(This award-winning column by Roger Simon was written on July 4, 1976, and has been reprinted every year since.)

I have done some pretty awful things in the name of journalism. I have rushed up to interview mothers who have lost children, husbands who have lost wives, families shattered by a variety of emotional and physical calamities.

All reporters do these things. We wear a protective cloak of professional indifference while we write the names and ages and addresses in our no ...

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