WWW. "I've seen fits of national hysteria in the past--each time the phenomena [sic] was similar--yet different. This time around, there's the same old use of insinuations to attack others for what appears to be personal gain--or pure revenge. The difference--television is involved. It's impossible to tell if this will feed the madness or dampen it--maybe, in the end, it won't matter much--except, of course, to those who are personally affected."--Excerpt, dated December 10, 1953, from a journal found in a drawer of a desk acquired in an estate sale in upstate New York in 2004

WWW is a weekly series on Blog About Town. Here is last week's installment.

Photo: David Marc Fischer