Tommy Jacks, a political reporter covering the 1972 Oklahoma U.S. Senate race, finds new love and old threats. The campaign reaches new lows as a violent world mixes with vicious political rhetoric. Tommy says, “there’s just too much hatred in the world right now,” but he hasn’t seen anything yet. It’s a three-man race—an oil baron, a college professor and a preacher. And it’s going to get ugly.
The above is a marketing blurb for Murder So Final the third and last book of the Muckraker series. Tommy Jacks is the protagonist in all three of these books and a favorite character of mine. Tommy is young, enthusiastic, smart and often wrong about things he has not experienced, yet. He is smart enough to seek advice from his elders, including his father; but most importantly a man named Taylor Albright. Albright had been one of the original people who had started the paper where Tommy is working, Albright made a serious mistake and had to leave the paper; he became bitter, but he still knows a lot.
The interaction of Tommy and Albright in all three books provides a lot for the reader to decipher. Albright has become Tommy’s mentor but that is not the role Albright wants in life; he’s still looking for the home-run, the big story; the scoop. He is worried about his legacy not Tommy’s. They both live and breathe the political world and the often strange and ruthless inhabitants.
The inspiration for these three books is drawn from real experiences I and my co-author, Stanley Nelson, had in the 60s and 70s in Oklahoma, related to the ultra-competitive newspaper market at the time.
Taylor Albright is based on someone I knew. Most of the mannerisms of Albright and his lust for scoops and love of politics came directly from that person. He was writing a political column for the Oklahoma Journal when I met him.
It was a strange encounter at a Denney’s where he was encamped with several of his unusual hangers-on. One of the group I happened to know and I was invited to join their table. That was my first opportunity to come into contact with my Taylor Albright. He was the most brash and opinionated New Yorker I had ever met. He had the aura of a prophet even though he was disheveled—did not know how to drive a car and carried a bag of old newspapers everywhere he went. I could not decide if he was a genius or an idiot; but I knew he was unique. I soon dropped into Denney’s on a regular basis to listen to his narrative; often about the events of the day, or maybe some good amount of local gossip regarding the political elites and, of course, his strange wisdom about most things that didn’t have anything to do with day-to-day life–the more obscure the better.
This was the 1970s with lots of promise in the air for a country experiencing some bad things but also enjoying great economic growth. The future looked bright. My Albright was not so optimistic. He said in the future the free press would be dead, bought without objection by corporations; and once the press no longer worked for the people, democracy would be over. Politicians and corporations would join forces and control every aspect of our lives. Workers would become slaves to their bosses. At the time I thought it was more of his usual hyperbole; but now over forty years later, maybe my Albright was right.
My Albright was fired from his job at the paper. He was vague about why, but I learned from others it had to do with a powerful politician accusing him of lying. Apparently, My Albright had run a gossipy piece suggesting the leader was having financial trouble and as a result his mistress was moving to a cheaper apartment. Nobody knew how that bit of news got by the editors. My Albright backed up his story with statements from others and documentation about the apartment move; but he was fired. The paper was already in financial difficulty and could not afford any kind of lawsuit.
He approached me and asked if I would help him put out a free “paper” focused on politics. The reason he would do that is that I owned a printing company. Not real sure why, but for whatever reason, I said yes. For months he drove my employees mad. His unique, odd personality could be kind of amusing if listening to his musings at Denney’s but he was a demanding, self-center monster at work. He put out several papers, which were increasingly aggressive in their content. After a while I had to tell him I could not subsidize his venture any longer. It was not so much the actual out-of-pocket costs; it was the fact that he was on the verge of running off every employee. We parted friends. He soon disappeared and I never heard from him again.
He had left me a copy of an article he had written for the next edition of his rag. It was about truth. His focus was politics, of course, and he was thinking about a future where truth was lost. He said we could withstand most things; such as corruption, even lying—but as a society we could not survive if we lost the ability to identify truth. We needed to maintain core beliefs that everyone, democrat or republican or independent knew to be true. We would also need a free press to help us sort out the facts and find truth. If that was ever gone, we were done. My Albright was a man of vision; and also something of a con-man.
Update
Waiting on the exact publishing date for Murder So Final, but hopefully in the next ten days.
The blog has a new layout. Hope you like it.
Ted Clifton's Grain of Salt Commentary 