Tuesday, February 12, 2008

CM PRESS # 297


HOG RIDIN' MAN IN CHARGE

Sam Zell, the 6 billion dollar Harley riding guy who went out one day to buy a newspaper and ended up with the whole friggin' company--including the Daily Pilot--had a sit down with some of his employees at a paper he now owns in Florida and ended up calling a reporter a @#$#%&* #$#@^and if you don't like that you can go @#$#@ your@#$%. LINK

We here at the CM PRESS like Sam. He's our kind of $%#&^guy. He cuts through the BS and gets right to the nub of an issue.

He's not a %^$#* guy who suffers fools, and he'll slice and dice dimwits who use pompous, overblown, flatulent, throat clearing prose.

Naturally, this brings us to the #$%$#% Daily Pilot.

For years we've wondered who the hell reads some of the puppy dog crap that the #@$%^ DP runs as regular columns.

Our guess, since the $#@&*^DP keeps having the same milquetoast hacks writing the same stuff, is that some blue-haired ladies and pablum eating dimwits must be telling Waving Johnson, the publisher of the rag, that they like what he runs. So, he keeps running it.

Our further guess is that Zell is going to change things.

RICH GUYS WE'VE KNOWN--OR, CAN YOU SPOT THE BILLIONAIRE?

Someday when you go into a coffee shop in Newport Beach or Costa Mesa, look around. See those guys with the styled hair, the darting eyes, the expensive suits and skinny Italian shoes? Watch as they constantly look at their expensive watches and fiddle with their designer ball point pens. Listen in as they talk big deals on their new cell phones. Impressed? You probably shouldn't be. They're usually not the rich guys. They're usually the poseurs.

See that guy in the back corner who looks like he just came from a machine shop and who is wearing an old cheap shirt from K-Mart? He might be the only billionaire in the room.

At least that's our experience with the rich guys we've either known or heard about.

We got a several page handwritten letter once from H. L. Hunt, who had responded to something we had written about politics. At that time, Hunt was the richest man in the world. You wouldn't have guessed it from his letter to us or from his lifestyle--reportedly, he used to bring his lunch in a brown paper bag when he'd visit some of his many oil wells in his old car.

It's been the same with others we've known, but the point we're making is that the guys we're aware of who seem to have the golden touch, seem to have a lot of the personality characteristics of Sam Zell.

Guys like that don't wait long to make changes when something isn't working.

Now, we don't want to be too harsh. The Daily Pilot has made some changes that are good, but some of the things the paper has done aren't working.

Nope, we're not going to give our opinion right now on what we think is working and what we think is not working.

If the DP is interested, they know how to find us.

We'll be in the back corner of the coffee shop with the guy who looks like he just came from a machine shop and who is wearing an old cheap K-Mart shirt.

We'll be the one picking up the tab--which is a sure sign that if either of us at the table is a billionaire, or even has a pot to piss in, it isn't us.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.

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