“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” - A.J. Liebling
My father Bob Wilson took this to heart, and bought one and started his own newspaper, the Prairie Post of Maroa, Illinois in 1958, and ran it until he died in 1972. It never had a circulation of more than 2500 or so, but every week, he would fire off editorials at everyone and everything from local events to the actions of the nations of the world.
He may have been a Quaker peace activist in a Republican district, but his love and support of the farming communities garnered him enough respect that he eventually ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962, though he lost. (He might have tried again, had he not died of an accident while only 49.) Many of his views ring true today. And he might have been willing to change the ones that fell behind the times. Although raised in the casual racism of the 1920s and 1930s, at the age of 15 he took stock of what he was being taught and discarded much of it as being wrong, and lived his life with respect for all.
I decided to transcribe his old editorials (I may make a book for some of my relatives) and every once in a while I will repost one here, as a view of how the world has changed wildly, or remained stubbornly the same.
December 10, 1959
THE OLD PAYOLA
We heard Handel's “Messiah” at Milliken Sunday night. This heavenly oratorio is our idea of great music. We do not know what the “Top Ten” tunes are this week, and we could not care less. The only disc jockey we would give a nickel for is the kind who can jockey a twelve-foot disc through a twelve-foot gate.
Nothing these people could do would surprise us after listening to their idiotic prattle on the airwaves.
Other entertainers as well have long cherished “The Old Payola.” For instanced, a joke about “Old Grandad” was reportedly good for a case of whiskey bearing that label.
The testimonials signed by celebrities for products ranging from “The Thinking Man's Filter”, and “Men of Distinction” to “She's lovely; she's engaged; she etc.” have long been known to be cash transactions.
At length, there came someone with maturity enough to see the humor in the situation. A series of ads has sprung up in a national magazine for Skippy* peanut butter, like a fresh breeze from the sea, blowing the stale fraud away in a gust of laughter.
A PAID TESTIMONIAL FROM BERT LAHR FOR SKIPPY* PEANUT BUTTER, one of them is headed. “How did we get Bert Lahr in an ad for Skippy Peanut Butter? Easy: WE PAID HIM. We approached Mr. Lahr with lots of money (really not too much, since we'd changed it into small bills and it made quite a fistful)” Mr. Lahr was horrified by the suggestion. In another ad, a Hermione Gingold declared the only peanut butter she ever used was to patch a crack in the sundial!
The Lahr advertisement continues, “We sent out for more money, and at last lured Lahr into tasting Skippy*. Following which, he becomes rabidly enthusiastic about the product.
The whole effect is so amusing as to inspire gratitude towards this truthful manufacturer, and even a desire to try his Skippy* peanut butter.
Of course, “The Old Payola” is all around us. We have an attorney friend who sometimes points out that there is “A little of Charles Van Doren in all of us.” In one way or another, do not most of us either give, or receive, “The Old Payola?”
Near the bottom is the worker who loafs on railroad or corporation time, and the country or township employee who runs his own errands in municipal trucks.
At the top with the same ethics but more expensive tastes, are the member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who enjoys vacations a the expense of war-plane contractors, and the state official who backs himself for re-election with public money, by printing his own name in bold letters on every piece of literature that leaves his office.
“The Old Payola”, all of it.
Small wonder there is corruption at every level, and public cynicism about the honesty of public figures.
* The star indicates product references to Skippy* peanut butter. In the days before he was married, the Editor “batched” for seven years, and peanut butter was one of his staple items of diet. The disc jockeys can have their cases of “Four Roses.” The Editor simply hopes the Skippy* Peanut Butter Company will read this and send him his “Payola”... a jar of Skippy* peanut butter!
WE THREE KINGS
We have noted with approval the employment of a few negro salesladies by some of the large department stores.
Despite a help shortage, some stores have hesitated to engage even well-qualified persons of darker race, out of a quite unfounded fear of public disapproval.
Only a few years back, Quakers and other concerned religious people in Philadelphia made studies which showed that the average customer would as soon be served by a negro clerk as by a negro waitress; courtesy and a good appearance are everything, white or black. These findings were presented to the large stores, and discrimination has now all but disappeared in those cities with regard to clerking positions.
Prejudice rests on a fiction of superiority, and this superiority can only be maintained by denying education and economic opportunity to our darker brothers.
Prejudice fits ill into the Christmas season, when biblical tradition holds that one of the “Three Kings” came up out of Abyssinia, and a quiet look at a “creche” or nativity scene will show us the figure of a princely African, with his white companions, bearing gifts to lay at the feet of the Christ Child.
December 17, 1959
THE ONLY WAR WE SEEK
Our President Dwight D. Eisenhower, opening the American exhibit at the World Agricultural Fair, stated boldly:
“Men now possess knowledge and resources for a successful worldwide war against hunger – the sort of war that dignifies and exalts human beings.”
“The call to that genuinely noble war is enunciated in the American exhibit: food, family, friendship, freedom...”
“These are four words that are mightier than arms and bombs; mightier than machines and money, mightier than any empire that ruled the past or threatens the future...”
This is one of the great statements of the Twentieth Century, delivered to the people who needed to hear it, by the man who is qualified to make it!
India today is the citadel of democracy in the Orient. If she falls, the rest may be anti-climax. We cannot win her battle for her; but we can at least stop hindering her in her effort to lead the subject peoples of the Earth forward into the same freedoms which we enjoy. The hungry and the homeless are on the march, and if it is not into self-rule like the Indians have, it will be into lock-step Statism like the Chinese have.
It is easy to say that Ike must have hired a new speech-writer (and no doubt he has), yet we salute is wisdom in casting aside the sterile diplomacy of threats and bribes, and replacing it with one of ideas.
If Ike is willing to be Supreme Commander in this greatest of campaigns, the shock troops in his army are the men and boys on America's farms. Without their record accomplishments, the challenge would be empty words.
We can only hope Ike read that speech thoughtfully, and absorbed some of its profound meaning. It might well have come from the address delivered in Montreal last Spring by Adlai Stevenson, when he declared that the most important fact in the world today was the existence of two worlds side-by-side... “We would need the pen of a Dickens to paint the contrast between the comfortable suburban homes of a thousand Western cities and the hovels of the hungry millions I have seen from Hong Kong to Johannesburg.”
It is to this need that President Eisenhower has spoken. We are with you, Ike, all the way!