AMERICA THE POKE OF THE WORLD
AMERICA THE POPE OF THE WORLD
AMERICA THE HOPE OF THE WORLD
Thus does Uncle Sam struggle against this new tide of darkness and perversity, unleashed in effect by one man, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, acting alone in his chambers and against the will and necessities of the entire nation. Uncle Sam himself appointed him to this High Council of Elders as guardian of the sacred laws and interpreter of the Covenant, setting him “as a banner in the vanguard of Righteousness, as one who interprets with knowledge deep, mysterious things, as a touchstone for them that seek the truth, a standard for them that love correction,” but now he’s fucked it up. Was he innocent in his pernicious decision, or has he fallen prey to the Angel of Darkness, stumbling knowingly into wickedness and falsehood, pride and presumption? This is what he said:
I have serious doubts whether this death sentence may be imposed for this offense except and unless a jury recommends it. The Rosenbergs should have an opportunity to litigate that issue…. It is important that before we allow human lives to be snuffed out we be sure — emphatically sure — that we act within the law. If we are not sure, there will be lingering doubts to plague the conscience after the event….
To be sure, if any conscience is to be plagued it will be his, for thus, with one stroke, he has nullified over two years of careful preparations, over two years of exemplary Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and liturgy, granting not merely a stay but ordering the case sent back to the District Court, thence to the Court of Appeals, giving the atom spies not respite but life itself, and making Uncle Sam, Judge Kaufman, Edgar Hoover, and the entire U.S. prosecuting team look like a bunch of clowns. And he has done so knowing that the Court is in recess and scattered, the world is in turmoil, an A-bomb attack is imminent, and the legal point raised by these shady interlopers is so flimsy that even the Rosenberg defense attorneys rejected it.
Haven’t the Pentagon Patriots already warned us…?
…Now some quack lawyer with a flair
Shall try to save them from the “chair,”
But such a shyster (mark him well)
Is paid with gold that comes from hell.
So with God’s lash, he, too, should share
Death with this Communistic pair!
…Still, should some court support their prayer
And save them from death’s “waiting chair”…
If such there be, who’d stoop to spare
Their hides from Sing Sing’s “burning chair”
We’ll brand his brow
With marks of guilt,
And link his name
With traitors
In the sewers of shame!
As one voice, the free press of America cries out against the “treason” of Justice Douglas, calling him “arrogant…crafty…disruptive.” FBI agents secreted in the Warden’s garage at Sing Sing wire the Boss reassuringly that newsmen “are considerably upset as a result of the stay and it is Denno’s opinion they will probably blast Douglas.” And blast him they do. Leslie Gould in the New York Journal-American brands him “a headline-grabber with political ambitions, a tramp who has reverted to type,” and in the Chicago Tribune Walter Trohan writes:
Douglas, it must be remembered, has been the darling of the Communists. He dissented from the Court decision upholding the conviction of 11 top Communists. He called for recognition of Red China by United Nations at a time when the Red Chinese were killing American boys in Korea…. He compared the Communist uprisings in the Far East to the American Revolution…. Douglas aspires to the presidency. Most of his evil might still be before him!
The Washington Post laments that “Justice Douglas has plunged this highly controversial and internationally important case into utter chaos!” and the Philadelphia Inquirer asks: COULD JUSTICE DOUGLAS HEAR MOSCOW’S CHEERS…?
Justice Douglas has done his country one more monumental disservice…after the Court had adjourned until fall, [he] took it upon himself to reverse the whole Supreme Bench by a masterpiece of legal red-hair splitting [and then] hurried quietly away from Washington.
For the moment he is supposed to have gone to Oregon. Some say he will soon head for Moscow, is due there July 1. Many others will wish he would go back to Tibet, climb on a yak — and stay there….
The blackest treason in American history must not be condoned.
This is the man, incredibly, who might have been Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth-term Vice President, and thus ultimately the Incarnation of Uncle Sam himself! Uncle Sam must have had his eye on him even then — probably why he dumped the old satyr into all those sex scandals. Maybe he caught something in all that friskiness, a dose of venereal anarchy or something. And if so, what’s to prevent the whole damned Bench from coming down with it? “One scabbed sheep infects a whole flock,” warns Uncle Sam on the floor of the House of Representatives, and Congressman W. McD. Wheeler of Georgia leaps up as though he’s been goosed to introduce a prophylactic resolution “that William O. Douglas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors in office,” whereupon a special subcommittee of five is created instanter to act on the resolution. “Ah see no pahticulah point in sendin’ mey-un to Ko-REE-ya to dai, Mistah Cheymun,” declaims Congressman Wheeler, “whahl ay-tomic spies are allowed to liy-uv heah at HOME! One Justice yieldin’ to the vo-CIF’rous my-NOR-utty preshuh groups of this yere CUNT-tree is indee-FEN-suble! Ah canNOT sit ahdly by heah in this yere layjus-LAY-tuv BAHDY without seekin’ to DO somethin’ abaout it!” Don Wheeler is warmly cheered by his fellow Georgians, all of whom have been aching for years to see this nigger-loving New Deal cowboy stuffed as deep in hell as a pigeon can fly in a week, and they figure now they’ve finally got a clean shot at him.
The Rosenbergs themselves, of course, are elated. Their spirits had sunk pretty low of late, Julius burning his eyes out with futile late-night searches through the trial record, Ethel suffering from migraine headaches and sobbing herself to sleep at night. Columnist Leonard Lyons’s report recently in the New York Post that they were actually anti-Semites at heart who didn’t even want a rabbi with them on their Last Walk apparently rattled them, and they’ve been singing themselves hoarse at the prison services ever since, seemingly in the mad hope that somebody outside the walls would hear them. Julie had to have two teeth pulled out (Warden Denno in his economy-minded way making sure he got temporary plates only), and when his mother, Sophie, visited him while he was still dopey from shock and Novocain, what he said was: “Mama, I don’t feel good. Oh Mama, where is my wife? Where are my children? I’m sick, Mama. If only I were home you and Ethel could take care of me.” Ethel has evidently stopped writing letters to him altogether. She hasn’t wanted to go out in the exercise yard and play boccie-ball any more. Julius has tried to exercise, to keep in shape, but his knees have been like putty. When he’s tried to flip cigarette butts at the toilet bowl in his cell, he’s not only been missing, he’s been burning his fingers as well.