From dapper don to felon don

THE EDITOR, Madam:

My reflection in the bathroom mirror shows a refugee from the 20th century, but someone not overly worried about being left waiting on the sidewalk along the information highway. The digital revolution has somewhat overtaken me, where everyone else has a smartphone clasped in their hot little hands, scrolling through endless messages, memes, photographs, TikTok and YouTube videos.

During many years spent criss-crossing oceans on freighters and tankers, one of my pleasures on reaching port was to locate a newsstand where there were several daily newspapers, magazines and periodicals that could be perused. In countries where I had only scant knowledge of the local language, it was even more interesting trying to figure out exactly what headlines meant. Newspapers always fascinated me and still do, ever since the difference between broadsheets and tabloids was explained many years ago. A broadsheet’s headline would be: ‘Mental Institution Inmate Flees After Sexual Assault On Laundry Workers’, while the same story in a tabloid carries the headline: ‘Nut Screws Washers And Bolts’.

Back in the 1970s, many newspapers in New York became focused on a Mafia leader called John Gotti. Other gangsters kept as anonymous as possible in their shadowy, criminal underworld, but Mr Gotti loved being in the headlines, impeccably dressed in expensive suits, and was referred to ‘The Dapper Don’. When his lawyers were able to outsmart the criminal justice system in every case brought against him, headlines soon changed to ‘The Teflon Don’, as no charges seemed to stick, while he bathed in the glow of the geist-lights.

After almost 20 years of this flagrant infamy, he was convicted of murder in 1992 and jailed for life; but New York newspapers had another citizen who loved himself and the spotlight just as much. A rising star in real estate development called Donald Trump was always in the headlines with some self-promotion or the other, making the rounds of nightclubs with the glitterati, or in a divorce scandal, etc. Newspapers were quick to label him as ‘The Donald’, long before he gained fame as a television personality and later as a politician. Following his recent fraud trial in Manhattan, he now has a new moniker bestowed on him by his political opponents, who gleefully refer to him as ‘the convicted felon’. So New York’s newspaper headlines have gone from Dapper Don to Teflon Don to Felon Don.

BERNIE SMITH

Parksville, BC

Canada