Newspapers: The Word from Moses

By the exquisite standards of Robert Moses, 75, father and president of the New York World’s Fair, the 646-acre monument to Mosaic vision is falling somewhat short of the mark. The fair’s first season ends Oct. 18, and only 28 million fairgoers have materialized, despite Moses’ estimate of 40 million. And then there are all those amusement concessions that have folded for want of customers. But, as usual, Moses knows just who is at fault. Last week, addressing a luncheon crowd of 250 newspaper publishers from upstate New York, he pinned the blame squarely in his usual Old Testament style. The trouble, pronounced Robert Moses, was a hostile New York press:

“I am told by some publishers that we should gladly suffer all faultfinders, including those whose eyes, too irritated by motes and beams no longer removable in drugstores, see little that is good in a sad world. When it comes to the fair, I know what disturbs the chemistry of the critics. Their sour stomachs dis tend and churn when they hear that we have discovered gold nuggets on the banks of Flushing Creek. The truth is that they hate like hell to see the fair moving to success. I don’t overrate these people, but one drunk can interrupt a Mass; a rotten egg can silence Hamlet, and a stink bomb can empty a theater.

“It’s an old story. You can’t please everyone. There will always be commentators who find it simpler and easier to get someone to call someone else an s.o.b. or a bastard than to write some thing intelligent that requires real work, accuracy and fairness. On the other hand, we must not lose our capacity for indignation. We have been listening too much to the raving hyenas, scavengers, jackals, parrots and vultures who should be kept behind moats in the Bronx Zoo. It is too bad that the rest of America does not realize how few and unrepresentative these discordant voices are. The shallows murmur, but the deeps are dumb.”