ninme

I turned the radio on for the news a few minutes early, and caught this from Paul Harvey:

“Over my shoulder, a backward glance. This Paul Harvey was still in high school in Tulsa, OK, working evenings on KVOO, when the studios were in the top of the Philtower skyscraper. So I was on duty when the King of England, in love with an American woman, went on the air to announce his resignation. “At long last”, he said, “I am able to say a few words of my own.” It was an agonizing soliloquy, that cold December day in 1936, as he set aside the crown, choosing to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson. In subsequent years the two of them visited the United States often, usually as self-invited house guests of the rich and the famous, and from one of those families, I, a fledgling teenage reporter, learned what Paul Jr. would one day recall as “the rest of the story.” I learned that after months of tedious debate with the British government and the Church of England, and with public opinion, a rock was hurled one night through a window of Clarence House, and the woman he loved, terrified, left the house, and left England, and fled to Paris. In those more responsible days, a journalist cleared such stories with the subject. So I sent my notes to Mrs. Simpson, captioned “A ruffian threw a rock through a window, and toppled a king from his thrown.” Well, she was furious. Furious! She protested, her attorney threatened, and I kept the story to myself, until today. In today’s modified morality, England’s future king and the divorcee he loves have lived together openly, and negotiated their divorces and planned with due diligence, for them, today’s royal couple to live happily ever after. After the 8h day of next april, history is equally hopeful, if less optimistic.”

Worth transcribing, I thought.