William Sullivan was a high-ranking official at the FBI from 1961 to 1971, when J Edgar Hoover was director. In his tell-all book (The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI) Sullivan claimed that one of Hoover’s many eccentricities was an odd prejudice.
“The FBI’s main thrust was not investigations but public relations and propaganda to glorify Hoover. Everyone who worked in the bureau, especially those of us in high places around him, bear our share of the blame. Flacking for the FBI was part of every agent’s job from his first day. In fact, ‘making a good first impression’ was a necessary prerequisite for being hired as a special agent in the first place. Bald-headed men, for example, were never hired as agents because Hoover thought a bald head made a bad impression. No matter if the man involved was a member of Phi Beta Kappa or a much-decorated marine, or both. Appearances were terribly important to Hoover, and special agents had to have the right look and wear the right clothes… Though a bald-headed man wouldn’t be hired as an agent, an employee who later lost his hair wasn’t fired but was kept out of the public eye.”
Wonka the sequel
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1. “I remain adamant that instead of a Willy Wonka origin story we should have a sequel where an adult Veruca forms an uneasy alliance with the other three traumatised factory survivors to go back, to try to take it down and save the Oompa Loompas and a brainwashed Charlie.”
2. “Having inherited her father’s business nous, blue-faced business woman Violet Beauregarde launches a rival chocolate with the help of angel investor Veruca Salt and media magnate Mike TV. She can’t get the recipe right, until an old German friend comes along.”
3. “We need the story of Violet, after she gets de-blueberry-ified, going off to university to get a business management degree & MBA, starting a rival chocolate company that grows and grows to a corporate giant, taking over the Wonka factory and bulldozing it to build a park. It’s not heartwarming, and I take no joy in the triumph of Big Chocolate, but Violet is a woman who knows how to run a confectionery business.” (Via Twitter)
Outsmarted by kids
A reader writes: “I take phones and iPads from the kids at night and keep them in my room til morning. Last night they all set alarms to go off at various times throughout the night.I’m very impressed with their ingenuity and team effort. They are all grounded.”
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