Concord Monitor Propaganda…The Tale of Beano “Bag of Donuts”
But first some background…
I was fortunate to grow up in the early 1960’s in Chicago. Our family ties covered the Italian west side neighborhoods known as Austin and Galewood.
My friends had every Italian surname that’s running through your mind as you read this sentence and, then some.
Beano “Bag of Donuts”, was the biggest bullshitter of them all!!! All of us kids loved Beano like a brother. We respected him, BUT WE NEVER TRUSTED HIM, in a Vito Corleone, Frankie “Five Angles”Pentangli, Hyman Roth kind of way.
He was special. However, Beano had one of the most un-Italian bad habits imaginable, he constantly took pictures!
Why did Beano LOVE newspaper and television reporters so much???
“…they put it on the line. In a society of salesmen and pitchmen, they are the ultimate hustlers. To succeed, they need approval of 50.01 percent of the customers. That is one tough sales rate.” (Miker Royko)
What Beano learned was, you don’t get to on the six o’clock news, unless you are smarter than about 99 percent of the people who agree or disagree with you.
Besides, Chicago was hiring some mighty fine “gnoccas” (that’s beautiful women to those of you in Rio Linda) at that time. And, Beano always loved beautiful women…Sorry I digress….
Beano eventually made the six o’clock news and was very famous…In fact Hollywood made a movie about him. No, Beano was never awarded a Pulitzer Prize. In fact, the only prize Beano was given in life was, his very own frequency on the FBI’s radar screen.
He did learn how to work the media…In fact when I dated one of Chicago’s most beautiful “t.v. gnoccas” She couldn’t shut up about all the good things this “supposed criminal” was doing. Nothing could convince her to write about all the bad, even when it was in her face!!!
Beano was spacey…hence he was extremely good at Geometry. He lived in a world of Theorems and Postulates…of which he had an infinite number of his very own;
“And you don’t get to be president, governor, mayor, senator, congressman or even a schnook alderman in Chicago unless you can ooze charm and shake a hand like you love the other end of that appendage.” (another one of his adaptive Mike Roykoisms)
And, I as stood over his coffin (after negotiating my entrance into the funeral home, past the thousands of national and local reporters and tv camera at the funeral home), to say my farewells, I realized Beano manipulated great press and, there was no doubt that great press made people turn their heads away from the Truth.
After Beano’s murder, and the factual stories were leaked, one reporter in particular Dee-Dee (who was Beano’s de-facto girlfriend) had some explaining to do. It was rumored that the reporter’s friend who was assigned to write the explanation story asked Dee-Dee to describe here relationship with Beano. The reporter said, “she was to quote Dee-Dee directly”.
Dee-Dee said to just write she and Beano were “involved”. The reporter shot back, “that’s true isn’t it?” Dee-Dee was incredulous, “No it’s not true, but it would be accurate.”
Which Brings us to the following front page of the Concord Monitor…the newspaper “game” has not changed in the forty years since Beano’s demise.
Beano’s story taught me this; Truth and Accuracy lives in a gaseous cloud deep in the quixotic mind of the ubiquitous “IN-PERSON”! ALWAYS MAKING YOU FEEL GOOD WITH ONE STORY WHILE THEY ARE SUBLIMINALLY ASKING YOU TO SUSPEND RATIONALITY TO BELIEVE IN THE NON-FACTUAL!
Every once in a while, not often but sometimes, I can see Beano’s face in the shadows of a printed newspaper’s front page….
ohb, keeping it real…Off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush…you can be the judge…