Which Reminds Me

Back in the day when I was working at the Boca Times our newspaper was sued by Bill Smith who was at that time the mayor of Boca Raton. However, I do not believe that he was suing me personally. Obviously, he was suing several people including my editors Rick Haydan and Steve Ricci, both of whom basically despised Smith and would to go great pains to make sure nothing nice was ever said about him, and also the publisher, Bruce Warshal, with whom he had an ongoing personal feud. Smith and Warshal had been friends until Warshal asked Smith to be his other sponsor for membership into the Royal Palm Yacht Club. Smith refused and then the two became bitter enemies. Warshal was often asking us to write certain stories of interest in his personal feud with Smith. He even supervised the wording of certain stories to make sure things came out the way he wanted, as for example the story about the campaign signs that were smeared with swastikas for some mysterious reason. So I don't think it was a personal thing about me. It was just the whole atmosphere of that time. There were certain activists agitating against Smith and they found welcoming ears in Steve and Rick and then I would have to try to write something to satisfy the demands of the activists even though there might not be anything else to say about Mizner Park. It will just always be there. And then I would get a phone call from Batmasian threatening to get me fired if I did not cooperate with their demands or something, and also Danciu made some ominous threats because things were not going his way and he was convinced that it was all my fault. The former reporter in my position had apparently been so much more cooperative with them, whatever her name was. I don't remember anything specific.