A writin’, fightin’ editor is Fred Sullens of Jackson, Miss.’s Daily News. He is the kind of newspaperman who once said of a politician who threatened him with physical violence: “If nothing less than a few buckets of blood from the veins of the editor of the Daily News will quench your thirst for human gore . . . come on and spill it—if you can. Being the party threatened, the editor is entitled to choice of weapons. [The threatener] may arm himself with cowdung and shingles at the respectful distance of 40 paces, standing with his face to the wind in order that spectators may not be offended by his polecat effluvia.”
On another occasion Sullens wrote of a political meeting: “There will be a buzzard swarming at Poindexter Park tonight. If you have buzzard appetite, go out and enjoy yourself. But please go home to do your puking. It costs money to clean public parks.”
In his younger days Editor Sullens sometimes used his fists. Now he is 62 and for a decade he has stuck to pen pizen, made loquacious Mississippi Governor Paul Burney Johnson holler that he come out and fight. Paul Johnson has been barbecued and fricasseed in sometimes as many as six News editorials a day for the last nine years.
Once when Sullens tied into Paul Johnson, then a judge, Johnson sued him for libel, and to Sullens’ disgust a News official settled out of court for a reputed $18,000. On the day of the settlement judge Johnson bought a big new limousine and cruised up & down Jackson’s Capitol Street, derisively honking as he passed the Daily News building. Said the Governor on the stump last summer: “I’m still spending that buzzard’s money. I’m liable to be spending some more of it too when this campaign is over.”
But Fred Sullens was no man to let up. “In his verbal hemorrhage . . . judgepaul-bulljohnson denounced the editor of the Daily News as a cowardly assassin of character or something to that effect. . . . Our plea is not guilty. We have never assassinated the character of the most dangerous demagogue who ever afflicted a long-suffering commonwealth. . . .”
Editor Sullens, half owner of the News, not only writes a front-page column (The Low Down on the Higher Ups) and three columns of editorial pizen, but until recent years he insisted on covering the Legislature himself. One evening last week a sizzling session of the Legislature—which has long frustrated the Governor—ended in an uproar. But Paul Johnson had had enough of words. Next night, in the crowded lobby of one of Jackson’s political centres, the Walthall Hotel, Governor Johnson rushed upon Sullens, as the editor and his pretty young wife of a year crossed to enter the elevator.
Quick as a flash Johnson cracked Sullens across the back of his head with a cane, and blood splattered everywhere. The editor whirled, knocked away the cane, and pitched the 6 ft. 3 in., 195 lb., 60-year-old Governor across a chair, smashing it, dropped astride him, landing furious rights and lefts in his face. The embattled editor was hauled off, and trumpeting that it was “a cowardly attempt to assassinate me from the rear,” was rushed to the hospital for scalp stitches. The Governor was put to bed at the Executive Mansion a block away.
Next day the editor snorted in his front-page column: “When you help to overturn a man’s applecart, wreck his gravy train, expose his motives and frustrate his purposes, it is but natural for him to be indignant about it. However . . . not even a rattlesnake will attack without warning.”
Mississippians reckoned that their Governor’s attack would cost him dear in sympathy and votes. But Editor Sullens also had something to regret. He had been scooped on his own story. The Daily News went to press before it all happened.
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