- It took a hundred years to pass and enforce some kind of law about killing civil rights workers, but once we get a violator of some kind and a real live manhunt, we’re righteous he-speed GONE! It’s not that we’ve become suddenly offended by nigger killings–we still can’t get a rat control bill passed, at least for the ghetto. Millions, of course, are spent on protecting farm surplus from rats; but black people haven’t counted as liquid assets for some time now. We give our vengeance a little more freely; the entire social machinery focuses on hunting down some poor, fully symbolized murderer. VISION:
- Dark figure leaps across windblown ice floes; out from a black stand of elms along the shore rush heated, baying thousands in pursuit. Bystander runs up, “What’s he done?”
- They run on.
- But King is not forgotten: Harper & Row, for example, have announced the creation of a $1000 dollar literary prize in King’s name, various US politicians are concerned–extremely concerned–that Martin’s peaceful message be remembered–and new garbage is received from Memphis daily.
- E. Starvo Galt—-who is probably a golem Created by Ayn Rand and not responsible for his actions anyway–is given more newspaper space by being free than Chaney got from being killed.
- Newspaper space and position is a strange thing anyway: one tends to get the feeling that news events come already labeled PAGE ONE, ABOUT 10,000 WORDS. Take almost any non-filler story in the paper, fill it out with statistics and comments about informed sources, and imagine it on the front page: bang, it’s important news. Somewhere, some editor has to sit down and decide whether an assasination will sell more papers/ attract more interest than, say, a gold crisis.
- “Well, better add a little more on the killer hunt or we’ll have to refund money to the goddamn old wino newsdealers… but enough is enough. Lets move the syndicated Reston from page one to the editorial page, and see what Bill Hearst has to say next Sunday.”
- Next Sunday Bill tells us that what makes the North Viet such tricky devils to fight is the traditional Oriental (Buddhist) lack of respect for human life. What can you expect from a race that invented gunpowder? If there were only, some way to whiten Ho…
- NY Times also gives front page coverage to intelligent, vivaceous Linda LeClair, 20, who chose to live in off campus sin with a young man. Her father, who works in a bank, does not approve, and further is beginning to wonder if he isn’t spending too much of the bank’s time talking to reporters.
- You know someone had to send those reporters out on their mission: editor speaks tersely into phone. “This looks like a job for SALISBURY!” Spidy and Poteet, blue with periodic cramps and protesting all the way, are rushed off to Saigon; Lippmann goes to Columbia to get the other side of the picture and the Times Literary Supplement comes out with a double issue. Iron Myke crawls back under the City Desk with the Dean of Women; Drew Pearson reveals that Linda is a dyke and her paramour is a Homuncula grown illicitly with cuttings stolen from Gov. Lurleen’s personal physician.
- Finally the newshound on the LeClair case dug down into the guilty meat of the matter. all this noteriety was making things very hard for Linda’s seventeen year old brother. Think of what you’re doing to us here at home…
- Cameras flash, “Hold it Mr. LeClair–that’s right, now smile. Tell me, would you say that all the publicity which your daughter has been receiving has had any adverse effect? In what way… hold it!” Flash bulbs pop again.
- Mayor Lindsay has recently suceeded in getting a bill passed to permit newspaper vendors to sell small, inexpensive items along with papers to make up for the loss of revenue caused by the folding of various NYC papers. “Well, these papers are ten cents apiece, while those over there are slightly more; but you can soak the logo in orange juice… yeah, four makes a nice high.” Then, of course, you have the problem of what to do with the paper. There is no journalistic equivalent of Fahey, though Stromburg occasionally comes on like the Mothers.
- More from the Times: Admiral Hyman Rickover appears to be, at long last, succeeding in his battle to get the Defense Department to give him more, sleeker, faster nuclear submarines. Wouldn’t it be a gas if you and I were sterilized forever from fallout by long phallic missles thrown up by long phallic subs thrown up by Mr. and Mrs. Rickoverls poor taste in first names?
- “Hey fellas, Maidenhead here says he wants to be a sailor:”
- “Yeah, well that’s cool, as long as he doesn’t get on any bicycles haha.”
- Someday you’ll be SORRY!
- And back to E. Starvo Galt: Castro, champion of the underdog, dismissed reports that Galt was headed toward Cuba and announced that if Galt did arrive in Cuba, he would be turned over to American Negroes rather than the “racist” US courts. Could Fidel be a pseudonym for Micky Spillane? who wants tomorrow’s papers?
