Murrow's later death from lung cancer was both tragic and ironic, for during World War II Murrow had been an articulate opponent of meretricious balance in reporting.

The one thing that no democrat may assume is that the people are dear good souls, fully competent for their task. The most valuable leaders never assume that. No one, for example, would accuse Karl Marx of disloyalty to workingmen. Yet in 1850 he could write at the demagogues among his friends: “While we draw the attention of the German workman to the undeveloped state of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter the national spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in the grossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular of the two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetich of the words, ‘the people,’ so you make one of the word ‘proletariat.’” John Spargo quotes this statement in his “Life.” Marx, we are told, could use phrases like “democratic miasma.” He never seems to have made the mistake of confusing democracy with demolatry.

Bentwood chairs faced pine counters littered with wadded Kleenex, spent greasepaint tubes, empty soft-drink cans, under squares of cheap mirror, lightbulbed on either side, flecked with powder.

Socks dipt in Brandy-wine, and worn, are preventive.