Hey! I knew Lewis Grizzard! Okay, well, not really KNOW him, but there was at least something. Hopefully enough that this title will catch attention and spin off into the Google engines as a rapidly and highly ranked search choice. Not that I'm trying to manipulate the system or anything.
In the late eighties and nineties, I worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I was a prominent writer and editorialist - SCRATCH THAT. Actually I was an accountant, a bean counter, a numbers cruncher. A very lowly figure well beneath the notice of the great and famous Lewis Grizzard.
I became the General Ledger Supervisor working with a staff of three. One of our areas of responsibility was the write and initial approval of expense reports. We had to make sure they added up and all receipts were accounted for, and that all expenses met the general standard of acceptance of the Atlanta Journal-constitution.
Without going into specifics, Mr. Grizzard's expense accounts were very interesting and very....different. We would often have to question his reports. When we did, we did not get to talk to Lewis Grizzard directly. He had his own "corporation" and it was one of his "corporate" people that we talked to. After losing objection after objection, we gradually had to accept that the same rules that applied to everybody else simply didn't apply to him. Not that we didn't stop trying.
The most entertaining one is one where we got this humongously large bill from Houston's Restaurant in Buckhead. Apparently, one of his buddies, a sportswriter, had just been fired by the paper, and he just came into this restaurant/bar and said, "Hey, ever'body! Drinks are on the The Atlanta Constitution!" Yes, the expense report was approved.
I saw him once, at a party for the 1988 Democratic Convention held in Atlanta. He had a female on each arm, and he may have glanced at me, but in a way where they're really just looking right through you.
Even though many people I know and respect read and love Lewis Grizzard, I have to admit my connection to him as a man above the rules kind of diminished my enthusiasm for him. What little I've read of him seems okay, but I just can't get him to him at the same level as others do.
Alison's mother, Rose Aldridge, wrote for The Blackshear Times, including a column that was very interesting slice of life stuff. She won a number of awards for her writing. I've always felt she should have collected her columns and have them published. Maybe she wouldn't become as famous as Lewis Grizzard, but maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to cut her a little slack on her expense report.
You state your connection to Lewis Grizzard was kind of diminished as he was a man above the rules so how can you be a supporter of Obama who has spent his whole term as president living outside the rules of our constitution and congress and has not followed the rules in most things his dictatorship wants to accomplish?
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous: If you chose to so freely throw around the word "dictatorship" regarding PRESIDENT Obama's term in office, you might want to look up the word "dictator". Dictator: noun (1)a person exercising absolute power, especially a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession.
ReplyDeleteNow, we know all know that sure isn't true! I don't mind anyone having their own opinion on anything, but please, don't use falsehoods when trying to defame the President.
In his mind he thinks that is what he is, a dictator. Just wait and see if, God forbid, he is re-elected what he will do to become the absolute ruler of the USA. Think it can't happen?, just wait and see.
DeleteSo you can read minds? Awesome talent. You make me laugh. I would think a little more of you if you would not hide behind ANONYMOUS.
DeleteThis is a weird focus for a story about Lewis Grizzard and a glimpse of my days at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But I guess this is a part of getting more blog traffic is to get more peculiar responses. I am much more fearful of a Romney-Ryan administration than a second Obama-Biden administration. Regardless, I don't think either one will be dictators. That is just nasty hyperbole designed to aggravate people.
DeleteThank you, Benita! Well put! President Obama has behaved in line with current understanding of Presidential authority. I remember Bush, Jr. lamenting how much easier things would be for him if he was a dictator, and for the most part used Congress as a rubber stamp for whatever he decided. Even when the Democrats took over Congress in '06 that most things were going to be his way or the highway. Now, in legislative battle after legislative battle, President Obama concedes miles of ground to Republicans and blue dog Democrats, and all gets out of it is the venom that spews forth from people like Anonymous.
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