Welcome, Cliff and Bobbie, to the Hartford Courant Alumni Association and Refugee Camp.
New arrivals here learn at lot…
…That Starbucks coffee, suddenly, has gotten expensive…
…That the world is a bigger place, and you are smaller, than you thought.
… That the Hartford Courant is less important than you thought, but still important.
You learn that change is hard, and that embracing change is even harder, and that holding on to who you are — who you really are — has nothing to do with where you worked.
You learn that the most important thing you built in all those years of hard work at the Courant was your reputation, and that proving yourself all over again is a humbling but satisfying experience.
And, perhaps most of all, when you join us alumni, you learn who your friends are…
… and that you need all the friends you can get.
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They can take our jobs, but not our history.
It’s too bad, given what a “good soul” Cliff reportedly is, that he didn’t have the fortitude to leave before he got blood on his hands. Ditto for Bobbie.
And how strange are their goodbye messages: Cliff oddly deriving inspiration from the fact that a man he forced out of a job, Gombossy, made lemonade out of the lemon he was handed; and Bobbie deriving pride from the way the people she didn’t axe performed during the layoffs and afterwards.
How horribly tangled must be their web of self-justifications for their completely inept stewardship of a once great paper, their complicity in its speedy dismantling, and their dutiful role in upsetting and possibly ruining the lives of dozens of people far more capable and talented than themselves.
Well, at least Graziano got his revenge on those who allowed the story about his disastrous parking lot fling to get into the paper.
The prize for heedless self-absorption and conceit has to go to the one who left gushing about “keeping it fun, keeping it new, maintaining a sense of wonder and purpose.” Evidently that’s what was going on in the managing editor’s mind while she was gutting the paper and laying off so many talented reporters and editors: “keeping it fun, keeping it new, maintaining a sense of wonder and purpose.”
It brings to mind the episode of “The Twilight Zone” called “The Good Life,” in which the “little darling” Anthony (played by Billy Mumy) gets what he wants or causes anyone who displeases him to disappear. At least the Courant’s staff doesn’t have to deal with a stand-in for Billy Mumy anymore. There’s a picture of him keeping it fun here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It‘s_a_Good_Life_(The_Twilight_Zone)
“The adults tiptoe nervously around him, constantly telling him how everything he does is ‘good,’ since displeasing him can get them wished away ‘to the cornfield,’ where they are presumably met by a less-than-happy ending.”