ETHNIC SLURS 975

It's pretty hard for Zorba the Greek, or Zorba the Veep, whichever
you prefer, to really understand how the humor that's pervaded
American life, that permits us as people of wide backgrounds to be
free and easy in our expressions with each other, gets caught into
such a desperate clutch that we must watch every expression we use.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am sick of sloganeering. I'm sick of people
reading something different into law and order than what law and
order really means. I'm sick of people attempting to put my thoughts
into a context that they didn't exist in when I spoke them. And I
say to you when you stop and consider how utterly ridiculous it is
to think that a person who had felt the sting of unkind remarks that
were uttered harshly in an ethnic or racial sense could say something
that callous without meaning it in fun and jest. It just doesn't make
sense to me.

I'm not going to apologize for the spirit in which I said what I
said to Gene Oishi; I am going to apologize to any who might have
read in my words an insult to their Japanese ancestry, or to any who
might have read into my words an insult to their Polish ancestry.
And I would say that 90 percent of the people who are born of im-
migrant parents understand probably better than most how important
it is that we in the United States of America, one of the few countries
in the world where it is safe to laugh, don't lose our senses of humor.

I am sorry that the remarks I had prepared for today must be laid
aside because what I'm saying has to be said. And in the spirit of
Ted Makalena, your great touring golf pro, whom you lost so trag-
ically so recently, let me ask that the camaraderie that exists among
men, which allows them to insult one another in a friendly fashion,
be not abolished in favor of the terrible and intense guarded atmos-
phere that seems to abound so freely in the dictatorships of the world.
This is America — this is the melting pot of America! And if we are
so ashamed of our background that a single word sets us into orbit,
then the purpose of America, my friends, is beginning to fail.

Yes, I remember when my father first came here from Greece the
word Greek was considered to be an epithet. Those very sensitive
people, who were sensitive because they did not know how they were
going to be received in the United States, because they were sensitive
in that they didn't realize that this really was a free country and that
they were most insecure, resented the use of the word Greek. They
preferred to be called Grecians or people of Hellenic descent. But
they got over that. They got over that because they moved up the