Frisco Fracas
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Our local scandal rag, the San Francisco Chronicle (also called the San Francisco Chronic by people who enjoy drug humor too much), is busy celebrating itself as members of the media are prone to do.
Seriously guys, check the ego at the door.
The Chronic has been printing highly readable bird cage liner for 144 year. Normally a paper with multiple Pulitzer’s would pause until reaching the 150 year mark. However, the rapid financial decline of American newspapers in general and the San Francisco Chronicle in particular is such that the journal’s current editorial board fears they may not be around six years hence.
In telling their (almost) century and a half of both high and low journalism, the paper mention a rather interesting episode that illuminates the nature of American media and the always wide open burg known by outsiders as ‘Frisco’ (technically that term was outlawed by Emperor Norton, but that edict has not been enforce since his reign).
Ever opinionated about politics, the Chronicle’s original editor – a fellow named Charles de Young – decided he was not found of a mayoral candidate called Isaac Kalloch. It was not so much that Kalloch – a Baptist minister from back east – was a bad fellow. De Young’s discontent lay in having already selected a different candidate and didn’t want a man of the cloth holding the office.
After all, San Francisco with a moral leader at the helm would destroy the city’s essence.
According to the current edition of the Chronicle, de Young wrote that Kalloch was “a tainted preacher, seeking his election in low groggeries.” What the today’s editors failed to mention was that de Young also accused the preacher of having an affair. No doubt history has unveiled one or more adulterating clerics, or at least that would be Jessica Hahn’s opinion. De Young’s low blow was low even by 19th century journalistic standards, which were somewhere south of those held by gutter drunks.
Yet the unsubstantiated account was not mentioned by anyone littering the Chronicle’s 2009 masthead. Curious omission.
Well, Kalloch responded claiming de Young’s mother of running a brothel. Granted, it is a short moral distance between a yellow dog journalist and a hooker, but assuming it was a family business and bringing somebody’s mother into the argument was out of line, especially if true. De Young, a working man of letters, power and influence did what any well tempered and worldly newspaper editor would.
He shot Kalloch. This may explain the Chronicle’s constant position favoring gun control. They have first hand experience with what short tempered snots with revolvers can do.
Curiously, this seems to have had the inverse effect. Kalloch was merely wounded and later elected. Something about shooting a preacher brings out the sympathy vote.
Ministers allegedly are of a forgiving nature. Sons, as Cain showed, are occasionally not. The following year, Kalloch’s son strolled into the San Francisco Chronicle’s offices and pumped a round or two into de Young, accomplish what de Young had not, namely a successful homicide.
If there are morals in this tale, they are warnings about select sins including pride, false witness, and mouthing off about the business activities of other people’s mothers. It also shows us the value of specialization. Had de Young kept to his accomplished trade of raking muck, he might indeed have thrown the election through slander and liable. However, he chose to employ himself as a marksman and assassin. Failing at both, he encouraged those with superior skill sets to give it a try.
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