An ex-bootlegger, ex-Klansman, ex-Coughlinite and a black hater of Jews, Communists and Roosevelt last week provided the first humor thus far in the Government's crackdown on "vermin publications." Square-jawed Court Asher, Muncie, Ind. publisher of XRay, was defending his weekly before Washington postal authorities, who gave him until June 2 to show cause why his paper should not be banned for sedition.
When the Government said that it had counted no fewer than 2,017 parallels between X-Ray and Nazi short-wave broadcasts, Editor Asher replied that he had never listened to a Nazi broadcast in his life. All he did, said he, was to lift most of his stuff from such "great metropolitan newspapers" as Hearst's and the Chicago Tribune. "In most instances,"he confessed. "I did not give them credit, but in some cases I did. Where I didn't print them identically I would read them and summarize them." His paraphrasing technique was simple: "What the [Chicago] Tribune generally reports in a dignified way, the X-Ray 'slams 'em out' in old plant, barn lot, hill billy or whatever you want to call it lan guage." An ex-serviceman, he deeply re sented the Government's slur on his patriotism. ''Give me an airplane loaded with bombs." he challenged, "and I'll fly over Tokyo and set that Sun that is trying to rise tomorrow." (Editor Asher admits that he cannot fly a plane.) Government's Exhibit A against Asher was an elaborate "weighted average system" worked out by Harold D. Lasswell, Ph.D.. propaganda expert picked by Archibald MacLeish to head the Congressional Library's division of "war communications research." Based on five key questions (example: "Does it [the paper under scrutiny] say that Washington is run by Communists, plutocrats, Jews or crooks?"), the Lasswell system rated X-Ray 65% subversive.
Allowed to mail the better-behaved issue of May 23. Editor Asher wrote of Lasswell: "This was a peculiar bird. This fellow who had more college degrees than Heintz has pickles, had formulated what he called a chart. . . . Well, the blamed chart looked to me like a Cartoon or one of the inventions of Professor Whatasnozzle in the Sunday comics. . . ."
During a recess Editor Asher complained to reporters that he had been described as a "petty bootlegger." Said he: "I never once sold less than a case at a time."
After Repeal, when Asher broke with Paul V. McNutt's local politicians, his noisy cafe, the "Wig-Warn," lost its liquor license. When HOLC foreclosed on him, he broke with Roosevelt and started X-Ray ("A Beacon for Taxpayers and Honest Labor"). In its five years its circulation has wavered between 500 and 1,500.
Commented the Muncie Press's Editor Wilbur E. Sutton on Editor Asher's Washington hearing: "A fine example of shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun."