'Oh, Stop Complaining!'
d.WSAT
EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Of inion Of One Man,
-And He May Be Wrong.
The ‘Professional’ Pose
If nothing else resulted from an effort
to revamp-the State School Text Book Com
mission one was able to get a dose-up of
the “professional” mind, at work;/ and the
punctuation is deliberate.
Numerous school officials, who- should
have known better, took the stand and al
leged that nobody—but nobody except
“professional educators” were qualified to
select text books! Well, Well!
There was a day, not so* long ago when
the word “professional” was applied with
careful discrimination but today it is used
loosely to describe any and every trade
or craft that can hire an executive secre
tary.
Even newspaper folks are applying this
distinction to themselves.
From one point of view everyone who
works for hire is a professional—from the
prostitute to the presstitute, but in the once
accepted use of the word only, an elite corps
was dignified in this manner. Doctors, law
yers, university professors. But now how
times nave changed.
We do not resent, but admit more amuse
ment than anyother emotion over this de
termination to reclassify everyone with a
clean shirt and a fresh shave as a “pro
fessional man’’.
Public officials are always bowing low in
the direction of some “professional opinion”
and one frequently hears, “But, we must
accept the advice of our ‘professionals’.”
But, of course, the “professionals” in
sist that mere simpletons who are being
asked to do nothing more than pay the
bills are expected to accept as “Divine
Commandment’’ any and every “profes
sional opinion”.
We earn part of our daily bread in this
manner—'writing for public consumption;
so take this “professional’s” advice and
pay more attention to simple arithmetic
and plain common sense and less attention
to the,principles' practices and plans of the
“professionals” who spin their web more
tightly each day about the body politic.
Judge Not, Cletus
CHetus Brock, editor of the Mount Olive
Tribune, is one of our best friends in the
newspaper racket. But CJetus is a fanatical
dry, that is a man opposed to the legal sale
of whisky: Of course, we must, add that
Brock is opposed to whisky—legal or illegal,
with or without ginger ale.
But all of the righteousness that Cletus
gains from opposing the evils of strong
drink be sacrifices with such judgments
as this which was in his Tuesday paper:
"The most regretful angle to the anti
ABC campaign which is baing decided to
day by voters in Wayne County, Is that
such a campaign should have boon neces
sary. Whan an issue so definitely morel
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sharp knife-—classifying everyone who sup
ports the ABC system as immoral, classify
ing everybody from Jesus oh down as im
moral wiho has ever touched his lips to an
alcoholic beverage.
Cars used wrongly are immoral, sex
used wrongly is immoral but who would
say that either driving a car or propaga
tion of the species is immoral per se?
Nature creates nothing immoral. Man’s
use or abuse determines whether any and
everything is moral or immoral. , j
(Freedom of the press is a precious pos
session of our nation, hot unbridled fana
ticisms, reckless absurd abuses of half
truths prejudgments of a majority of
the population by the self-righteous such
as Brock are an abuse of this freedom and
Immature
The new Kinston Board of AMemen
Monday night stormed off into the “WM
Blue Yonder" under the obstinate leader
ship of 9opbomore Robert Curtis and dis
p.ayed itself in a series of immature exer
cises that cannot help the cause of good
government
Senior Alderman Frank LaRoque re
peatedly and with toneful logic tried to
halt the pre-arranged steamroller driven
by Curtis and peddled by Freshmen Simon
Sitterson and Jesse Rayner. The board’s
other member, Mrs. J. J. Hannibal, also
a freshman, displayed excellent judgment
by abstaining from votes on the contro
versial issues this trio kicked up, explain
ing that she bad not been a member of
the council long enough to be well informed
enough to take sides.
Nobody should have been surprised as
Alderman Curtis exercised bis spleen in
a motion calling tor the dismissal of Utili
ties Superintendent Graham McAdams in
30 days.
Everybody, however, quite properly sat
up when Freshman Sitterson “made a
resolution" calling for the appointment or
dismissal of all department heads by the
council, rather than the city manager.
This exercise aso carried by the 3-1 vote
with Mrs. Hannibal’s abstinence.
Curtis summarily waved aside sugges
tions that the citfy-manager form of gov
ernment bad been' instituted by a vote of
the people, and should not be emasculated
except by a vote of the people. He said,
“We’re not against the city manager form
of government.” But he did not explain
what a city manager would manage in a
system where he had no control over de
partment heads.
Actually, in all fairness, these three—
■Curtis, Rayner and Sitterson—should be
forgiven their ineptitudes, because (they
are all green—green as gourds. They have
been given a “mandate from die people”
which they have interpreted to mean one
thing, and that we interpret quite different
ly
They will find, as previous aldermen have
.found that the public is fickle, and that
what the public demands today it may
On Covering Up Ditches
Monday night the Kinston Board of Al
dermen voted to take $4,932 from the tax
payers of Kinston to enhance the value of
three lots between Cavalier Circle and Bar
ton Avenue owned fay Roy Poole, John
Burroughs and Edwin Hill. These property
owners have also agreed to spend $5,960 of
their own funds in this “community im
provement project”.
Each of these men has good vision, and
neither is classified as unable to take care
of personal affairs. The ditch they are
concerned with was there when they bought
their lots.
There is a question whether the aider
man have legal authority to spend the tax
payers money to improve every frogpond
or ditchbahk. But no matter bow the legal
question may be answered there is no
moral ground upon which the aldermen can
stand in such an action.
Sochi careless expenditure of city funds
invites people to buy, discounted property
and then come with hat in hand to the city,
begging or demanding the city to “act”.
People who bu£ cheap lots cannot moral
ly expect others' who have bought better
lots to underwrite their mistakes, or de
liberate adventures.
inherent points of the true Christian con
cept but are absolute requisites in a free
society.
judge Not, cletus. The world is not made
up of saints and scoundrels but of mere
mortals none saintly and few absolutely
bad.
JONES JOURNAL
JACK RIDER, PuttUaher
Published Every Thursday by The Lenelr
County News Company, Inc., 403 West
Vernon, Ave., Kinston, N. C., Phone 5418.
Entered |s Second Class Matter May 5,
1949. at'the Post Office at Trenton.
North Carolina, under the Act of March
The process of education is stow, often
tedious and this applies to the education
of innocent young aldermen as well as to
kindergarten pupils.
pmomi
pmmm
BY
JACK RIDER
I suppose no one remembers the Tom
Johnson Elra in Kinston so well as myself,
since Tom and 1 were fellow presstitutes,
giving our all for news and breafhihg it out
over local radio stations. We had similar
tastes—beer in the morning, gin in the af
ternoon, bourbon after dark and Scotch for
wakes and weddings. Johnson is now as
sistant editor of the Montgomery, Alabama
Advertiser, a (paper that occupies roughly
the same position—but for different rea
son—in Alabama that the News & Obser
ver holds in North Carolina. (
Tom is an unpredictable type, if it’s pos
sible to type him. He wandered in last week
just as if he’d been around the corner to
lick a postage stamp and not a change has
been wTou^it in the “Ole Tom’’ of some
years back who held forth with such care
less ease on any subject.
Wednesday he jolted Catherine Cooke by
protesting the higher taxes on whisky that
are being whispered by same Coke drink
ers. “Haw’d you like it if you had to pay
85 cents for a Coke?” be demanded of
Coke Drinker Cooke. That’s roughly the
relation that taxes hold to five cents worth
of whisky, since the tax is between $12 and
$14 per gallon and it costs the distiller
roughly $1 per gallon to make acceptable
“spirits”. Catherine hasn’t thought of an
answer to this question yet.
Johnson is also noted for such epigrams
as, “Opium is the opiate of the people!’’—
and once drove a city editor in some Tenn
essee hamlet daft, or more daft trying to
set up a picture at a college track meet
that would show the timers standing all in
a row, and for which Johnson bad created
the headline to end all headlines, “The
Souls That Time Men’s Tries.” If you can’t
understand that one you’ve no business
reading this far on this page, so turn over to
the funny papers and get in your proper
element.
Johnson says his latest effort in this
direction was a review of a book by Hairy
Ashemore with forward by Harry Golden,
or something roughly comparable to that
if one can imagine anything that would
compare to such a sickening pair between
two boofccovers. He explained the book as
being the kind that praises the writer of
the foreward as a “Great Southern Editor”
who has called the foreward writer a
“Great Southern Editor”. Are you with us?
Aside from our kindred “spirits” John
son and I have the same purple nausea
for the professionals on both sides of the
racial issues. He describes them thusly,
“The thick-lipped burr-headed hymn sing
ers who snatch the innocent negroes’ purse
and the hoarse-voiced, slobbering imbe
cils who sell memberships in white citi
zens’ councils.” In between these hucksters
on the extreme ends of the racial squabble
the vast majority of the people are not
very interested unless they’re hit in the
face themselves. Most folks are too busy
fighting the mortgage battle and keeping
installments paid on time to worry about
such inconsequential things as state rights,
constitutional principle, divisions of power
and racial integrity.
A fiat tire in between pay days, a broken
TV tube, a dull razor blade, a hole in that
last dean pair of socks, a wet diaper left
on the newly finished hardwood floor, no
ginger ale and plenty of whisky, or worse,
plenty of ginger ale and no wi' ‘ ‘
are the kind of problems that ci
tions, undo governments, upset deers and
cause divorces.
aw