THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
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In "Of Thee I Sing," I believe that we discover the happiest and most successful native music-stage lampoon that has thus far come the way of the American theatre.
--The critic and editor George Jean Nathan, in a foreword to the first printed edition of the work.
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(Wintergreen looks out the window, through which is visible the panorama of Washington, with Washington's Monument prominent in the foreground)
WINTERGREEN: What a country -- what a country! Jenkins, what monument is that?
JENKINS: Grant's Tomb.
WINTERGREEN: Oh, yes. Well, what's on the schedule this morning? Ah, here we are! (Takes up some letters) Tell the Secretary of the Navy to scrap two battleships.
JENKINS: What?
WINTERGREEN: Scrap two and build four. Disarmament.
JENKINS: Yes, sir.
WINTERGREEN: Cablegram to the President of San Domingo: "Congratulations on beginning your second day in office. That's five I owe you, and will bet you double or nothing on tomorrow."
JENKINS: Yes, sir.
WINTERGREEN: Tell the Secretary of War to stand ready to collect that bet.
JENKINS: Yes, sir.
WINTERGREEN: Letter to the Friars' Club, 48th St., New York City. "Dear Brother Friars: Regret very much I cannot take part in this year's minstrel show. Owing to conditions in the South, I do not think it would be wise for me to black up." (Looks through the pile of letters) I get the lousiest mail for a President!
--Dialogue from Of Thee I Sing, the first musical to win the P-Ulitzer Prize in Drama. (George Gershwin, who wrote the only good [a VERY good] thing about this show [ditto his brother Ira], did not win a prize, in no small part because the P-Ulitzer judges were tone-deaf.)
Walter Duranty DID win a P-Ulitzer that year, for Fiction -- Correspondence.
(The above excerpts are from the Library of America's Kaufman & Co.)
P. S. from THE MASTER:
Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.
The nice thing about being in the NEWS BIZ is you never have to GROW UP.