The Evening Independent
October 4, 1937
Well, anyway, the Hugo Black thing isn’t all scandal and outrage and for the comedy relief in an otherwise angry episode, we owe thanks to our red and pink pals over on the left who have been giving a hilarious imitation of the wrestler who let out a horrible yowl of pain, rolled over on his back and discovered that, in the confusion of the struggle, he had been twisting his own foot.
Would anybody ever have expected to see the day when the butchers’ paper literati would find themselves stuck with a Kluzer, and did anyone ever imagine that in a desperate attempt to save our Bolos would be driven to the humiliating necessity of apologizing for their guy’s lack of intelligence and character and minimizing the atrocity of the Klan?
To obtain the best effect it is necessary to go back to the days when the Klan was riding high and read up on the resounding fury of the reds and pinks. In those days there was no discount or mitigation and anyone who joined out with the night riders whether for active, personal service as a terrorist or merely as a politician seeking votes, was flattered by the name of heel. In fact, the politician who wasn’t really Klannish at heart but joined merely to win a cheap political job was considered to be distinctly lower than the ignoramuses who actually thought the Pope was fixing to storm the White House and earnestly subscribed to the Mother Goose prattle about kludds, kladds and kilgrapps.
The politician, if he had character, would have felt himself contaminated by the approval of such people and honored by their hatred, and you may read writings to this effect in all the publications which are now attempting to argue that when Hugo changed from a white nightshirt to a black one he also became another person. At that time they wouldn’t grant you that any adult man who joined the Klan could live long enough to get over it, and there are those of us who heard them the first time and agreed entirely.
Then, all of a sudden, and thanks to the deception practiced on the senate as well as on themselves, they discovered that they had been cheering shrilly for a man with a past.
I will say one thing for them. They do not often speak so dishonestly. Usually they are fairly consistent, and they have done themselves injustice in this case, for they would have been at least honest if they had admitted a mistake instead of resorting to arguments which sound like the state papers of Little Joe Goebbels.
The counter-attack has been directly mainly at the personalities and motives of those who made and exploited the expose, with special emphasis on the personality of Paul Block, whose Pittsburgh paper broke the story. And while I yield to no man in that which I may describe mildly as my dislike for Paul Block, it isn’t necessary for me to point out that Block isn’t an issue. Neither is Hearst with his personal grudge against Hugo Black, and equally irrelevant is the fact that many persons who delight in the Klan story are hypocrites who wouldn’t object to Klannishness of Hugo were a reactionary Republican.
Nothing can be gained by denouncing people who are not involved and even it be granted for the sake of argument that Paul Block had ulterior motives for breaking the story the question remains the same.
I am afraid our pals on the left have lost their sense in their shock and horror at the discovery, but they will do themselves no good railing at fate, the house fly and crime, meanwhile neglecting the trouble. They ought to calm down, accept the situation, see the doctor and start taking their me)dicine.
(Source: Google News, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=PZE8UkGerEcC&dat=19371004&printsec=frontpage&hl=en)
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