Chicago Daily Observer

George Will is not all that hard to figure out. He just wants to be. So he will start a column something like this (a parody):

“DES MOINES, Ia.—As every Iowa schoolchild knows, the first known caucus in the Western world was convened at Lillebonne, France in 1066 in the form of an assembly of French mercenaries by one William the Bastard who, after his victory at Hastings, became known as William the Conqueror.”.

Well, thirty years of this kind of thing wearies me. And maybe you. But I doggedly work through it. Yesterday, however, in the “Tribune” was not work worthwhile. So you do not have the same experience, I will parse with you.

s the year ends, a time to reflect . . .

Former CEO Dennis FitzSimons, who gave the Tribune Company 25 years, just walked out the door Sam Zell held open with a package worth $38.3 million in severance and stock. The sums bandied about in civil litigation were vastly larger, but in the end Conrad Black was convicted of stealing $6.1 million from Hollinger International and he just got six and a half years in prison. Maybe he should have fired himself instead.