***
Chip Off The Old Clark: Perry White
***
What a load of hogwash. In all his years as a newspaperman, Perry had never been so disgusted. Lies and innuendo, implications and inferences, apparently anyone and everyone could get their day in the spotlight as long as they had some mud to sling.
So much for hard-hitting news. So much for the last bastion of the free people. So much for truth and justice and the benefit of the doubt. Bring in the pigs and the pitchforks and the self-proclaimed righteous with their stones to cast.
Perry had rarely been so angry, or so disillusioned. And he didn’t think he was the only one. Lois seemed shell-shocked, Clark was ricocheting between stalwart resolve and dispirited desperation--even Jimmy had let himself get caught up in the whole mess.
Ridiculous.
Superman a deadbeat dad? Perry had believed a man could fly sooner than he’d ever believe this trash they were passing off as news.
Well, not in his newsroom. Not on his paper. Let those TV gloryhounds trumpet their made up leads till the cows came home--Perry White would not get down in the mud with the rest of them. And he’d pull Jimmy away from it too. Let Clark know he wasn’t alone in fighting this. Prove to Lois that she hadn’t been wrong in believing in an ideal against the better advice of her jaded cynicism.
“We will not be wasting a drop of ink on this story,” he vowed, and by Elvis, he’d make sure of it.
The Daily Planet would stand behind Superman, even if they were alone in doing so.
***
