Sometimes the joy in reading news online is that you get to see things you never would have otherwise. Like this well-crafted obit -- especially the lead -- about the direct-television copy writer Arthur Schiff, who purportedly invented the phrase, "But wait, there's more!"
And
you've got to love the anecdote about the time Schiff's boss confronted
him about sitting in his chair, hands behind his head, smoking a pipe
and staring off into space instead of working. Schiff's reply: "I am
working. You pay me to think. What do you suppose thinking looks like?"
The boss said he never raised the issue again.
(Sounds
like a great line for a lot of reporters and editors to use. But of
course, in most places they couldn't be sitting at their desks and
smoking a pipe these days. Political correctness and all that.)
By Peter M. Zollman. [
