Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • July 14, 2010 were denied passports. Nobody saw this stuff as bad until they saw Hitler do it to educated whites. Then they got the point. Before that, American racism was institutionalized. Many states had laws against marriages between people of different races. The Hollywood Production Code in 1930 banned movie plots that featured interracial romances and just about put Sessue Hayakawa out of business. Before that, Hayakawa had been a Hollywood moneymaker on the level of Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin playing a sort of menacing romantic Japanese villain who pursued white women. Hayakawa and his wife, Tsuru Aoki, adopted three white children. When Aoki died, Hayakawa became a Buddhist monk. Somebody slipped a non-singing version of “Madame Butterfly” with Cary Grant and Sylvia Sydney through Hollywood just as the Production Code was taking effect. Sydney gave the most convincing impersonation of a Japanese girl I’ve ever seen from a white actress, but since it was still an interracial love story, it was the last of its kind. “Birth of a Nation” (1916) was so racist that the leading black characters were played by whites in blackface. The remote extras really were of African ancestry. In “So Red the Rose” (1935), the blacks who wanted to be free were dangerous fools and villains and the Union soldiers who wanted to free them were thieves and cowards – “one step above gorillas,” as a modern reviewer noted. The heroine, Margaret, justified slavery, and the blacks in the movie agreed with her. In “Gone with the Wind” (1939) all bases were covered. The black characters in that film included a villain, the wise Mammy, and a comprehensive collection of good-hearted, lovable people. Check out the dialogue in any World War II movie: “These little monkeys are ichi-ban jozo (number one skillful). They can climb trees better than monkeys. They’ve got all the best trees marked on their maps.” “Okay, Mr. Monkey, you’re gonna get it now.” That wasn’t the Germans or the Italians they were talking about. The one black man in “Bataan” (1943), played by Kenneth Spencer, spends most of the film singing the blues. When the Japanese kill him, he is the only one who screams. Southern states banned “Bataan” because the unit in the film was integrated – an anachronism, since the whole Army and Marine Corps were segregated until 1948. Once the “color bar” went down in sports, white supremacists received a shock: Blacks were demonstrably better at many sports than whites were. White supremacy is a fear trip as whites in the lower quadrant of the IQ sector, who can’t relate to much beyond sports and sex, realize they aren’t really superior. If life is really a “struggle for existence” instead of all people helping one another, these guys are losing. If you want to get rid of white supremacy, get rid of Charles Darwin. His science was bogus and was dismissed by genuine scientists like Louis Pasteur and Rudolf Virchow. Darwin was the grandfather of modern racism, supported by Americans like Charles Davenport and Madison Grant, and Austrians like Adolf Hitler and Adolf Eichmann, along with a lot of Germans and a surprising number of Brits. Empirically, those whites who are drawn to white supremacy are generally anything but supreme. They are scared, resentful people, especially in this economy, but they are still morally and intellectually in the wrong. Darwin, their conscious or covert touchstone, is a racist has-been and prime instigator of the Holocaust. Nazi racial theory was bluntly known as neo-Darwinism. But some people just can’t understand why it’s fake, and other people are afraid to lose their jobs and be lumped together with Fredric March playing Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan) in “Inherit the Wind.” The facts of science – the absence of any plausible case of spontaneous generation or the gaps in the fossil column as in the Grand Canyon – just don’t matter to Darwin’s defenders. What is important is job security. People who reject Darwin are just as unpopular as those who publicly support white supremacy, but they’re not the same people. An interesting thing happened during our aestivation. According to a piece in another newspaper, some residents took umbrage with the fact that the Glen Rock Borough Council and the Community Relations Advisory Board of Glen Rock and Ridgewood had been remiss in tackling the issue of white supremacist leaflets stuck under windshield wipers by the National Socialist Movement, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama. The leaflets denounced illegal immigration and supported “Putting Our Family Our Nation and Our Race First.” (The leaflets display a swastika in front of a U.S. flag.) Missing from the article – an editorial disguised as a news story – was what the Glen Rock Council and the Community Relations Board’s response should have been. What is the appropriate response for an irresponsible hate pamphlet from a bunch of neo-Nazi nutcakes? Should that response have been the unconstitutional suppression of free speech, however moronic and odious, or perhaps a personal visit from the Black Dragon Society, the only drastically active anti-racist group I know of that had any viable claws or any serious political support. The Black Panthers have long since been rendered extinct. The Jewish Brigade just after World War II was pretty good, and caught up with a lot of Nazi death camp murderers the Nuremburg prosecution missed, but they have long since gone out of business. The world would be a better place if white racism all came labeled with the swastika so Americans would recognize a palpable evil and shun it as they would a cancer. It’s not that easy. Once a year, the Americans celebrate “Doctor Seuss” – Theodore Geisel – a commie stooge who fronted for Ralph Ingersoll and Lillian Hellman while Ingersoll and Hellman fronted for Stalin. Once a year, the federal governmental tells us to dote over the ugly illustrations of this Stalinist dupe – a man who, having insulted blacks, Indians, and Jews earlier in his career, drew racist cartoons advocating Japanese-American relocation when even J. Edgar Hoover said it was illegal. Seuss once made a documentary called “Decision for Death,” which justified the incendiary and nuclear attacks on Japan, the leading anti-racist power before 1945. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said “Decision for Death” – killing the Japanese so their survivors could get their act together and adopt U.S.-style democracy, which still prevented black citizens from voting in most Southern states, bluntly banned interracial marriages, and condoned lynching – was the worst documentary he had ever seen. Why was Japan, whose hard-working immigrants were virtually banned from the United States, and whose leaders wanted to send troops to help the Ethiopians against Mussolini, so obtuse as not to see how much better we were? Bluntly, the United States before the late 1940s was an officially racist society. Opponents of 4,000 lynchings could not get an anti-lynching law through Congress. Public health programs in many states sterilized blacks and Indians to keep their populations down if not to eradicate them. Educated hard-working Jewish refugees from Hitler White supremacists v. the emerging reality Area A break in the heat wave late last week prompted the Ridgewood Water Company to ease its Stage IV ban on any type of irrigation. “The system is recovering, and there is no longer a public health and safety concern,” said Frank Moritz, the director of Ridgewood Water, at press time Friday. “Perhaps we can further ease the restrictions going forward; it will depend on the weather,” he added. The revised restrictions issued Friday afternoon allow the use of hand-held hoses for watering gardens and shrubs on any day at any time. Manual and automatic sprinkler use is still prohibited. The utility’s sprinkler and hand-held hose ban were triggered by the record-breaking heat wave and the demands that heat placed on wells and water tanks, according to David Schreibner, Ridgewood Water’s business director. The temperature in New York’s Central Park was recorded as 103 that same day, breaking a record set in 1994, and temperatures in Ridgewood were several degrees higher, according to local thermometers. At least three telephone messages went out on Reverse 911 last week, advising the company’s customers in Ridgewood, Glen Rock, Midland Park and Wyckoff of the restrictions. Only watering plants with a hand-held watering can was permitted. There were no exceptions for new plantings. Some landscaping contractors and garden center owners were taken aback by the sudden, total ban without waivers. Chris James of Chris James Landscaping of Waldwick recalled that 10 years ago landscape industry members in the area had worked with state DEP officials and Ridgewood Water on water usage and conservation. The talks resulted in the odd/even restrictions and a promise from utility officials that exemptions would be granted for irrigation of new plantings, shrubs, trees, sod, seed, etc., he said. Moritz said that the sudden, all-encompassing ban was driven by the extreme severity of the situation. He said that Water restrictions eased following break in heat wave exemptions do not apply at the Stage IV level, when at one point there was only a foot of water in a storage tank. “We lost 20 percent of our total storage in just one day,” Moritz said. He added that although Ridgewood Water has a contract with United Water to provide 3 million gallons a day in an emergency, United could not supply the water. Other area towns not served by Ridgewood Water imposed restrictions as well, though for the most part not as severe (most are posted on each town’s web sites). Only Waldwick also imposed a complete ban on irrigation of any kind, but exemptions are provided for new plantings and swimming pools. Ramsey and Allendale placed a ban on sprinkler systems but permit hand watering. Allendale offers special waivers for new sod and plantings. Mahwah bans irrigation only on Sundays. Sprinkler systems may be used from 6 to 11 a.m. following an odd/even schedule. Above ground irrigation may be used the same days, but only between 4 and 9 p.m. Last week, Ho-Ho-Kus residents received a Reverse 911 message indicating that the borough had imposed a restriction on outside watering due to the excessive heat and low water pressure. Those who wished to request special permission to water items such as new plantings are permitted to contact the DPW at (201) 445-8161. Wyckoff urged residents to take precautions against extreme heat by keeping blinds and curtains drawn because sunlight can increase thermal penetration to houses and buildings by 80 percent. Residents are also urged to make sure to drink ample amounts of water, while avoiding alcohol consumption and limiting the consumption of caffeine; to wear loose, lightweight clothing, and hats out-of-doors; and to avoid direct sunlight. Those with respiratory problems are urged to avoid going out of doors during the heat wave. Midland Park’s Office of Emergency Management suggested that residents seek cool places such as the public library or a mall. Residents are also urged to check on neighbors, especially the elderly, and share air conditioning with them.