WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST STONEWALLS STYLE MANUAL
Washington, D.C.-- This is not a very pretty story. It's really not very pretty much of anything but I had to write it and I had to believe that what I was doing was right because I had orders. I even knew they might change the rules on me in midstream and leave me twisting in the wind and easy prey for cheap shots of liberalism and communism and bruxism, because I had orders. You live with that. You live with the betrayal and cheap gin in waterfront bars and chicory-laden coffee in the ethnic kitchens of the poor. But you don't shill.
No, you don't shill and you know in your gut that Jimmy Cannon and Jimmy Breslin and Ernie Hemingway never shilled either. And you get a certain dry joy from that. And you know that Norman Mailer was right, that the whole rotten, festering business came down to little more than feeding the goat, yes, your orders are to feed the goat, to cram and stuff and fill that yawning white space until it can take no more until tomorrow. You throw good print after bad, it doesn't matter. All that matters is feeding the goat, oy. And the goat, he'll be in your yard tomorrow, too. And you get the notion that you're a goat boy. And that stinks.
I said I didn't shill and I know that what they wanted was for me to shill and I said I wouldn't do it. Oh, I had orders. The white space would be filled. I'd fill between the lines too if that would make them happy. But they'd find my body limp across the barricades before I'd shill for a COMMA. So there I was in that room and maybe my greasy typewriter was bugged and maybe the phone was tapped and maybe everything I said that night went into a tape and then into a file and then somebody slammed the file door shut and put the label "Columnist Richard Cohen" on it and smugly set his ersatz cup of coffee down on top.
But they wouldn't get a comma out of me. Go back and read that long sentence. See?
--Norm Burnett Alexandria, VA