Make more than 300% when the world wakes up sick come winter.   There is a myth in this biz that “if it bleeds, it leads.” The idea is that what truly makes mainstream media moguls happy is guts, gore and conflict. Drama sells, and sells well. Death, war and sex sell even better.

It’s commonly held that when Frederick Remington cavilled to William Randolph Hearst that conditions in Cuba were not bad enough to warrant hostilities, Hearst told Remington to shut up and draw: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

The truth is, as always, somewhat more complex. Yes, a good tale of death and destruction will hold the public’s interest for a while. But it has to be something they can easily wrap their minds around. And it has to go somewhere if it’s going to have

Get up, stand up… stand up for your rights…Get up, stand up… don’t give up the fight…– Bob Marley & The Wailers. Thanks to you, dearly beloved reader, Jim Amrhein and I have a friendly Taipan Daily rivalry going. It seems Jim’s time spent basking in the glory of an all-time reader response record (for “A Kind Word and a Gun“) was all too short.

As quickly as you, the readership, set a new feedback milestone with your outpouring of thoughtful replies on guns and Second Amendment issues, you then outdid yourselves with an even bigger response to Friday’s missive, “Will California Go to Pot?”

So now ol’ Jimbo and I have an excuse to rib each other in the one-upmanship