*Flash*: This statement just in across the wires...delivered to the nearest telegraph office from the hot, chubby hands of one Henry Gatewood (aka Berton Churchill)
"Please suh, I say,
I say, I must protest!"
"Even though I've often been confused by those who've been driven half-mad by trying to make sense of politics then and now, I really must draw your attention to the fact that I am not,
not based on the legendary
Col. Robert McCormick* of the Chicago Tribune...nor am I an even distant relative of
Foghorn Leghorn (see below for clear evidence of this), though we do share a rather oddly similar linguistic style."
"This scurrilous rumor questioning my identity must stop, good suh!! I can't get over the impertinence of that poster ken123! I'll make it warm for that shake-tail! I'll report him to Washington--we pay taxes to the government and what do we get? Not even protection from the army! I don't know what the government is coming to. Instead of protecting businessmen, it pokes its nose into business!"
"I say, I say, let's come together as "Americans from America", (or was it "For America"?), and forget all this water under the bridge being revamped by those prevarications that my disgruntled former employee
Ben Hecht, fed to
Dudley Nichols (not to mention that forgotten writer,
Ernest Haycox), and then filtered through a smokescreen, no make that a
pink screen in this script."
"Oh, to heck with all this palaver, let's everybody just enjoy and remember that
Stagecoach, like
Canterbury Tales, the
Decameron and umpteen other classic tales essentially tells the story of people--and every man-jack and woman-jack of them has one thing in common:"
"No matter who they are, and how much cash they have, or even if they have a wee bit of a financial or social scandal in their past...they are each--whether they know it or not--a human being in trouble. This flick goes way beyond politics or newspapers of long ago and straight to the philosophical heart of the matter..."
Telegraphers reported that at this point the message broke off, though clearly Mr. Blowhar--er, I mean, Mr. Gatewood, was just getting started. No word received yet on why the Stage is late today...more details later as they become available!
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*
Robert Rutherford McCormick, sometimes called "the greatest mind of the 14th century", gave the newspaper game in America, and particularly Chicago, much of its color. You can read more about him
here if you're interested. There's also a fine bio by Richard Norton Smith, called "The Colonel" that's a great read.