El gordito y la estrella dorada
Donde vemos sobre Roy Roberts, el Kansas City Star, Tom Pendergast,
lobista y político de muy mala fama, y la política en la década del ´50.
At 3 o´clock one
morning last spring, the phone rang in the Kansas City home of Roy Roberts.
“Are you the Roy Roberts who runs the
Star, who sent Tom Pendergast to prison and started the Eisenhower for
President Boom?” the voice at the other end of the wire inquired.
Roberts groaned that he was also 63 and the fattest newspaper editor in the
country. Then he added, “If it´s necessary to discuss my career, I´d prefer to
do it at a more civilized hour.”
“Well, if you
have so damned much influence,” said the caller, “would you use a little of it
to shut up your newsboy in front of the Muchlebach Hotel. He´s been keeping me
awake since 10 o´clock.”
Roberts said he would see what he could do and before he went back to bed he
called his office and had a man sent out to calm down the overenthusiastic
newsboy.
In little crises
or big ones, Roy Roberts likes to
rise to the occasion. When, on January 6, 1953, the U.S. Justice Department announced
that it was indicting the Kansas City Star for news monopoly (a suit that had
not yet been acted on when this was written), it was Roberts who personally counterattacked, splashing a white-hot
editorial across the front page of the Kansas City Times, the Star´s morning
edition.