RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
Time now for your comments.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONTAGNE: Even before Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama declared a truce over charges of racial insensitivity in the campaign, some of you were asking us to drop the subject. Leave it alone, writes Julie Eligood(ph) of Phoenix. You're using this as news and it is not.
STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Other listeners wanted to weigh in on Clinton's remarks about Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson. From Miami, Steven Cox(ph) writes what Mrs. Clinton does not understand is that while we may have needed a white president to execute King's dream, the country has come a long way since then.
MONTAGNE: Kelly Brown(ph) of Fort Worth, Texas adds, quote, "I am black and I am a woman, part of the first-generation born after the Civil Rights Act. Dr. King understood the power of marching with hundreds beside him, but he also knew he could not enact legislation or enforce it. For that he needed the men that Senator Clinton referenced in her speech."
INSKEEP: We have a correction this morning. In a report on a Supreme Court case about an illegal arrest in Virginia, we noted that the policeman involved was awarded a prize for Cop of the Year, which is true. But he did not get it in the same year as that illegal arrest. He received the award two years later.
MONTAGNE: We received many e-mails - and many of them from writers - after our commentator and screenwriter John Ridley spoke about the Golden Globe Awards. They weren't much of a show this year because of the writers' strike.
INSKEEP: Doug Ivok(ph) of Studio City points out, quote, "Ridley has long been vocally critical of union leadership. He cannot possibly be expected to report stories about the strike objectively."
MONTAGNE: Doug Moliture(ph) of Los Angeles adds: Since when is it appropriate to send a bitter enemy of his own union to report on its strike? Would you hire Jefferson Davis to provide insight into Lincoln's Second Inaugural?
INSKEEP: People offered other variations on that theme. Would we ask Rush Limbaugh to report on Hillary Clinton or Michael Vick to talk about animal rights?
MONTAGNE: Finally, in my interview about crime stories from the golden age of pulp fiction, our guest said that in the 1920s, a write named Carroll John Daly created the very first series about a hard-boiled private eye.
INSKEEP: He also said Daly created the first private detective to appear in a series of stories, which prompted many of you to write in defense of earlier detectives like Sherlock Holmes. In that same interview, Renee, you also talked about the word frail used as a noun?
MONTAGNE: That's another word for dame or doll.
INSKEEP: And a few of you wrote to say there is at least one other way to meet a frail in song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BIRTH OF THE BLUES")
HANK SNOW: (Singing) And from a jail came a wail of a downhearted frail...
MONTAGNE: This is NPR News.