Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 14:48:17 -0500 From: Alan Baragona Subject: Re: RE>Re: sportswriters' disease Grant Barrett wrote: > > Journalists, of course, lay a claim to alcoholism as the a requirement of the profession, and for good reason, I think. > > When I was still a small-time journalist, my peers and I went to a journalism conference in Baton Rouge. We were met in the hotel lobby by six happily drunk Pulitzer Prize winners, and I've often thought of that as typical since. > > Grant Barrett > gbarrett[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dfjp.com There's a story that Flann O'Brien, the great Irish comic novelist, was fired from his job as a civil servant for alcoholism, but sued to get his pension back on the grounds that alcoholism is an occupational hazard of working for the Irish Civil Service. He reportedly won. I'd be willing to bet there are a lot of colorful Irish words and phrases, euphemistic and otherwise, for heavy drinking and drinkers.