New York, May 15—Everyone feels compelled to comment on the event in Rome. Such comments are better done off, rather than on, the record. On the record, propriety prevails. Off the record, undomesticated sentiments are uttered. Where 1 work, sitting around the table eating sandwiches on press day minutes after we got the news, one of us blurted out, “Why don’t they ever kill someone 1 don’t like?” George Ade, the mordant Hoosier wag (“Early to bed, early to rise, and never meet any important people”) was as saddened as his clubmates when one of their favorites died. He posted his wry regret on the bulletin board: “Why is it always the wrong man?”
If somebody had to shoot at anybody, why not at Pol Pot? Or at—but we are not off the record, and such licentious instincts must be governed. In conversations about assassinations we are only safe in speaking in the past tense. It is safe to say, for instance, “What a pity that British Intelligence didn’t get Adolf Hitler between the cross hairs of an agent’s telescopic sight. . . .” But if Hitler were alive today (and he is), the public expression of such a desire would raise eyebrows. Properly, because publicly to desire an assassination is probably worse even than a clinical execution.
Comments