The publisher arrives at her office and boots up her computer. Her password doesn’t work. No big deal she thinks, those security-obsessed IT guys must be making everybody change passwords yet again. She reaches for the phone to tell them she is being denied access. Strange, she thinks, that she should have to leave a voicemail message. She’s so important and no one is responding to the neon flashing of her name in Caller ID.
She shuffles around her office, sipping her latte, fairly paralyzed without access to her computer and fuming because she can’t get to her email. At some point she notices the sound of cardboard boxes being dragged across carpeting and down the corridor between the cubicles. The sound grows nearer and louder. Ah-hah, she thinks, at last they are getting rid of that #$@%^ down the hall. But no, the sound of sliding boxes inches ever closer. Good heavens, she wonders, why in the world are they are stopping outside my door?
Yep, it’s Judith Regan’s turn to be frog-marched to the curb.
Frog-march: to seize from behind roughly and forcefully propel forward –Merriam Webster Online Dictionary.
In the Wicked Witch’s experience frog-marching usually involves two hulking guys on either side of you, practically lifting you off the ground by your elbows while your feet go through the motions of walking. Not unlike the frantic paw action of the family dog being lowered into the swimming pool.
Did Judith Regan make anti-Semitic cracks? According to The New York Times yesterday, Rupert Murdock personally ordered Judith Regan’s ousting. Not, evidently, because of the O. J. Simpson book debacle over If I Did It, but because of comments Ms. Regan made in a phone conversation “with a company lawyer on Friday that…were deemed anti-Semitic….” Slurs are never justified, but are utterly incomprehensible in a milieu where many of your colleagues, not to mention most of your bosses, are Jewish. (Here, let me hand you your own gun to commit professional suicide.)
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