Word: hissingly
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Where the rattlesnakes hiss and the wind blows free...
Smith's show was singularly patchy and misshapen, and might have passed unnoticed save for the identity of one of the panelists*: Alger Hiss, who slipped State Department secrets to a Communist spy ring in the 1930s and was later sent to prison for perjury. Nixon, as a tiery young Congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee, helped bring the Hiss case to light. On the air, Hiss, now a printing salesman, all but accused Nixon of framing him: "He was less interested in developing the facts objectively than in seeking ways of making a preconceived plan appear...
Even before the Nixon obituary went on the air, ABC's switchboard lit up with protests; after the show was over, the network received several thousand phone calls and 300 telegrams, most of them objecting to the presence of Hiss. Even former President Dwight Eisenhower called James Hagerty, ABC vice president and Eisenhower's press secretary for eight years, to express "astonishment...
Against the barrage, hapless Jim Hagerty could only defend the program. "It was," he said, "a fair presentation, giving both sides of a controversy." Commentator Smith professed surprise; he thought the discussion was "a little overbalanced in favor of Dick Nixon," and that Hiss, as one of Nixon's "Six Crises," had every right to appear. At week's end, Dick Nixon, whose mail had ballooned after the show, asked rhetorically. "What does an attack by one convicted perjurer mean when weighed on the scale against the thousands of wires and letters from patriotic Americans...
...unhealthy political climate of the post-War period, which the Hiss case so disastrously encouraged, was Congress right in exacerbating dangerous tensions by such an investigation? I think not. And I am sure Mr. Von Salzen would say the same thing today about, say, the concerted, unremitting attempt to secure full civil rights for this country's Negro population. He would no doubt argue, "You've got to be careful about this; sure they deserve their rights, but think of the dangerous tensions such an attempt would exacerbate." I submit that any sound politician would have at least considered...