The Street News Saga : Part Three

Hutchinson Persons believed in the Seven Sages. I only valued Bias of Priene as wise.

I felt that Hutch had more brains in his little finger than Chris Wallace had in his entire head. Wallace was cunning, deceptive, shrewd and rotten and he was going to use the exact same subterfuges he had used in the past to make innocent people look guilty. It didn’t matter what they were accused of. Chris was there to make the public assume they must have done something or why else would they be taking heat? These rabbinical arguments had been used to destroy people’s lives for decades. I wanted to be there to try to run defense for Hutch. At the last minute, I got called away before they arrived. I feel to this day if I had been present, I would have whispered in Hutch’s ears to ignore all of Wallace’s bizarre requests and seen to it the interview was staged in a sane setting. Hutch was not like me. I was a misanthrope and I knew mankind was inherently evil. Hutch believed they had good in them, as well. I had my doubts about that.

After much time speaking with Hutch I had come to recognize his core ideology as being identical to the Hellenistic worldview … evil is due to errors in thinking and rational argument is sufficient to defeat the wicked by converting them from their incorrect notions to better ones. I recognized it because when I was younger I had held similar views before I went through the military and had lived on the street. I knew by the time I met Hutch the truth of our conditions. The only one of the Seven Sages of Greece I would have agreed with at that point was Bias of Priene, who was recorded for all the ages as stating the obvious for anyone possessed of even a little honesty … “most men are bad.” Some are even worse. They are Chris Wallace.

When Chris Wallace and his crew arrived at the Street News corporate suite for the interview, I had been sent on an emergency call uptown to the Harlem sales center to fix their computer system when the Paradox Database had crashed and needed to be rebuilt. I rushed back on the subway to try to be back in time for the interview but a glance at my watch told me it was already over. I felt sick I was not there to protect Hutch from the media vultures.