The end game and the Oval Office
Mob Rule: Part 23
Jack sits down with Bobby and Joe and a clutch of white-haired power players to discuss the prospect of a Presidential bid
By John Armstrong
I would have been less shocked if I were at an audience with the Pope and he winked and said, ‘Will you look at the knockers on that one?’ I choked on my drink and spat a mouthful up onto my jacket. When I stopped coughing they were still sitting there, waiting for me to say something. I dabbed at myself with a hanky. No one was laughing. Neither was I. “What the hell are you talking about,” I said. It seemed to me a very reasonable question. Bobby looked at his father and Joe nodded at him to go on. “Jack, we’re not saying that the old government was a good one, but it was at least a democratically elected one and this country was founded on the principle of every man having a say in how he’s governed. One man, one vote. That’s something that everyone here feels very strongly about.” He put ...
Reporting behind bars
The Sick Days: Part 16
Journalism 201: Remember to bring your prednisone to prison
By Shelley Page
“Don’t forget to take their picture.” As I’d find out, not the best advice for a reporter sent to sneak into a third-world prison. I was heading to Trinidad to interview two imprisoned teenage drug mules who had attempted to smuggle three suitcases of marijuana back to Canada. Both 17, they’d been sentenced to eight years in an adult prison, filled with murderers on death row. The Star wanted the boys’ story. It hadn’t started out as my story. A new hire, a summer student heading to Columbia University’s journalism school in the fall, had been following the case and already called the prison warden asking to interview the boys. Although she had a hunger for foreign assignments and a passport filled with stamps, she was too green to go. Instead, I was assigned to show up at the prison, say I was a cousin, get their story and a photo: proof of life for ...
