hurry. At that point, his commanding officer had arrived, who was a full colonel from New Orleans, had told the Yankee that the flag would come down "only over somebody's dead body", and so the flag remained up. The man had obtained the flag in France in 1944 when his father, the late James Walker, a former Mayor of Charlotte, had sent it to him in England, at a time when the sergeant was halfway through France before it finally reached him. He had set it up every chance he got so that Southerners would see it and they would have a little reunion, sometimes starting to sing "Dixie", until some Yankee boys would begin shouting "Marching through Georgia", all in fun. He said that most of the Europeans had never seen a Confederate flag and thought it was a British flag, that small European children who came around had received a first-class education on the joys and privileges of being a Southerner. He had given up the flag once, but only to make sure it had arrived in Berlin with the first American troops, as his outfit, an intelligence unit with the Ninth Army, had been held back, as the Second Armored Division had been picked to make the final plunge into Berlin. He had dashed around the night before the move to Berlin and finally found a soldier who had promised to take it and then send it back, saying that the soldier could not guarantee him that it had been the first flag into Berlin, but that it had been one of the first. His father had been given the flag by a man who ran a flag shop in Charlotte, who was happy to hear that it had been lowered to no one, Yankee or otherwise, but was not really impressed, as he shipped Confederate flags all over the world, indicating that one had been the first American flag to go up over Seoul when American troops had gotten there during the Korean War, adding, "Son, there are Southerners everywhere."
On the editorial page, "Hot Words Won't Ease Racial Taboos" indicates that constructive thinking and action rather than public wrangling would solve the question of black membership in the North Carolina Dental Society, that the dentists of both races might benefit from the experiences of local physicians, where peaceful relations had coexisted within the Mecklenburg County Medical Society.
It finds that if there were real or imagined technical barriers to the professional association of white and black dentists, surely they could be discussed and settled to the mutual benefit of all, that the profession could be depended on to act fairly, in accordance with its dedication to the advancement of science. It appeared reasonable to believe that dentists, as well as physicians, could benefit from professional association with each other, that those benefits did not need to be limited by race.
But those facts had been obscured by the long-distance contention of the previous day, finding that in such cases, calm face-to-face discussion was the proper prescription.
"Quick! Civic Tailors to the Rescue" indicates that the Mint Museum of Charlotte ought be back under the protective wing of the City Council, rather than being governed by the Park & Recreation Commission, as it could win sympathetic attention to its needs, and action could be taken posthaste by being governed by the Council. It needed funding immediately if it was to continue to be the home of Charlotte's artistic treasures, that unless repairs and adjustments were made soon, it would virtually become useless as an art museum. The Commission had little time or money to look after it, while the Council had shown sincere interest and could translate that into an adequate budget.
Charlotte was justly proud of the museum, and a folder on Charlotte culture published recently by the Fine Arts Committee of the Chamber of Commerce had featured it on its cover, along with the new Ovens Auditorium. It had referred to the Mint as the "seed of artistic endeavor in Charlotte," but the piece finds that it was embarrassingly threadbare and called for "civic tailors to the rescue!"
"Give Us a Little Three-Way Monopoly" indicates that a Congressional committee was seeking to determine whether CBS, NBC and ABC had a "stranglehold" on the television industry.
It finds that for all it knew, there was such a monopoly, but that in Charlotte, the villain was one of creation by Congress, that being the FCC, which after eight years, had still not determined which of the networks ought activate channel 9 and provide the area with a competitive television medium of entertainment and advertising—at that point, only WBTV, channel 3, being in operation in the market.
In the hearings before the Senate committee, Senator John W. Bricker had talked about a "stranglehold" by the three networks, squeezing out competition. CBS president Frank Stanton had replied by asserting that the viewer, not network executives, ruled the television industry and its programming.
For residents of Charlotte, the contention could not be more academic, as to be monopolized by three networks would be a rare privilege, suggesting that it would rather be strangled by CBS, ABC and NBC than bored to death by the slow-poking FCC.
"Tito's Text" tells of Marshal Tito's explanation of why he liked both East and West, not being as funny as Robert Benchley's "Treasurer's Report", but was at least as hilarious as Tito telling the West about democracy: "Democracy is not an end in itself. To suggest as some have that this is so, and to appeal for increased democracy now, would actually serve only to retard the democratic development Yugoslavia has undertaken."
It concludes: "Any questions?"
"Individual Rights Defended" finds that the Supreme Court had "struck a blow for sanity" during the week in the Government's chaotic security system, holding, 6 to 3, that summary suspension and reviewable dismissal of Federal employees as security risks could apply only to those in sensitive positions and not indiscriminately to any employees of the Government. It finds it one of the most important decisions of the current term of the Court, reducing what had been accurately described as an abundance of stupidity in the handling of security matters, insisting that some common sense be used.
It finds that the ruling meant that an employee having nothing to do with national security could not be fired under existing procedures, the specific case having dealt with a food and drug inspector. It reminds that about half of the so-called security risks who were fired under the Administration's program held non-sensitive positions, but were nevertheless not exempt from the "system's flailing arms and serious damage to employment status, reputation and personal life." It concludes that the Court had once again risen in support of individual rights against unreasonable extensions of government.
A piece from the Richmond News
Leader, titled "From Bach
But now such a hackneyed plot, just
to feature jazz musicians on film, was no longer acceptable. Now,
Friedrich Gulda, a young Austrian pianist who, since 1950, had been
well received in the U.S. as a specialist
He had been playing jazz in public for some years in his native Austria, but never before in the U.S., with his style said to be "hard to describe—very warm, simple, yet advanced. Nobody else plays jazz remotely like him."
Previously, in U.S. musical circles, jazz and the classics had seldom mixed, with Benny Goodman perhaps being the only top jazz artist who also had performed some first-class classical work, with his Mozart clarinet recordings having been well received. There had been various attempts to produce jazz music in symphonic form, but except for George Gershwin, whose music ran only so deep, they had failed.
When a New Orleans jazz band played
Rachmaninoff, what emerged was all jazz and no Rachmaninoff, though
New Orleans jazz, played well, approached a classical form in its own
right, and was becoming further removed from the jukebox sphere, with
about as much similarity between Turk Murphy's recent version of the
"Memphis Blues"
If other forms of popular music ever
attained the status of classical music, it would probably have to be
done the way good New Orleans jazz had begun to do it, on its own
terms, realizing the classical dimensions
Drew Pearson indicates that after about a day of indecision following the attack of ileitis to the President the prior Friday, the Republican high command had decided on a united and vigorous front that he could and must run again, with the word having been passed down to the party faithful almost immediately after he emerged from the anesthetic. But unofficially, there had been serious misgivings at the strategy. The President did not have a word to say about it, nor had his wife or son. The official line had been adopted, despite the fact that the President had been quite frank about his health and his worry over it, about the only man, observes Mr. Pearson, who had been frank.
He provides the record of what the President had said, both publicly and privately, on the matter. At a stag dinner in the winter of 1954, he had told RNC chairman Leonard Hall, Attorney General Herbert Brownell and other close advisers that the Republican Party ought not depend on one man, that they should start to build up younger men to take his place, some of whom he had named. But despite that statement, Mr. Hall and Vice-President Nixon had left that dinner to make emphatic statements that the President was certain to run again in 1956. Then, in May, 1955, the President had told Senator George Bender of Ohio that if he were to run again, he would be the only President to reach the age of 70, and that the White House tended to erode the health of any President, and to make sure that his views were known publicly, he had asked White House press secretary James Hagerty to see to it that the view was expressed to the press. In September, 1955, about three weeks prior to his heart attack on September 24, state leaders had gathered in Denver and were disappointed to hear the President tell them that they could not pin their future on one man, that they had to begin developing other candidates. When the President had recovered initially from his heart attack, he told newsmen at Key West that it would be wrong for him to run again unless he had a good chance of serving out a second term because "it is a very critical thing to change governments in this country at a time when it's unexpected."
At his first press conference after the heart attack, he had warned that it would be idle to pretend that his health could wholly be restored to the excellent state in which the doctors believed it had been the prior mid-September, and that his future life had to be carefully regulated to avoid excessive fatigue.
That was the unequivocal record of the President's apparently definite decision at that time not to run again. But Mr. Hall had emerged from a conference with the President at Gettysburg to announce that he was confident that he would run again, while Senate Minority Leader William Knowland of California, after visiting with the President the same day, had stated that he had just the opposite opinion. Mr. Pearson indicates that Mr. Hall had begun a holding operation at that time, asking the President not to refuse to run again, at least for the time being, on the ground that he needed to keep Congress guessing for the sake of his legislative program, that a lame-duck President had no influence.
Joseph Alsop, in Jerusalem, tells of interviewing Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, finding him to resemble both the Prophets of Biblical times as well as the "sharp, sometimes unscrupulous politician", of "such ruthless single-mindedness that he was wholly ready to sacrifice the simple Arab peasantry of Palestine, in order to create the Israeli state." But, he reminds, Nehemiah, as an example, had also been something of a politician, "certainly fierce enough toward the 'Arabians and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites' when they tried to stop him rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity."
He suggests that every Western policymaker ought study prayerfully the Old Testament, as there was no other way to understand Prime Minister Ben-Gurion or, in large measure, the spirit of his people, a spirit which was "a cardinal political fact in the Middle East." He finds it to explain why the Prime Minister and most of the other Israeli leaders were not averse to living in a state of siege almost indefinitely. The Arab boycott of Israeli trade, the omnipresent tension on the borders, the constant menace of attack, would cause most Western leaders to suffer a nervous collapse within a month, but the Prime Minister found danger invigorating and considered a state of siege to have positive advantages.
He said: "We have gathered in our tribes from all over the earth. From them we must make our nation. Those who never held a plough must learn to till the soil. Those who were always humble must learn to be proud. It does not hurt for all our people to know that they must rely on themselves and only on themselves. So the new nation comes to birth. We want peace, but not at any price. And if we cannot get real peace for 10 years or 20 years, why we can stand it, and there will be some blessing in it, too."
Mr. Alsop finds it a fantastic statement in a self-indulgent age, made with "a slight smile, a quick shrug and the flipper-gesture." But every word was meant in deadly earnest. Prime Minister Ben-Gurion said that he had told Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britain, when the latter had sought to persuade him to seek peace some months earlier by offering important territorial concessions to the Arabs, that "if he really wanted to take this land from Israel, he had better mobilize the British Army."
The same spirit animated his approach to two problems, one being the border incidents, supposedly settled only a few weeks earlier by U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, which Mr. Alsop indicates had not changed Israeli policy, that since the victory over the Arabs in 1948, it had been troubled and was still being troubled by constant pinpricks along its borders, whether from state-sponsored attacks or merely individual Arabs who would steal the harvest, take irrigation pipe, animals or other valuables, or open fire on an exposed road or even commit a murder, with Israeli policy having always been to wait just so long and then to order a major retaliatory operation which had caused so many flare-ups during the previous eight years. That remained Israeli policy, with the Prime Minister arguing that if all the little border incidents had gone unpunished, they would only increase in number and progressively grow more serious "until our people would have no security."
Mr. Alsop indicates that by the same token, although the Syrian Government had publicly stated that it would be a casus belli, the Prime Minister also declared that Israel had to proceed during the current year with the Jordan water diversion plan, as water was Israel's lifeblood, the proper sharing of Jordan's waters having already been planned, though, according to the Prime Minister, they would undertake to "explore all avenues to avoid a quarrel". But that if the Arabs started a fight over the problem and they could not obtain a peaceful agreement, "we shall go to work and damn the consequences."
Robert C. Ruark, in Palamos, Spain, suggests that "by easy degrees we seem to be creeping toward the development of our policemen into something more approximating the FBI boys than a bunch of sadists who got into the business in the first place because they were too untalented to work or else just liked to shove the people around." The New York Police commissioner, Stephen Kennedy, had said recently that he hoped to create a college course of at least two years to prepare police officers, as well as a program in high school for the same purpose. He said that they needed better people and were not getting them, people with a broad background in government.
He remarks that after 20 years as a journalist, he had known some honest cops, some who would listen to an argument, some who would not lie in court, accept graft, or push the alleged offender around before he had "a word with his mouthpiece". But he had also known many "blustery, bullying cops, crooked cops, lying cops, sadistic cops, cops who took their badge and nightstick, the gun on their hip, and the close protection in their own fraternity as an open license to shove the civilian around, innocent or not." He found that almost without exception, they were men who would have conducted themselves the same way without the authority of the law, provided they could have gotten away with it.
As a younger reporter, he had heard them lie themselves blue in the police courts and had been present at a few "'interrogations'" when the person who was being "'interrogated' would have walked out unscarred if he came of a slightly higher social category—let us say head bookie, instead of runner."
In the smaller Southern towns, the police system was a scandal, especially if one's license plate was from a Yankee state. Once, he had been arrested, tried and convicted on a street corner in "some horrible little hamlet in Georgia." When he had been running a country weekly newspaper in North Carolina, he had keys to the jailhouse, as his janitor was incarcerated for murder and he needed his services once in a while, and some of the things he had seen he did not like to remember.
He finds that the policeman had passed the point of being the town bully who could not keep a job and join the police force "just so he could let his stomach sag over his belt and indulge in his natural propensity for crudeness and brutality."
The policeman was not supposed to interpret the law, but rather to enforce it, that if he had been taught early a few more of the sociological demands of his profession, he would not have to "sound like a heel when he sticks his head into the car window."
"Apart from the showpiece boys on New York's Park and Fifth Avenues or the London bobby, there is nothing any ruder than a copper who is playing copper as portrayed by Humphrey Bogart."
Whether the individual officer was right had nothing to do with the expression on his face or the tone of his voice. "Open your trap once and you've bought it. But control your righteous wrath, duck your head meek and he delivers the reprimand and walks off with a smirk." He concludes that one of the things they ought teach them in the proposed New York educational program was that the police officer worked for and was paid by the individual citizen and that of all of the things he was not, was judge or jury.
Speaking of small hamlets in Georgia, we feel compelled to offer, if not too late, some sound advice to recently booked arrestee number P01135809—who, perhaps, for effect, should have been booked as P0666686—who, for reasons unknown, hired his bail out of Lawrenceville, Ga., as we once, in June, 1962, got clipped good, nearly scalped, in that town, in a little barbershop therein, after we had merely asked for an "Ivy League cut", and so we hope he won't suffer likewise and wind up with the bondsman skipping town on his $20,000 commission and thus being nowhere, ultimately, to be found, a nowhere man, should the bond on arrestee number P01135809 be increased later for some reason, undoubtedly to derive from manipulation by the Deep State in which we, as a nation, now, mournfully, find ourselves, disdaining even our very existence, as we heard to be the case this morning out of Australia, below even the final resting place of R.M.S. Titanic, beneath the weight of the worst financial depression in the history of mankind, beset by NATO-generated war on all sides, from Atlantic to Pacific, and in between, all to repay the Big Guy's crime family bribes, with no way out but surrender, which even, in final resignation to reality, arrestee number P01135809 did, after having urged everyone never to do so, heartbreaking to see, as we had hoped for a coup de grace chase scene carrying on for days, weeks, months on end, maybe even years, into the vanishing point of the painted desert, rivaling that of Dr. Richard Kimble, and which would have garnered, no doubt, in the unremitting predation by the Police Lieutenant obsessed with his capture
Yet, we need not distress or despair too much, and, indeed, can rejoice, for arrestee number P01135809, no matter what may take place henceforth, has a dedicated follower of fashion, a substitute
A letter writer from Grand Rapids, Mich., tells of having been a Democrat all of her life, but for the good of the country, was bound to change her vote as she had not thought that the Democratic Party would ever get so desperate and low in principle just to win votes, that if things turned out the way they were beginning to appear, she was afraid there would be thousands of others who would change their votes also. "If they put a Catholic man on the ticket for vice president, I could not with a good conscience vote for him. Because of history that I learned in a public school and because of present situations in Catholic controlled countries. I feel it would be the beginning of religious conflict. Don't say it will never happen here. Anything can happen." She urges remembering that if democracy were ever to fall, it would be from within, that some did not like what the Supreme Court had handed down, but urges not forgetting that "they were first voted into public office." She urges knowing the man for whom one was voting, at least a little bit, that if one read the June 12 issue of Look Magazine, a person would learn a lot, as she had done. She adds that she was a native of Charlotte.
Perhaps belying the notion that modern, progressive education was failing the students of late, or maybe confirming same, as she does not state her age, it is too bad that in that public school you also did not learn how to state a proper English sentence, with a subject and predicate rather than a series of staccato phrases punctuated improperly. While, for effect, on occasion, it is acceptable to divide a sentence, as if stating poetic prose, your delivery hardly seems poetic and does not appear to be for effect, but rather out of pure ignorance. Likewise, your apparent belief that Supreme Court Justices are elected, even if sometimes, they posit themselves as the elect, and in the case of the 1956 Court, of course, the Chief had been appointed by President Eisenhower from his position as Governor of California and Justices Hugo Black and Harold Burton, by FDR and President Truman, respectively, from their positions as Senators, and soon-to-retire Justice Sherman Minton, having been a Senator before being appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals by FDR, before being appointed by President Truman to the Supreme Court.
Whether, incidentally, she had read in Look that Senator John F. Kennedy was being touted as a possible running mate to Adlai Stevenson, prompting her anti-Catholic remarks, we do not know, as she does not identify the supposed object of her statements, but given that Robert Kennedy would, in 1960, author a book titled The Enemy Within, about the investigation of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters during his time as McClellan Committee counsel during the period from the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, when Senator McClellan was the ranking minority member, onward through the investigation of racketeering infiltration of the unions by organized crime, her statement becomes quite ironic if not at all prophetic or edifying. Some have suggested, not without probity or probative merit, that the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy stemmed from their time on the McClellan Committee, making enemies in the process within organized crime and the Teamsters, continued during the Kennedy Administration by the Attorney General's unrelenting efforts to end the influence of organized crime in the country, including the prosecutions of Jimmy Hoffa, eventuating in his 1964 conviction for jury tampering in the 1962 criminal trial in Nashville involving alleged illegal profiteering with union funds from the auto-carrier Test Fleet Co., placed in the maiden names of his and Teamster right-hand man's wives with minimal investment, out of which had emerged a hung jury. Whether that speculation is true or not, his illegal activities profiting personally from the pension plans, intended solely for the benefit of the union's membership, is enough to mark Mr. Hoffa as someone hardly worthy of any lionizing by those who conveniently blink accurate history, with the devil found in the details, in favor of Hollywood compressions of years into two hours to give the viewer the impression of knowing, upon leaving the theater, all there is to know about a given historical figure or incident, while leaving the rest to more dedicated research to correct or not the inevitable misstatements and glossed-over, montaged or omitted reality, unfortunately not usually undertaken by casual viewers unduly impressed by the shiny object and fast banging for fast bucks amid the treacle, ignoring the basilisk hidden in plain view.
Beware, without thorough research preferably performed prior to seeing it, the purported historiography committed to film, as it usually is devoid, by the fact of its medium, of more than a quick overview of highlights, punctuated by the sensational developed from rumor, often, though not always, skewed to completely erroneous overall viewpoints by a director's and writer's particular bias. If, by contrast, it is deliberately presented as an artistic argument for a view of history or a particular event, or a "Rashomon"-type presentation of alternative versions of an event, to engender considered thought and more dedicated research, then it serves a cinematic purpose which might otherwise disserve history as it actually occurred, by presentation of misleading, cynically disseminated "alternative facts" as if everything is relative and so not as bad as that other thing, thus seeming, in the end, not so bad really, after all—just like the movie you are watching. There is, at base, an objective reality which often even the participants in an event or those close to it do not or cannot grasp because of subjective involvement and emotional blindness caused by mental or physical trauma of the moment, or just by the rush of events and the aftermath in real time; but the objective reality is there, nevertheless, with its discernment at least to be approximated reasonably by diligent effort through time to get at it.
And, by the way, further research has revealed that, indeed, the writer had read in Look that Senator Kennedy, as well as Governor Frank Lausche of Ohio and Mayor Robert Wagner of New York, were being considered by Democratic leaders as possible running mates on the ticket to attract the Northern urban Catholic vote, with second-tier consideration also being given to future Speaker of the House John McCormack of Massachusetts, future Majority Leader Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, and Governor Edmund Muskie of Maine, who would run as a Senator on the ticket with Vice-President Hubert Humphrey against former Vice-President Nixon in 1968 and, after being forced out of the 1972 presidential nominating race by the merry little pranks of Nixon dirty-trickster Donald Segretti, would subsequently become Secretary of State during the Carter Administration, after President Carter had defeated a native of Grand Rapids, the only President to date never elected from any place on a ticket, for reasons not his fault.
Whether, incidentally, the writer was on the mailing list of the hate-literature disseminators, recently prosecuted under local ordinance in Charlotte, who had targeted in their pamphlet, with apparently anti-Semitic remarks, Alfred E. Smith of M. B. Smith Jewelers in Charlotte, we do not know and have no practical way of finding out. But you know, those jewelers, with their rings, and lacking the quality of mercy
A letter writer says: "Truly now it gladdens me Irish heart to see our county fathers so concerned about our welfare, and that of our neighboring states as well. To be sure now, and some there might be who would be thinking now, that we had our hands full, what with the creek called Sugar but not smelling it; our hate literature but scarcely contained now, and our smoke abatement program more smoke than fire. But not we, we have advised our governor to say something new to the governor of South Carolina. Something more in line with the temperance times in which we know we now live."
He refers to the Mecklenburg County Commission having determined during the week to propose to Governor Luther Hodges that he do what he could to stop the establishment of the Bowater Co. paper mill in neighboring York County, S.C., for the possibility of its pulpwood processing odor drifting over the border into Mecklenburg and fouling the air.
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