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The long arm of the PC police has reached back to the ‘30s and arrested, prosecuted

and sentenced the late singer Kate Smith. Smith, who pop-ularized Irving Berlin’s song “God Bless America” and was a female pioneer in early tele-vision, recorded songs that today in hindsight are viewed as racist.

An old friend, Harry Co-vert, writes to recall the early days of black-and-white TV when he (and I) watched Kate Smith’s television program. Covert remembers one show interrupted by a news bulle-tin announcing the attempt-ed assassination of Harry S. Truman by militant Puerto Rican activists. He notes that today’s Puerto Ricans are not smeared by that incident, so why is Smith being figurative-ly tarred and feathered?

In 1940, Irving Berlin, the Russian-born composer, established the God Bless America Fund “for the benefit of the youth of America,” donating the proceeds from the song’s royalties to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America. Yankees baseball great Joe DiMaggio was a trustee on the GBA Fund.

Smith, along with many other celebrities, donated her time to entertain troops during World War II. The PC crowd gives her no credit for that. The New York Yankees, an organization that should be proud of such history and DiMaggio’s association with it, stopped playing “God Bless America” at their games. The Philadelphia Flyers, which at one time asked Smith to sing the song live at their hockey

games because when she did the team usually won, has also banned her voice.

As in so many cases with political correctness, the standard is unequally ap-plied. What about Southern Democrats who approved of slavery, Jim Crow laws and poll literacy tests and op-posed civil rights legislation? One of them, Sen. Richard Russell (D-GA), has a Senate office building named for him.

Then there is Sen. Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia. Not only was Byrd a member of the Ku Klux Klan, rising to the level of Exalted Cyclops in the bigoted orga-nization, he spoke favorably of the Klan during the early stages of his political career. In 1956, Byrd wrote to the or-ganization’s imperial wizard: “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anx-ious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.”

During his 1958 Senate campaign when he was 41, Byrd said his membership in the Klan was “the most egregious mistake I’ve ever made.” Still, in a 2001 inter-view on Fox News Sunday, in response to a question about race relations, Byrd, then 83, said, “I’ve seen a lot of white (expletive) in my time.” He later apologized for the remark.

When it comes to naming

buildings and other projects after politicians, The Dai-ly Gazette in Schenectady, N.Y., editorializes against the practice: “There’s a state park on Long Island and a parkway near Niagara Falls named af-ter Robert Moses. Moses was a 20th-century urban planner who was later revealed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning biog-raphy, “The Power Broker,” as a ruthless abuser of political power with racist tendencies who pushed through many major infrastructure projects that New York City residents now revile. Should his name be on public highways and parks?”

How far are we willing to take this retro-cleansing of American history? The Arlington County, Virginia Board may decide as early as this week to rename Jeffer-son Davis Highway, which runs through Arlington and Alexandria. Davis’ offense was being the president of the Confederacy. They have already renamed Washing-ton-Lee High School, because of Robert E. Lee.

As for Kate Smith, when these imposers of the present on the past accomplish any-thing benefiting America, as did the singer and Irving Ber-lin, then we can talk. In the meantime, why not focus on efforts that will significantly help the poor and disenfran-chised, such as school choice? Meaningless symbolism improves nothing.

CAL THOMAS is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears in hundreds of news-papers and regularly appears on Fox News and other media outlets. Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.

OPIN

ION

White House Press Secretary Sar-ah Sanders has come under

scrutiny after admitting she made statements to the press that weren’t based entirely on facts.

The controversy stems from the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on his investigation into Rus-sian interference in the 2016 election. It surrounds com-ments Sanders made about President Trump’s 2017 deci-sion to fire FBI Director James Comey, a subject that Muel-ler’s investigators studied closely.

Shortly after the firing, Sanders told reporters the de-cision had to do with Comey’s having lost the confidence of the bureau’s rank-and-file employees. She cited the tes-timony of “countless” FBI agents as evidence.

According to Mueller’s re-port, however, Sanders told investigators those comments “were not founded on any-thing.”

Sanders has since said her

use of the word “countless” was an unintentional slip. She said the sentiment of her com-ments was true, although in-vestigators concluded Trump fired Comey because of his “unwillingness to state that the president was not person-ally under investigation” by the special counsel.

Politics are politics, and this story has certainly been clouded by partisanship – sup-porters vehemently defending Sanders, and critics insisting she step down.

What’s more important is to step back and emphasize the principle being dissected here. Sanders may or may not have misspoken. Regardless, we must continue to iterate why it’s fundamentally important that our press secretaries deal only in facts. The press corps and citizens must be able to trust the information provid-ed by the president’s official spokesperson – it’s a big part of what separates a democra-cy from a dictatorship.

As Kurt Bardella wrote in an analysis piece for NBC News, “The press secretary serves as

a living, breathing reminder of the free press’ constitution-ally protected right to ques-tion the most powerful office in the world. More than that, the White House press secre-tary is the person we turn to in times of emergency or tragedy for the truth. We must have faith that they will understand when the politics of the day should be suspended.”

Going forward, we must make sure this episode doesn’t set a precedent or lead to fur-ther erosion of the position. Regardless of her intention in 2017, Sanders must work hard to restore trust and credibility to her office, and her succes-sors must also deeply appreci-ate its special mission.

The same is true for mem-bers of the media who have come under attack for being overly partisan in their report-ing. From the media to public officials to press secretaries, we all have an obligation to avoid propaganda and pro-vide democratic citizens with the unpolished facts they need to understand their world and make informed decisions.

“Clean this mess up,” my wife commanded the other day.

“I can’t do anything about it,” I told her. “The election is still more than a year away.”

“No, not THAT mess,” she clarified. “THIS mess,” she said pointing to our yard, if you can call it that.

Our property is covered in large trees so close togeth-er that, when viewed from a drone over-head, their tops look like a nice lawn now that all the leaves have bloomed back out. Problem is, somewhere beneath that nice green lawn is our house. Some-where.

The prob-lem with nice, large, hardwood trees is that they produce nice, large, broad leaves which tend to wither and die and fall to the ground in the fall. Luckily, it doesn’t happen all in one fell swoop, otherwise we’d be crushed by the sudden deposit of what I would estimate to be tons of leaf litter.

No, each leaf has its own ex-piration date. Some succumb with the first chill of fall like a loaf of bread left unwrapped overnight while others hang on stubbornly like a box of Twinkies. Being a practical person – a trait my wife often misinterprets as “lazy” – I like to wait until the change of seasons and gravity have done their thing and every single leaf has fallen to the ground before I pick up a rake.

Why should I go out and rake now when there are still leaves dangling from the trees wait-ing their turn to fall? Better to wait until they’re all down and then tackle the chore. I’m a big fan of one fell swoop as long as it’s not a sudden drop of a million tons of leaves on my head.

Consequently, our proper-ty usually stays ankle-deep in dead leaves throughout the winter until the arrival of spring. Then it’s time for those two dreaded words. No, not Republican Party. Spring cleaning.

For weeks now it’s been a constant mantra – “When are you going to clean up the leaves?”

“When Trump gets around to draining the swamp,” was my initial response.

But then I realized that nature herself was giving me the perfect excuse for procras-tinating or, rather, for being practical. You see we live out in the county, and there is no curbside pickup of leaves and limb litter. Probably because there are no curbs.

It’s up to us to rake and burn our own tree trash. Unfortu-nately, as I tell my wife, fortu-nately, as I mutter to myself, the weather won’t cooperate. We haven’t had a long enough stretch of dry weather for the leaves, other than the top-most layers, to dry out enough to rake and burn.

It’s like that line from an old Mystery Science Theater epi-sode when angry villagers are attempting to burn a suspect-ed witch at the stake, and she refuses to catch fire.

“Musta got ahold of a wet witch,” someone says.

So, for now, spring cleaning is put on hold until Mother Nature decides to stop hos-ing us down every other day. Thanks, mom!

MARTY RUSSELL writes a Tuesday column for the Daily Journal. He can be reached at marty.russell56@gmail.com.

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DAILY

Unpolished facts necessary for democracy

PC criticism of Kate Smith unfair

Cal Thomas

Two most feared words: spring cleaning

MartyRussell

“When are you going to clean up the leaves?” “When Trump gets around to draining the swamp.”