MR. HACK No. 103

 

 
This is quite a historic picture, in its own way. It comes to us from our most learned friend and colleague, Cal MCrystal and, indeed, features him ont he extreme right photographed in his office in the Sunday Times Foreign Dept. Beside him is someone we have been reading a lot about recently and, depending on your point of view, he is either, A, a saviour of the British Press, or B, whatever the opposite of that might be. With them in the picture is the former editor of the Sunday Times Harold Evans. "Note the faintly idiotic/uneasy grimace on my face as I begin to dance to a new tune," Cal tells us. "It has remained ever since, but not yet to cause me to be arrested or sectioned." *We are not sure about the man attemptiong to make an escape through the office roof.

Comments

[Graham]

YOUR EMAILS MAY BE CENSORED!

I read last week that, after 80 years of publication, the daily newspaper in Torquay is no more. The Herald Express will now appear as a weekly. It's owned by the Daily Mail people.

Now I hear that another of their daily papers is also to get the same treatment. It's a paper where I still have some contacts from my days working in radio on Humberside.

One of these contacts lives in Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire. He used to give us tip-offs. So I e-mailed him - or tried to - to find out the position there on the Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph.

When I tried to send it I got the message: "This email cannot be sent" I must have tried half a dozen times over the next hour; always unsuccessfully. I assumed that perhaps the system was busy - sometimes you get a similar message on TheCopyboys site.

Eventually I read the notice in more detail. It also said: "The content is unacceptable" Prolonged study of my content eventually yielded possible insight. Surely not? I thought.

So I removed just one letter from the email - tried again and it went through!

Can you tell me the letter I removed?

[KB]

You mean it went to Scnthorpe?

[Blogmaster]

Cal did suggest an alternative introduction to our new picture ... I know he won't mind me sharing it with everyone ...

This is a three-hand reel, with the under-hand invisible. Harry Evans is saying to Rupert: “My-oh-my! You’e losing your hair.” Rupert is protesting: “Phuk it, Harry, look at that other guy!” (This is 1981-2, by the way, when M. Merdique had taken over Times Newspapers and I was running/ruining the foreign desk). And that other guy (Guess who?) is singing: “We shall over-comb, some day-eyee-aye.” Note the blackboard which was the ultra-modern way I had for contacting our foreign corrs. Sorry that Simon Winchester’s name is lower down than he might have preferred. Shortly after this picture was taken, Rupert forgot my name (What bliss!).

[Graham]

Yes, Keith is nine tenths-right! I started referring not to Scnthorpe, but to Scunhorpe - and it went through! There was never any trouble in the past when I was on Outlook Express for my emails. Now I am on Mozilla Thunderbird for email, which apparently is more prim, hence my trouble.

I didn't realise that this sort of censorship went on. It also illustrates that computers have no brains and cannot assess a situation. Really scary when you think of some of the things that computers are used for - defence etc.

Incidentally, my contact is Scunthorpe (this last word seems to work ok on Copyboys!) replies that, yes, the daily paper there goes weekly on August 12. He says that Marks and Spencer recently pulled out of the town. The once-famous steelworks has paid off 1,200, and is a shadow of its former self. It makes you realise the depth of the recession in GB. We are still sheltered here.

My friend was made redundant from the paper last year; he then got fixed up with a job as a sub at the PA's Doncaster "hub" - but then got made redundant again. Later, after 30 years in journalism, and not yet pension age, he applied for a job as a hospital porter.

(Anybody else had any computer "censorship" experiences?)

[Blogmaster]

There are three new Visual Jokes in that album, courtesy of our beloved Chairman ... each comes from a newspaper somewhere in this wide world ...

[Blogmaster]

THAT'S ME WITH
YOUKNOWWHO ...

Cal has sent us another picture, this time of him enjoying a quiet drink with a now quite famous personality ... it will appear here, but it got us wondering: how many of us have been photographed with someone famous? Even infamous. Your Blogmaster has one, but modesty has prevented him from publishing it but if other photos arrive after this appeal, well, he might be persuaded to run his along with the others. C'mon, let's see what pictures you have got hidden in a cupboard somewhere ...

[Chairman]

Yes, Mr. President, I have had e-mails refused for minor mispellings. Not lately, but more so when I was with AOL. Of course some may have been censored on moral grounds. Some of my jests are not always politically correct. As to the question of being photographed alongside someone important. I've been trying to think? Someone more important than myself? No. Sorry. Can't come up with anyone.

[Graham]

Oh yes, Mr Blogmaster I've been photographed with somebody famous (or infamous). You have it already. Go to the "Photo Albums" in the left-hand sidebar. Click on "Likely Lads and Lasses". Spool down to the fifth row. Click on the picture in the middle.

(There's a story about this: I wasn't conscious that the photograph had been taken. Thirty years or more passed. Then, on day, in England, a newspaper group was having a clearout - and dumping material! as they do.

This included unpublished pictures as well as published one. An old contact happened to glance at one of the unpublished, recognised me, and sent it on to me. I don't if he recognised the other main person in the picture.

[Blogmaster]

Good one, Graham ... I have also been sent an email from the Chairman who adds to his previous comment:"Re pics with important folk, I have shaken the hands of most of the old Stormont Prime Ministers from Brookeborough on - and four British Prime Ministers. Alec Douglas Hume, Edward Heath; Harold Wilson just before he became Prime Minister and Harold Macmillan at a do in his constituency just after he retired. Never thought to keep a photograph. But I'm sure they kept copies of the occasion on their walls." Another good one.

[Graham]

Well, I have a picture of Eddie McIlwaine and me chatting to Tom King* Also one of me with Dave Glover. Does that count?

*former Sec of State for NI, for younger readers.

Also I have spoken to deValera who said, with seeming delight: "Ah, yer from the Narth!"

Also spoken on one-to-one basis to Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, John Lennon, Brendan Behan, Marty Wilde, Marianne Faithfull (over breakfast) Hank Locklin, Hughie Green, Dominic Behan, David Niven, Sean Connery, Charles Haughey, President Hillery, Bridie Gallagher, Karl Denver, Tom Jones, Jayne Mansfield (in the back of a car with her) Joan Baez, Archbishop of Canterbury (Fisher) Michael Heseltine, Lord (David) Owen, Philomena Begley, Jim Reeves, the fellow who had a hit with "Tell Laura I Love Her" - can't remember name, Van Morrison, and a whole lot more I just can't remember.

There was a photographer present on most occasions, but I never thought to have a picture taken. Anyway, Eddie McIlwaine could probably give us a much more star-studded list. Two people I'd like to have talked to - the Dalai Lama and Fats Domino.

[Graham]

....never met Frank Mitchell, though

[Cal McCrystal]

My former interlocutors are much more renowned than Graham's. I met them all while out riding a high horse. Here are some:-

Luke Sharpe, Rose Early, Neil Down, Mark Time, Grant Favours, Hank Awfayre, Jack Hammer, Andy Mann, Al Fresco, Drew Lotts, Sally Forth, Des Ultry, Dick Tate, Molly Coddle, Joyce Tick, Phil Herup, Cliff Hanger, Gerry Mander, Jay Walker, Catherine Wheel, Phil Anderer, Anne Orecksic, Tom Ahawk, Kay Sera, Tim Pani, Hugo Furst, Bill O’Sayle, Martin Gale, Pat Ernity, Ray Zorbill, Ben Zedrine, Harry Krishna, Liz Ards, Paul Tergeist, Norman Conquest, Nick O’Teen, Sue Daneze, Matt Riark, Will Owey, Art Illery, Sam Ovar, Jim Jams, George Cross, Charley Horse, Jan Youworry, June Bugg, Ruth Less, Ed Case, Jude Ishery, Ally Gator, Eric Tyle, Polly Styrene, Chris Beetoast, Gary Sohn, Ewen Huelse, Sarah Senn, Mel Lowe, Frank O’File, Tony Pandy, Colin Detts, Len Safiver, Ron Deau, Mustapha Bath, Peg Legge, Hugh An’cry, Paddy Whack, Terry Aire,

[Graham]

Ah Cal, I see you met Nick O'Teen. But what about his good friend Mr LK Hall?

[A.McQ.]

Big Ted Scallan had a very famous contact with whom he held consultations on a daily basis - John Barleycorn.

[Smyth]

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot ... A friend, former feature writer for the Toronto Star, posted this on Facebook:
``Today an online service accepted me as a feature writer - but their email acceptance was so bad I felt compelled to send it back with a graph by graph revision (in keeping with their guidelines and promise to ensure writers' excellence along Strunk and best writing practices.) I could not click "yes" without showing them the big problem. They are not a small time organization. I doubt they stilll want me.''

[ruthie]

Good man Rory McIlroy. Taunted on Twitter, he responds accordingly and now the taunter is crying into his soup.
Did the Radio 5 Live reporter think a personal attack on Twitter was not a taunt.
It deserved a worthy ballsy reply.
McIlroy has now blocked him, but not before telling him he was a failed golfer.
Because that was the truth.
No relying on wishy washy press statements from our Rory. The lad did the job himself.

[A.McQ.]

Earlier he had a set-to with that appalling footballer Robbie Savage and called him a t**t - then apologised for calling him a t**t saying he was sorry he couldn't find a better word to describe him! I like the boy. Former England cricket captain Nasser Hussein didn't take criticism from the broadcasters lying down either.

[Graham]

I see that journalists at four of Johnson Press newspapers in Yorkshire are about to enter their third week on strike. The stoppage is about cuts will cut the editorial staff by a whopping 50%. Johnsons have refused to go to conciliation talks. They own the "Newsletter" here as well as the former Morton chain of weeklies.

[A.McQ.]

Johnson Press have had a bad press for many years. Feel sorry for the journos on their titles. The management believes itself to be infallible and the journos pay the price for their bosses' arrogance. They're just as bad as Sly Bailey and her cohorts at Trinity Mirror which chops staff at its regional and national titles at the first opportunity. I often wonder if these execs regale their fellow high fliers at their golf clubs at weekends with tales of their visiting misery on their wretched staffs.

[Graham]

JOHN GRAHAM

Does anybody remember John Graham, who has died? According to the Daily Telegraph he was the FT's man in Belfast around 1972. Later he wrote about his two loves - bridge and drinking and "charmed generations of elegant young ladies."
This is his obit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8668924/John-Graham.html

[Cal McCrystal]

I have just been re-reading a piece about newspaper proprietorship which may well sound familiar. I shall leave Copyboys to guess the identity of the article’s hero.

“There is no psychological mystery to be unravelled here, no intelectual shadow land. He is obvious and elementary - a man who understands material success and nothing else. He has no standard by which to judge life. Napoleon’s question was, ‘What have you done?’ ****’s question would be, ‘What have you got?’ For he not only wants success himself; he admires it in others. It is the passport to his esteem .... The one principle to which his loyalty never falters is to be on the side the the big battalions. He carries no intellectual or moral impedimenta, has no sentiment, is subject to no theory, holds no view of life. He simply asks, ‘What will win?’ He is, in a word, the Stock Exchange man in the sphere of journalism. He represents the conquest of Fleet Street by Capel Court. ... It is this absolutely commercial conception of journalism which is ****’s contribution to his time. Journalism was a profession: he has made it a trade. The old notion in regard to a newspaper was that it was a responsible adviser of the public. Its first duty was to provide the news, uncoloured by any motive, private or publc; its secod to present a certain view of public policy which it believed to be for the good of the State and the community. It was sober, responsible, and a little dull. It treated life as if it was a serious matter. It had an antiquated respect for truth. It believed in the moral governance of things.
“**** has changed all this. He started free from all convictions. He saw an immense unexploited field. The old journalism appealed only to the minds of the responsible public; he woud appeal to the emotions of the irresponsible. The old journalism gave news; he would give sensation. ... He is all that is summed up in that desolating word ‘smart.’ He is a ‘smart’ man, the representative man of a ‘smart’ age. ... It worships success, however it is achieved. You may be exposed as often as you like: all will be forgiven if only you will be smart.”

[Cal McCrystal]

Sorry to hear about John Graham. Although we were based in thre US at the same time - and covered some similar stories, such as the ML King and Bobby K assassinations - I cannot remember if our paths actually crossed. Probably not, since he was such a colourful and memorable correspondent. But I do remember the shard-in-the-cocktail story.

[Graham]

UTV LOOKING FOR NEWS BOSS
Here's the advertisement. Scrutinise:

"Executive Editor, News
Reporting to: Managing Director, UTV Television

Purpose of Role:

To manage, lead and take responsibility for all aspects of news on a cross platform basis
To have an understanding and appreciation of the commercial environment in which the business operates and to contribute to its continued success
To manage all news staff within responsibility area and to ensure budgets are adhered to
To ensure the highest production and editorial standards in newsgathering and news programmes
To ensure compliance standards are met

If you are interested in this post, or for further information including a full job description and personnel specification, please download an application pack using the button above.

The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 5.00pm on Friday 12th August 2011."

[Comment: Rob Morrison is retiring. Note the above. Commercial considerations come well ahead of editorial standards, which almost come last. The word "journalism" doesn't appear or the need for extensive experience in television or newspapers]

[A.McQ.]

I remember John Graham from the early days of The Troubles. He was known to have the occasional noggin with Tommy Roberts and Trevor Hanna and was good company.

[Cal McCrystal]

The unnamed newspaper proprietor in the passage four posts above was Lord Northcliffe. It's from a chapter in AG Gardiner's Prophets, Priests and Kings (1914). So perhaps RM is not a one-off after all.

[Graham]

I thought of Northcliffe, but reckoned that he couldn't have been as bad as that. But, as that was written while he was alive, he must have been. He has been mostly rehabilitated since and is acknowledged now for bringing digestible news to the masses at an affordable price - via the Daily Mail etc. Perhaps, in the long-term, Mr Murdoch will be seen in a more favourable light - though he may have to wait a few decades or so!

[Chris Ryder]

Re Job Advertisement - Just what you would expectfrom the money obsessed UTV of today. Minimum into programming. Maximum profit out of broadcast. Exploitative wages for employees. The abolition of the quality threshold for commercial television is the root of this evil. It should be restored.

[Cal McCrystal]

Only those with T(unnel) V(ision) and an abacus need apply.

[whu]

WHY WE'LL ALWAYS NEED REAL JOURNALISTS
"News is more than just an eye-witness and a mobile pic"

Like, context, investigation, analysis etc?

[This from the BBC College of Journalism website}
see here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2011/07/news-is-more-than-just-eyewitn.shtml

[Graham]

The comment above was posted by me (Graham) I have no idea where the "Whu" came from

[Chairman]

Back when Jack Sayers resigned as Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and an 'outsider' (Eugene Wasson) was appointed, the Telegraph Chapel held an angry meeting condemning the appointment. Chapel meetings could get a little overwrought sometimes. Yet Mr Wasson turned out, (in my opinion) to be a brilliant editor and saw the paper through some of the toughest years of the Troubles. And its circulation was never higher. Perhaps we shouldn't rush to judgement over the new man or woman at UTV. Might turn out to be somebody we know. It's not you is it Cal?

[JC]

Good one Mr Chairman. If we are saying kind things for a moment, I recall that Eugene - at the height of the Ulster Workers' Strike - drove home to Bangor at the end of a busy day a group of us who had struggled to get into work to produce the paper.

[KB]

John Graham's father, the Rev Douglas Graham, was headmaster of Portora after the war.

[Cal McCrystal]

Reading Peter Watson’s erudite book, “Ideas: a history of thought and invention from fire to freud” (Harper Perennial), I was surprised that the “About the Author” passage concentrates on his academic prowess while omitting all mention of his journalism, particularly his years as my colleague in the Sunday Times (ed. Harold Evans). The word “irrelevant” may pop up here, yet I feel fairly sure that his success in investigative journalism helped to launch his career as a writer on intellectual history and kindred subjects. Indeed, what prompted my surprise at this career lacuna was the style in which Peter begins his prologue (The Discovery of Time). It is written in the manner of a typical Sunday Times Insight piece (circa the H. Evans golden era).

“On the evening of Wednesday, 1 May 1859, John Evans, a British archaelogist, crossed the English Chennel by steamer from Folkestone to Boulogne. He took the train to Abbeyville where he was met by Joseph Prestwich, a renowned British geologist. Next morning they were collected at seven o’clock by Jacques Boucher de Crèvecoeur de Perthes, chief customs officer in the town but also an amateur archaeologist. Evans and Prestwich were in France to investigate certain discoveries of their host.”

That’s a classic Insight intro.

[A.McQ.]

Cal: Have you noticed that The Sunday Times Business Section over the last few weeks has been giving what I would call "Insight-style" treatment to a specific story? It's normally a single column on the right of the front page of the section turning to a full piece inside. Perhaps some bright spark has been in the library looking at the old Insight stuff and has then re-appeared on the newsroom floor claiming to have invented the wheel.....!

[Blogmaster]

BOOK YOUR
PLACE NOW ...

Cal kindly sent me an email recommendation of Anna Politkovskaya's book, "Putin's Russia" (written in 2004) which he says "I thoroughly recommend as one of the most revealing acts of journalism ever produced." I'm presently reading (as well as subscribed magazines) an updating of Robert Shelton's brilliant biography, 'No Direction Home: the Life and Music of Bob Dylan' which I can heartily recommend to all for its depth and knowledge of its subject. It started me wondering what books other contributors are reading and what they would recommend to friends to go out and buy ...

[Cal McCrystal]

I was faintly cheered this morning by what appeared to be the Wee Farty Movement's failure to wreck the US economy. However the Wee Farties are still breaking wind furiously, and like all national bowel movements are still capable of vast vermicular extrusions. Gosh! Did I really say that?

[Graham]

JOURNALISM TODAY

Yorkshire newspaper closes its office. Instead, asks readers with stories to meet reporters in local cafe during a two-hour window once a week.

It's true! See here: http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2011/news/cafe-base-for-reporters-as-offices-close/

[Cal McCrystal]

it is right and proper that matters concerning organised religion be not examined here I very much agree with the taboo-ing of this (in N. Ireland) hyper-sensitive subject on the Copyboys blog. However, the anecdote I wish to relate concerns not organised, but orgasmic piety. It appears in a slim volume by Padraic O Laoi entitled “Nora Barnacle Joyce: A Portrait,” published in 1982. On page 24, the author writes as follows:-
“[Nora] has told me something of her youth and admits the gentle art of self-satisfaction. She has had many love affairs, one when quite young with a boy who died.... When she was sixteen a curate in Galway took a liking to her: tea at the presbytery, little chats, familiarity. He was a nice young man with black curly hairs on his head. One night at tea he took her on his lap and said he liked her, she was a nice little girl. Then he put his hand up under her dress which was shortish. She however, I understand, broke away. Afterwards he told her to say in confession it was a man not a priest did ‘that’ to her.”
Sound familiar?

[Chairman]

Our Blogmaster's desire to know what we are all reading is a natural curiosity. Like most readers, whenever I visit someone's home the first thing I look at (in the absence of a pretty woman) would be the bookcase. Lately I seem to have been doing more re-reading than anything else. Digging out the short stories of Somerset Maugham or the thrillers of Chandler and James M. Cain. But at the moment I am reading a 'factional' novel by David Lodge based on the life of H. G. Wells. When I finish that I shall start on Stella Tillyard's novel of the Peninsular War, "Tides of War". I took it to make up a three-for-the-price-of-two offer. The other book was Bill Bryson's "At Home" which I've just glanced at and it seems to carry well, Mr. Bryson's genius for explaining the inconsequential in that wonderful style of wit and clarity that makes you wonder why you hadn't realised how interesting hallways and attics were.

[Bookworm]

Is The Best Chairman We Ever Had being a trifle economical with the truth in his posting above? He says the first thing he looks at - in the absence of a pretty woman - is the bookcase....really....is that after he's sniffed out the cocktail cabinet or because he believes there could well be snorters hiding in a secret booze store behind a phoney wall of books? I think we should be told.

[Chairman]

I'm looking for the safe

[Graham]

I'd say that if Billy is interested in books, drink and women, he's just like most journalists (well, journalists of our era)

What is needed is a library with sexy librarians with a bar attached.

[Cal McCrystal]

What kind of bar might one attach to a sexy librarian? A Mars Bar?

[Graham]

Very good! That made me laugh. Put me in your book of Copyboys howlers!

[Graham]

MR MURDOCH PAID GOOD WAGES, THOUGH

This update on NoW ex-staffers plight from Prof Greenslade:

See here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/aug/02/newsoftheworld-newsinternational?CMP=twt_fd

[Chairman]

Speaking of sexy librarians, I think the sexiest one of all was the young Dorothy Malone in 1946 version of Chandler's "The Big Sleep" with Humphrey Bogart as Phillip Marlowe. She was only in a couple of scenes but the fact that she invited a total stranger into her bookstore, produced a bottle of scotch and stuck up the closed sign on the door, is what first got me interested in visiting bookshops. Sadly, no comparable version of Dorothy Malone happened to be in any of them and I was forced to buy books instead.

[RedRick]

Johnston Publishing (Press) have also in the last two weeks virtually wiped out their pre-press production unit at Carn (Craigavon). Fifteen people including a very good friend -Colin McClelland - who had worked there for almost 40 years were made redundant, leaving just five people to man the unit. The pre-press work is now being done in Glasgow!!!
Where will it all end???

[Smyth]

Billy: Drop the Tillyard and Lodge books and go straight to Bryson. It's far and away the best non-fiction book I've read in the last year.

[Graham]

It is to be noted that Johnson Press, closing down their pre-production unit at Craigavon, as reported by Red Rick above, are also the people who have closed a newspaper office in England and asked their reporters to work from a cafe. (report above) Same people own the NewsLetter and chain of weeklies in NI.

[Graham]

Bravo for RTE broadcaster Ryan Tubridy (now broadcasting on BBC Radio 2)

He's just been quoted as saying:
"Oh Sweet Jesus, unless you're physically travelling, please stop saying 'journey'"

Was it Blair who started this with his book "My Journey"? They're all at it now. Firms have journeys. People's lives are now journeys. And a Belfast newspaper, in a marketing blurb, recently talked about the paper's "journey"!

Please report any other nonsenses here.

[Chairman]

Didn't Adolf Hitler start this trend back in the 1920s when he wrote "Mein Kampf" (My Struggle). And Sinatra had his "My Way". Great egos have to imagine that their self-glorifying biographies has to be a 'Journey' or a 'Struggle" or even a "Way". Most of us are happy just to think of it as a life. If it were a 'journey' we'd demand a refund on the ticket.

[Cal McCrystal]

Shum of ush call it the Noo Journeylishm.

[Graham]

Papers telling us that the Stock Exchange "plummets" or "dives" - economic doom etc.
Wall Street Journal, however, comes up with a new (to me) sub-editor's word:

"US blue-chips skid 4.3%"

"Skid"? Sounds good - bit of danger there, yes, but hope of gaining control again, just like driving a car.

Meantime, popular papers here don't really seem to have a handle on the seriousness of the situation. Even the Mail and the Express lead with the polar bear killing boy story. So does the "i" paper.

Belfast Telegraph front page: "Mum - 'catch killers of my Gavin'" plus big picture of a monkey eating an ice lolly.

Ob-le-di Ob-le-dah, life goes on....

[Chris Ryder]

Oh the silly madness of August!

[Graham]

But my favourite news story of today is here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/8683698/Carriage-rider-blames-colour-blind-horse-for-drink-charge.html

[Graham]

This should be in the film section, but I don't think I've ever been here. I can't really concentrate on films as I'm always concentrating, not on the plots, but on how they do it, the shot changes, the effects etc. Maybe I should have been a director.

Anyway, the guy who helped construct the effects for King Kong (78 years ago!!) has died. This is his obituary:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8684819/Harry-Redmond.html

[Graham]

The decision by a Belfast judge that news organisations here must hand over footage and photographs of recent riots - whether used or not - has caused controversy.

The "Belfast Telegraph" speaks out in an editorial:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/viewpoint/editors-viewpoint-news-gathering-not-for-police-to-exploit-16032614.html

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/viewpoint/editors-viewpoint-news-gathering-not-for-police-to-exploit-16032614.html

[Graham]

Topical comments on the news, seen on the net:

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to rioting, rioting leads to looting, looting leads to a fancy new TV and iPod"

"A convenience store in Tottenham has been set alight. It's Tottenham Hot Spar"

[Chairman]

I liked Richard Littlejon's headline today. "Shopping With Violence."