The Hitman

I imagine Roger Simon took one last drag of his cigarette, then dropped it to the floor. Yes, he nodded stoically, he would accept the "contract" from his POLITICO overlords. The professional hit on Rupert Murdoch would not be pretty. In his column today ("The Evil of Rupert Murdoch"), Simon writes about his one, personal interaction with the tabloid mogul back in 1984. At the time, Simon was a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, a newspaper Murdoch would soon purchase. Over dinner, he conversed with Murdoch about various sections of the paper. “I don’t understand anything about American sport,” Murdoch told Simon breezily, “but I know the coloreds like it.” Pregnant pause. Simon told the Australian that in America we no longer used the word “coloreds,” that it was considered insulting. "He looked at me the way Queen Victoria might have looked at a footman who had told her she was using the wrong fork to eat her pheasant," Simon wrote. The evening went downhill from there. So did Simon's three-page column, an editorial hit job if there ever was one. Like I said, it wasn't pretty. But it sure got the job done. And if half of what I've read is true, this thoroughly contemptible Aussie probably deserves every rhetorical bullet. By the way, Mr. Simon, don't forget: Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.