Horning: Not Gone and Not Forgotten
Management did not respond, and on March 31 Nicodemus reported to the membership on the guild bulletin board. He said the guild was making three points:
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“(3) To permit the company-endorsed publication of such a column, followed by an offer of continued employment at an American Publishing Co. property here, displays a double standard on ethical conduct. Because the Guild believes that any Guild member forced out for such an infraction certainly would not have been afforded similar charitable, kid-glove treatment.”
The Sun-Times’s top editors still haven’t responded formally to the guild grievance, may not know how to respond, and probably don’t want to give the guild the satisfaction of a response. Informally, management is furious at what must seem to it an astonishing attempt to conjure ill will out of thin air. Surely allowing Hornung a chance to explain and apologize was humane; and if his explanation fell short of total self-abasement, that was human nature. As for any invitation from Perrotto, that was his idea, not theirs.
ABC immediately rewrote All My Children to delete the story line in which Janet Green sends her baby’s father a bomb on his wedding day.
Producers of this Bruce Willis thriller haven’t explained their decision–not that it’s unfathomable. They might wish to declare: “Would the makers of last summer’s smash hit Speed or the makers of the smash flop Blown Away have let themselves be intimidated by senseless cowards? Neither will we. If Die Hard With a Vengeance opens, those senseless cowards lose. If a hundred bombing movies open, those senseless cowards lose. If every American takes away from Die Hard With a Vengeance the message “Never again!’ they lose. Die Hard With a Vengeance deserves to be seen and pondered by every American.