Word: cassandras
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Craggy Konrad Adenauer-whom London Daily Mirror Columnist "Cassandra" (William Connor) once accused of demonstrating that Europe's German "problem child is still reaching for his flick knife"-has been a target of Fleet Street snarls for months. What had suddenly turned the snarls into a shrill chorus of rage was President Eisenhower's approaching tour of Western Europe's capitals and a surge of British fear that Adenauer would somehow persuade Ike "to keep the cold war alive." To the Daily Mail (circ. 2,071,054), Adenauer was reminiscent of Adolf Hitler, "who ranted and raved...
...politely and discreetly, or pungently, provocatively, rudely and even brutally. We may not tell a defamatory lie about anyone." With that charge, the jury in a London court last week retired to consider the libel suit of Pianist Wladziu Valentino Liberace against the London Daily Mirror and its columnist "Cassandra," William Connor (TIME, June 22). Three hours and 22 minutes later, the jurors were back with their verdict, eleven of them wearing the traditional stolid stare. But the twelfth -Mrs. Jean Friend, a grey-haired, 49-year-old widow-could not keep the delicious secret. She winked at Liberace...
Indeed he had. The jury found that the choleric Cassandra had libeled Liberace in a September 1956 column strongly implying that the pianist was homosexual ("the pinnacle of Masculine, Feminine and Neuter"). It awarded damages of ?8,000 ($22,400) against Connor and the Mirror. Both filed notice of appeal...
...columnist with the professional disposition of a rabid porcupine, William Connor of London's spicy Daily Mirror (circ. 4,500,000), who writes as Cassandra, watched 1½ TV performances of a U.S. pianist visiting England in 1956, then upquilled. "This deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother-love," fumed Connor of Wladziu Valentino Liberace. "He is the summit of sex-the pinnacle of Masculine, Feminine and Neuter. Everything that He, She or It can ever want...
...impressed by their great faith in the ability of democratic processes to solve problems which are fully presented to the nation. But it is equally impossible to avoid a feeling of dislike, verging on distrust, for what they say and the way they say it. Of course, such was Cassandra's fate, as the Alsops are probably only too ready to tell you. But it is not just their message which makes them unpleasant to read; it is their manner which really makes them objectionable...