Don’t look over my shoulder, brother
Don’t go peeking at my screen
Don’t try to read my emails or
You might not like what you seen
“Hello. Who am I speaking to? Well get an IT guy up here right this minute. I want to snoop into one of my employee’s emails.”
A few hours later, Moe Zaire has pulled his stocking feet off his oversized desk and is leaning forward and leering into an undersized laptop.
“Hmm, now let’s see what that self-promoting son of a bitch has been up to while I’ve been playing the carefree but committed democratic Bollywood billionaire.”
Inbox: Bret, I’ve been offered a job as Lady Liberty for Mouth of America and no longer need to work for you. Please send all pay and other compensation due me to the following address in care of Kate Mustard: Correspondent.
Inbox (15 minutes later): Hey, I heard you’ve got an editorial opening – I might have some free time to help out… just between you and me… let me know as soon as you can… not that I’m in a hurry…
“Mother of Krishna! He’s like Kabba the temple rat. You cut off his tail and he scurries into a hole, only to reappear more devious and dangerous than before.”
Now resting back in his large leather chair, Zaire begins to loosen his red tie with one hand while clicking his mouse with the other, as email after email flashes across the screen.
Inbox: Dear Bret, I quit. Just how long did you expect me to keep running my mouth about getting into Harvard anyway?
Outbox (Unsent): No skin off my nose, bitch. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
Outbox: Sure, Cocoa. I understand and wish you nothing but the best in your exciting new career endeavors.
The white of Zaire’s eyes gleams amongst an otherwise chocolate field of facial features that contrive to create a smooth expression of prohibited delight.
Inbox: Thanks Bret. And I will always remember you fondly in that fatherly sort of way.
Outbox (Unsent): And I will always remember fondling your sunbaked black ass on that beach I flew you to against all company policy and no small expense to myself.
Outbox (Sent): Well, don’t be a stranger, and drop us a line once in a while from that high-powered job you landed in America.
Inbox: Don’t worry, I will. In the meantime, you will be receiving word from my replacement, career newsman, Jim Book, whom I took the liberty of hiring in the best interests of the paper.
Outbox (Unsent): Thanks. And I will take the liberty of making this asshole’s life a living hell in the interest of keeping my own ass as comfortable as possible in the only job I’ve got.
Outbox: Great, all the best.
Zaire raises his eyes from the computer screen quizzically, scratches the crown of his dyed black head and decides to call his chief accountant Ali and his personal driver Abu to come round and watch Turkish porn movies.
Meanwhile, the chief editor at Ukraine’s window to the world has retired to the familiar environs of the newsroom’s corner desk, where a mountain of layouts from this week’s edition of the Poster has already begun to emerge beneath his rough-hewn news chin.
On the otherwise bare wall behind him hangs a plain-framed photo of a beaming Boss Lard in younger years, his starched white shirt with ink-stained sleeves, standing in front of a printing press, arms akimbo, the stance – jaunty and sure.
“I didn’t ask for this shit,” Boner grumbles at the image of the paper’s first known CEO.
But that’s not entirely true. Could the man have been entirely devoid of ambition when he returned to the paper’s helm after nearly a decade of journalistic obscurity? Stepping over the heads of Saint Stephan and Zippy Zamazda was child’s play in retrospect.
Then of course you had to call that strike, which put the publisher on the back foot, while giving the boot to a few independent types. Josh Davies himself – octogenarian scab resurrected from retirement like ‘Return of the Mummy’ turned into a reality show. He made as brave if hopeless of a stand as could be expected.
Publisher Moe Zaire, on the other hand, was shaking in his boots, fearful of being branded an enemy of the press. When the shaking stopped, the firing started, with Boss Lard calling the shots. You let The Ferret take the first bullet, didn’t you?
Engineering the fall of that master of newsroom intrigue was nothing short of Machiavellian, a surgical operation to rid the publication of its most insidious pest, a rat no less, that required no small natural reserves of cunning, ruthlessness and devious, Academy Award-winning dissimulation.
When your number was up, you chose exile at Hebrew News One, opening the door for outsider Jacob Perfidsky to reclaim the paper from the gentiles. Fortunately for you, Jacob’s ambitions exceeded his English-language skills, and you ended up back where you started in that much touted ‘outer-body experience’.
And now, almost three years and one revolution later, just what have you got to say for yourself? Go on, spit it out. What are you typing into that keyboard?
What’s that? Jim Book has turned down the job as your boss? No, I don’t believe it. No fucking way… after working all those years on the ground in Moscow, Beijing and Greenland, a career journalist who dyed his hair in preparation for a fresh start in Kyiv… to move to New York to raise funds for the newspaper and pursue other career opportunities.
What the fuck does that mean, anyway? Why in the hell would someone turn down a paid job at a paper in order to move as far away from it as he could to then raise money to keep it from going under?
That is like rejecting a mail order bride and then saying you will send her money to live on. And another thing: Is The Ferret still working at that paper or not?
Filed by 39S, who finally got his ass back to work, January 31, 2016