MIKE ROYKO

I know I've written this before, having said that my admiration for Mike Royko goes beyond caring if I'm repeating a post, so please read it and stop complaining.

Mike Royko, was one of America’s most Influential and respected Newspaper Columnists, whose writing style, in a career spanning 34 years- till his death in 1997, was characterized by Political and Social satire, in a down to earth manner that showed his Blue collar working class background (The son of Polish Immigrants) in Chicago his birth/work place and won him the Pulitzer Prize.

A prolific columnist- if there was one- who wrote an average of 5 pieces weekly for The Chicago Tribune, he was famed for his ascerbic wit, Integrity and caustic tongue; famously he waged a one-man campaign against the corrupt, bigoted political establishment in the Chicago City Hall headed by Mayor Richard Daley.

He also took on the American Bureacratic machine, of note being his savaging of the Veteran's Administration Board, who repeatedly refused a young Vietnam Vet funding for an operation to restore his ability to swallow, after a serious injury.

Mike Royko was also famed for his principled refusal to work for Rupert Murdoch’s News International, after its takeover of the Chicago Tribune where he worked for several years, on the principle that Rupert Murdoch had more interest in the figures than Journalistic pursuit. He often referred to Murdoch- less than fondly- as “Alien”

Here are a few of his quotes

On Rupert Murdoch :“No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper”

"In Alien's Tongue, 'I Quit' is 'Vacation " (In response to Murdoch’s insistence on reprinting his old articles after his resignation).

"Fried chicken, fried chicken, fried chicken. I said it and I'm glad. Sue me," Responding to Editorial Guidelines from the University of Chicago prescribing that certain words regarded as un-PC- including "Sweetie" and curiously, "Fried Chicken" be expunged from Newspaper Columns as sound editorial policy.

"The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons".

On Mayor Richard Daley, in tribute after his death- “In other ways, he was this city at its worst — arrogant, crude, conniving, ruthless, suspicious, intolerant….He wasn’t graceful, suave, witty, or smooth. But, then, this is not Paris or San Francisco…….He was raucous, sentimental, hot-tempered, practical, simple, devious, big, and powerful. This is, after all, Chicago.”

"I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message,I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose."

"Whether one eats a cat or not is a personal choice, and I don't want to sway anyone one way or another. But if you do, there is one obvious cooking tip: Always remember to remove the bell from the cat's collar before cooking."

It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway,' but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies. Definitely touched a sore nerve somewhere (mea culpa).
Below is a link to three of his articles.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/730735.html