No, this is the most boring scandal ever! Los Angeles Time opinion page editor Andres Martinez resigns after protests by killjoys in the snoozy newsroom over "an appearance of impropriety" about something or other.
By the way, this Martinez has to be the most Lithuanian-looking guy I've ever seen named Martinez.
Anyway, bringing this is up is just an excuse for recounting an anecdote by the previous LAT opinion editor Michael Kinsley illustrating the contrast between America's most stuffy newspaper and America's most ridiculous city.
My very first day on the job, I attended the Page 1 meeting in the newsroom. There was a story about a transient who allegedly had broken into the home of a 91-year-old Hollywood screenwriter — author of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and later a blacklisted victim of the Red Scare — cut off his head, climbed over the back fence (head in hand), stabbed a neighbor to death, and was ultimately arrested at Paramount Studios, where guards recognized him from police photos shown on a TV they weren't supposed to be watching on the job. What a story! But it didn't make the front page. It ran in the Metro section.
I asked Carroll, "Gosh, who do you have to decapitate to make Page 1 around here?"
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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The decapitated victim was Robert Lees. "Blacklisted victim of the Red Scare" means, as usual, that he was a Communist, as this really depressing article admits.
I read his wikipedia bio and it says his mother was from Boston. Since you mentioned Latvian/ Lithuanian, I also noticed he has a degree in Russian History. Why? Who knows. I'm Mexican and the only history that I find entertaining is Finnish (from the Finnish Civil War to the Continuation War).
This is a great story.
Of course, one of the reasons the story didn't make the front page is that the Whale is dull as a matter of principle, the Komosomolskaya Pravda of LaLa Land.
So why exactly do you find that article "really depressing"?
It was an attack on Cathy Seipp, who just succumbed after a multi-year battle with lung cancer. She was only 49.
The writer, writing in 2004, didn't know that, of course, but he was saying "I wish I had the power to erase her voice from the journalistic spectrum."
Who knew that Kinsley had such a sense of humor?
What about the Winter War? The Finns fought the USSR to a standstill for some time in what was probably one of the harshest battlefields ever. Check out the Finnish sniper Simo Haya.
Finnish miltary history is indeed a more interesting subject than the topic of this thread. Another famous Finnish miltary hero was Larry Thorne(aka Lauri Alan Torni):
http://sfandfamily.bravepages.com/special-forces/html/thorne.html
Steve,
I have four words.
Merry
Kerry
Broken
Berruh'
bqThis andres Martinez guy found himself a girlfriend? THAT should be the headline story! :)
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