Word: wickers
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...Italy's highest political office dragged on inconclusively for a record 16 days and 23 ballots, one vote was cast for Alighiero Noschese, a television comedian who does a splendid impersonation of Richard Nixon. On another ballot, one elector absentmindedly dropped a love letter into the green wicker voting urn. Most of the time, there were so many astenuti, or abstainers, that the joke went round that the Onorevole Astenuti ("the Honorable Mr. Astenuti") was the most promising candidate...
...paramount concern was to save lives?hostages and inmates alike," he explained later. "We had to give the negotiations a chance." His first concession was to let into the compound a group of outsiders, chosen by the prisoners, to "oversee" the situation. They included New York Times Columnist Tom Wicker, Bronx Congressman Herman Badillo, Republican State Senator John R. Dunne and Clarence Jones, black publisher of Manhattan's Amsterdam News. But they also wanted Radical Lawyer William Kunstler and the Black Panthers' Bobby Seale. At one point there were as many as 30 mediators...
Four of the observers (Wicker, Badillo, Dunne and Jones) telephoned Rockefeller and for 90 minutes pleaded with him to come to Attica and talk to them as a means of expressing concern and buying more time. "If we could just get two hours, three hours, more time . . ." said Badillo. "I can give you that, all right," Rocky replied. "We'll stretch this [the negotiations] out as long as anybody thinks there's a chance of settling it peaceably. But if I come up and talk to you, they [the prisoners] will demand that I come inside ?and that wouldn...
...Wicker has been at odds with Times editorial policy before, most notably about campus upheavals. As he puts it, "I tended to write about student grievances, and the editorial page stressed the necessity of maintaining order and academic freedom on the campuses." Never before has one of his columns triggered an opposing Times editorial, though no one called him on the carpet and the home office's only communication was to advise him in advance that the editorial would be forthcoming, a move Wicker describes as "sort of like senatorial courtesy...
Apart from the editorial. Wicker also drew strong censure from more than 100 readers. Last week he felt compelled to confront his critics. In another column, he noted that "most letters and even some editorials have accused me of charging that Jackson's death was 'set up' by the authorities. Of course...