OPINION- Column One

Why, oh why?

Why does each day's edition of Arkansas' Newspaper carry just enough news and opinion to fill every column inch, neither more nor less but exactly? And here's a clue: The usually unheralded geniuses on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's copy desk know how to condense all the news and opinion to custom-fit.

Why did it take a coupla-three days for our president and tweeter-in-chief to identify and denounce the haters on the right at besieged Charlottesville in Virginia by name and ideology--like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other such fanatics? The way Arkansas' junior senator, Tom Cotton, did?

"I'm currently traveling in the Balkans," said Senator Cotton, "where the long, violent history of ethnic supremacism still stalks the land and is a reminder of how unique America is. White supremacists who claim to 'take America back' only betray their own ignorance of what makes America so special: our country's founding recognition of the natural rights of all mankind and commitment to the defense of the rights of all Americans. These contemptible little men do not speak for what is just, noble, and best about America. They ought to face what they would deny their fellow citizens: the full extent of the law." Why was it so hard for Donald J. Trump to go and do likewise?

Why did the mayor of Baltimore join the rage for tearing down Confederate monuments that's sweeping the country just now? It should have told her something when she had to do it in the dark of night. "With the climate in this nation, I think it's very important that we move quickly and quietly," Mayor Catherine Pugh non-explained.

"For me," Mayor Pugh added, "the statue represented pain, and not only did I want to protect my city from any more of that pain, I also wanted to protect my city from any of the violence that was occurring around the nation." And so she took violent action--supposedly to avoid violence, joining the mob of ahistorical ignoramuses who have declared war on the American past.

Why did His Tweetership Donald J. Trump, aka the president of the United States, form an advisory council of business leaders if he was going to disband it? Because some of those leaders began resigning from it in disgust at this president's blaming with equal vigor those who fomented the violence at Charlottesville, Va., and those who took a stand against it. There was "blame on both sides," he claimed, putting the Kluxers and other white supremacists on the same moral plain as those who demonstrated against them.

Why has Jim Kenney, mayor of Philadelphia, opened the door to the possibility of pulling down the statue of a former mayor, Frank Rizzo, who was a center of controversy in his time, blamed by his critics for presiding over an era of police brutality? Why not leave such matters to the historians, scholars and partisans of both side to fight it out--with words, not firearms?

Why should Donald J. Trump feel he has to praise North Korea's dictator, the current Kim, for a "very wise and well-reasoned decision" to dampen down tensions between Pyongyang and Washington after the North Korean dictator backed away from a confrontation over Guam? Why didn't he make a very wise and well-reasoned decision himself not to escalate this war or words in the first place?

Why, why, oh why?

Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Editorial on 08/20/2017

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