I\u2019m thinking but this is the story with everything. Wealth, power, darkness. Princes and presidents. People with secrets. Rumors of spying. Even an English aristo moll on the lam.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s the most famous prisoner in America! They put him in a jail, where he supposedly tries to kill himself. So they move him to a special cell, heavily guarded 24\/7. Don\u2019t worry, he\u2019s safe, he\u2019s gonna face the music!<\/p>\n
Then dawn on a Saturday in high August. Everyone important is away. It\u2019s an entire city run by the second string\u2014novices, kids and pension-bumpers at the police desk, the news desk, the hospital. It breaks like sudden thunder: Epstein is dead, he committed suicide in his cell!<\/p>\n
And then, like, silence. Thunder\u2019s followed by fog.<\/p>\n
Government dummies up, no one knows nothin\u2019. Finally on Monday the attorney general has a news conference. He\u2019s very upset! What incompetence! That jail don\u2019t work right!<\/p>\n
But incompetence proves nothing, right? If Epstein killed himself, he chose the time he knew the guards were asleep. If Epstein was murdered, his killer chose the time he knew the guards were asleep. Incompetence is completely believable but insufficient.<\/p>\n
The papers are doing their stories about those strange Americans with their quirky ways burning up the internet with their quaint conspiracies. But who would\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0wonder about foul play? With all the people who\u2019d want him dead?<\/p>\nThis whole thing is a big stinkin\u2019, fumin\u2019 hunk of foul-up. And there\u2019s still time to get this story. I miss the tough, crazy beat reporters of yore. Like me. I got cancer and was on chemo when I got a tip about a police-brutality story. I tore the IV out of my arm and ran to the sound of the crap! . . . .<\/p>\n
Work every source and angle, every prison guard and cop you know\u2014you\u2019re supposed to know them! Pete Hamill would have known the estranged sister of the night nurse at the ER. He\u2019d wait at her house, she\u2019d tell him the EMTs came in laughing about \u201cWho do you think killed the guy who suicided?\u201d Or maybe she\u2019d say they were nervous and just plopped him down and scrammed. But he\u2019d have gotten the color, the feel. And it would suggest something. . . .<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like every great media organization is tied up in this complicated, soul-crushing, virtue-signalling fearfulness, this vast miasma of progressive political theory and ideology and correctness and \u201cplease report to HR\u201d\u2014and it has nothing to do with the mission. The mission is to get the story!<\/p>\n
Reporters and editors, they\u2019re not the fabulous old drunks and girl reporter miscreants, they\u2019re like\u2014like normal people! Reporters aren\u2019t supposed to be normal! And they\u2019re very tidy because they\u2019re extremely important! You get the impression they became reporters to affect the discourse. \u201cI\u2019m going into journalism to press for cultural and political justice.\u201d These\u2014these deconstructionist intellectuals! These twinkies with soft hands from Phillips Exeter Andover whatever. These mere political operatives. These people with grievances, who\u2019ve never had anything to grieve because their lives were the red satin lining of a music box.<\/p>\n
If I was in charge I\u2019d say, \u201cThank you for your boundless efforts to secure the greater progress for the polity. But I was wondering if, in your spare moments, you could be troubled to help us cover the biggest scandal of your blanking lifetimes?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photo by C.A.D.Schjelderup [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0)] via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York City medical examiner issued this ruling about the death of billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein:\u00a0 \u201cCause: Hanging. Manner: Suicide.\u201d The various questions surrounding his death were not answered\u2013including the broken hyoid bone, which is usually\u00a0 considered forensic evidence for strangulation instead of hanging\u2013leading to plans, particularly on the part of Epstein\u2019s lawyers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":43587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[600,29],"tags":[8532,1208],"class_list":["post-43533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-media","tag-jeffrey-epstein","tag-journalism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n