Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Feb. 25, 1965, edition 1 / Page 2
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. 'Where I come from, comrade, we don’t hold with kibitzers lv EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man — — — .. And He May Be Wrong Malcolm X Fortunately all the people of the State of New York are not being indicted for the murder of Malcolm X as all the people of the State of Mississippi were indicted for the murder last year of three so-called civil rights workers. But we suggest that a bill of indict ment should be issued against Earl War ren and his judicial oligarchy, against each and all of the one-race propagan dists from LBJ down to the crummiest member of Martin King’s tribe. The ancient question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg, can be paraphrased somewhat more bitterly to day, with: Which came first, the racial unrest or the professional agitators? It is the stated and repeated policy of international communism to capital ize on racial and religious differences in every part of the world. In Cyprus we see the classical example of commu nist strife as they stir up the Turkish minority against the Grecian majority. Again in Viet Nam where they turn Buddhists against Catholics. In India where Hindu and Muslim are thrown at each other’s throat and this is the pat tern in every part of the world. No one of minimum intelligence should be surprised about this Soviet game because it has been stated in the clearest language and followed with monotonous regularity. There is some major cause for con cern, however, when our supreme court, our executive and legislative branches of government permit themselves to be made tools of this ancient politicial practice of “dividing and conquering.” We do not suggest that Earl Warren is a communist. We don’t think he has sufficient intelligence for this role; nor do we label our other executive and legislative leaders as members of the Soviet conspiracy. But we do seriously suggest that they are the dupes of Soviet foreign policy in every part of the world and no where more danger ously than right here at home. A Pressing Need 5 There is no more urgent public need in Lenoir County than the addition of a trained person to the court system of the county to work with the dozens of domestic relations cases each year that cost the county untold amounts of money and misery. Broken homes, neglected children, juvenile delinquency, moral depravity, illegitimacy, school drop outs and tre mendous welfare case loads are each and all a part of the debris left when domestic relations break down. In smaller coiuitfea^here the tempo of life and the nnitiber of cases is less there is no need for such specialized court services. But in a county such as Lenoir that is moving from the sleepy agrarian into the bustling industrial era, such a specialized service is not amply a need, it is a crying necessity. No judge can possibly render a fair and equitable sentence in such cases unless he knows as far as can be known the total family picture. Asking either of the partners of such a bankrupt mar riage for the truth is rather like asking fighters to referee their own fight. The judge needs to know the income picture, the spending picture, as well as something of the health of both par ties involved. In a brief few minutes from the wit ness stand even the wisest judge cannot extract this information from hostile wit nesses, who under the rules of evidence cannot be made to divulge more than they actually wish to. Local officials are aware of this prob lem but their inaction is costing the county much in misery and in money. We suggest further that this is a total county problem and no attempt should be made to amortize it out of the usual- i ly depleted pocketbooks of those charg- ; ed in criminal cases by adding “just ; one more dollar” to the criminal court ( cost in the county. April 17th is not so far away as you i might think. Go ahead and buy, or at ; least make a down payment on that ; season ticket for 72 Kinston Eagle base- i ball games. This remains the biggest i entertainment bargain available any- \ where in the sports world today. 'Nut House' At the tisk of sounding very nasty, we suggest that there might be some good reason for changing the name of the Agriculture Building to “The Nut House.” Let us explain, and quickly. This week the newsletter from the Lenoir County ASCS office announces that 385 farmers have signed- up to take 8,399.4 acres of corn out of pro duction for which they will be paid a maximum of $317,824. This week a hearing was held in the court house to determine the legality of setting up a drainage district in Jones, Lenoir and Craven counties to make thousands of acres of land more productive and into which project thous ands of the taxpayer’s dollars would be poured. This is another project involv ing agencies of the agriculture depart ment So we see one hand of government throwing out millions of dollars to farm ers for not using the good land they already have and another hand of gov ernment spending millions of dollars to put more land into production. It is on this basic that we suggest that something is nutty around the “Ag Building.’’ However, in fairness to the local patients in our own “Ag Build ings” it ought to be pointed out that they do not make the laws; this is done by congress, so don’t blame the local folks. Perhaps the motion should be amend ed to change not the name of the “Ag Buildings” but to change the name of congress, because actually there is the place from which “reason departed” long, long ago and billions of dollars away. On Pickpockets When Old Homo Yokel visits the big city he is warned to sew his money in the lining of his long-handled drawers, to beware of strange women and strang er men, and especially he is told of the artistry of the pickpocket, who’ll steal his solid gold watch chain as well as his folding money. But all pickpockets do not work the subway circuit. There are other, fan cier thieves who roam the range and who do not wait for Ye Olde Yokel to come to the big town to see the bright lights. One of the standard pickpocket rou tines is for an accomplice to bounce clumsily into the victim while the oth er deftly extracts the life savings from the sheep. Consider pocket picking on a grander scale. The public is pushed around with “Civil Defense Drills” and ominous warnings of nuclear destruction are spoken of in hushed terms by the big men in the big town. The style is simple. They scare hell out of old John Q. Yokel while they steal his eye teeth with an assortment of taxes that would make Shylock seem like Santa Claus. They keep a little war running some where all the time to justify stealing 50 billion dollars a year in the name of ‘defense.” It’s rather like the bottle of castor oil sitting on the back of the old wood stove that used to make a lot of us go to school when we were run ng a high fever. Civil Defense, Viet Nam, Korea, NATO, SEATO, United Nations, The ”ongo, Cuba, Panama; these are all ‘castor oils” to keep the taxpayer’s mind off' that long, greedy paw the tax payer has in his pocket. As we were saying, there is more ;han one kind of pickpocket. Malcolm X said, “The chickens are :oming home to roost” when a commu list killed President Kennedy. It would ippear that those same chickens are itiU looking a place to roost. JONES JOURNAL JACK RIDER. publisher ■ublished every Thursday by The Lenoir Bounty news Cohrany, Inc., 408 West Iernon Aye., Kinston, N. C., phone ja 3 >378. entered AS Second Class Matter May I, 1S4S, AT THE Post Office at Trenton, JORTH CAROLINA, UNDER THE ACT OF MARCH S, S7S. SY Mail ih First ZONE—88.00 Per 'ear. Subscription Rates payable in Advance, iecond Class Postabe Paid at Trenton, N. C. PERSONAL PARAGRAPHS BY JACK RIDER This past weekend Muriel and I at tended the Press-Radio-TV Institute at State College. (We left before the fires started.) And we had a good time, ex cept for one really disturbing tiling, which had nothing to do with the in stitute. What it was, was a one-man ex hibition of “art” by a character named Musselwhite. I walked through this “art” exhibit in the lobby of the student union building with a very mixed set of emotions. This trash that was posing in the name of sculpture included blocks of'wood into which rusty railroad spikes had been driven, other pieces of badly welded metal that had neither form nor color and one pile of stovewood tacked togeth er with an old tobacco truck wheel stuck on top. We talked this “exhibit” over with Jack Hankins and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goodman who were also amazed and amused by this Mongolian idiot type of art. Yet people buy this junk, and the “arty” set “oohs” and “ahs” about it as if it were something more than the effort of an idiot. But then the thought struck me that maybe this fellow is not an idiot; that maybe he’s a lot smarter than his works look. He had to be a grown man to handle the railroad ties and tree trunks that he had hammered railroad spikes into so unstylishly. So I wonder if he is not pulling the leg of the “avant garde” in what must rank as one of the best examples of this thing called “anti art.” The February 18 issue of The Chris tian Science Monitor has an excellent article on “anti-art” by its book editor, Melvin Maddocks, who sums up the weird situation in this one sentence: “It is scarely an exaggeration to say that the avant-garde has become com mercial; the far-Out is In.” In this “far-Out” art Maddocks points out, “No demands of rhyme, or even meter, cramp the lines of the poet to day. The novelist no longer feels re sponsible to plot, nor the musician to melody and harmony. Even in the field of “entertainment” people glory in be ing abused. The first of the “sick com ics,” Mort Sahl, knocks down a third of a million dollars a year telling saloon audiences how crummy they really are. And even Sahl admits, “You can’t go too far for audiences. They’ll take anything. The only control is the discretion of the performer.” Consider an alarming example of what the paying side of society will permit. A current Baptist reading list for children includes the latest James Baldwin novel which describes with re volting preciseness the seduction of a white girl by a negro — much to her pleasure of course—in a Baptist church choir loft. This is sackcloth and ashes carried to the “Nth!” degree. But there is some faint glow of hope on the artistic horizon and in the same wacky fashion it is being called “Anti anti-art.” The worst thing that can hap pen to the “nouveau riche” or the pseudo-intellectual is to be mistaken for a “square,” so these two groups have been pillaged and plundered by the wild assortment of “artists” who have sold them at fantastic prices such junk as that exhibited in the union building at State College. I am both a square and a lover of art, but I never “dug” anti-art. If I look at “Nude Descending Staircase” I want to see something more than the smearings of color on a canvas by a dipsomaniac. Cubism, Daliism, “Pop art” and all of the other filth and junk that lias been foisted on the gullible and stupid public have always left me very -old. And I never felt more chilly than it the railroad spike exhibition in Ral egh last Saturday.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Feb. 25, 1965, edition 1
2
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