Paul Newman was not one for celebrity worship

PHILIP MARTIN

You aren’t supposed to get star-struck in this job. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

COLUMN ONE : O, for the good old unfair days

PAUL GREENBERG

There was a small but revealing moment on the final night of the editorial writers’ convention here in Little Rock. Our distinguished guest speaker of the liberal persuasion was waxing nostalgic for the heady time when the old Fairness Doctrine ruled the airwaves and all was right with the world of broadcast opinion. For in those days impartial government bureaucrats enforced the rule that, for every opinion voiced on radio and television, equal time had to be allotted to its opposite, and all was right with the world. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

Little Rock, 1957

BY ELIZABETH JACOWAY

All of you have undoubtedly read Gene Roberts and Hank Klibinoff’s fine book that won the Pulitzer Prize last year—The Race Beat—about the press and the civil rights movement. There you met a charming young Harry Ashmore, editor of the Arkansas Gazette, who appeared to be one of the leading heroes not only of the tragedy in Little Rock in 1957, but of the whole Civil Rights Movement. While I have long been an admirer of Ashmore’s courageous commentary and his dedication to preserving law and order at a time when that fundamental principle of democracy was truly imperiled, I am going to talk today about Ashmore in a way that casts his role in a somewhat different light. - Sunday, October 5, 2008

Three views of the desegregation crisis

BY JIM JOHNSON

When George Jones was informed that he had been selected to the Country Music Hall of Fame—rather than thanking them for the high honor—he said, “It’s about time!” I thought of this when Paul Greenberg called and invited me to appear on this program—after 52 years. It’s about time! - Sunday, October 5, 2008

PERSPECTIVE

BY ADAM GREEN

Last month marked the 51st year since the desegregation struggles at Central High, what is often referred to as the “crisis” of Little Rock. Much has changed in our thinking about these events, just as much has changed in the social, political and civil character of our nation. As we move into the next half century of remembering Little Rock in 1957, it is worth pausing to consider why this episode remains so prominent in the minds of people throughout the state and across this country. If I might take some liberty with the words of my own father, Ernest Green: after three majors wars, revolutions in political ideology, paradigm shifts in economic structure and fortunes, and transformations in social attitude, why are we still talking about high school? - Sunday, October 5, 2008

The week in review

Around the world Stampede kills 47 A religious festival in northern India turned into a horrific deadly crush on Tuesday as thousands of Hindu pilgrims stampeded at a temple shrine, piling into each other on a treacherous walkway slick with spilled coconut milk. Officials said at least 147 people, mostly men, suffocated. Television footage showed dead pilgrims strewn on the narrow walkway about 150 yards from the Chamunda Devi temple, at the southern edge of the 15th-century Mehrangarh fort in Jodphur, in the western state of Rajasthan. It was the second deadly religious tragedy in the past few months in India, where pilgrim stampedes are not uncommon. Tuesday was the first day of a nine-day festival called Navratra that celebrates nine incarnations of the Hindu mother goddess Durga. Between 2,000 and 3,000 pilgrims were present when the stampede began at about 6 a.m. While the exact cause of the stampede was unclear, officials said the disaster was worsened by devotees who had brought cracked coconuts as rel - Sunday, October 5, 2008

How risk models failed Wall Street and Washington

BY JAMES G. RICKARDS IN THE WASHINGTON POST

Crooked mortgage brokers, greedy investment bankers, oblivious rating agencies and gullible investors, and, lest we forget, foolish home buyers, have all been faulted in the financial crisis, and there is bipartisan agreement that regulators were asleep at the switch. It’s all well and good to call for substantial new oversight. But if regulators were oblivious to the danger, the question is why. - Sunday, October 5, 2008