Parker chronicled this highly charged situation in her January 23, 2001, column and followed up the next day with an offer from then-Press Club president Don Knox. Even though he guessed, with disturbing prescience, that the guilty parties hailed from "an alternative newsweekly that is not The Onion," Knox promised to provide the wannabe felons with a marinated-pork dinner in exchange for the portrait. But since this proposition fell far short of the previously published ultimatums, the Steers Mob ignored it and decided to wait for the powers that were to cave in. Evidently, the folks at the Press Club didn't much miss the vintage drawing -- which pictures Green with a Bobby Goldsboro hairdo and the biggest sideburns this side of President Chester A. Arthur --because the negotiations ended right there.
During the next twelve months or so, the Green "artwork" was never defaced, although photocopies of it were the target of some fiddling. (Self-control only goes so far.) Still, chronicling precisely what happened to the portrait itself over this span would be as difficult as discovering everything that took place during the lost years of Jesus Christ. Suffice it to say that earlier in 2002, the portrait was wrapped up and handed over to the News's Parker, who then delivered it to the desk of Rocky reporter Lynn Bartels.
Susan Goldstein
The Dogfather in happier times.
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Upon discovering the contents of the package, Bartels, a hard-bitten journalist if ever there was one, unleashed a scream worthy of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. But after pulling herself together, she realized what a valuable commodity she had on her hands -- and for the second time, the rendering of Green became the subject of a hostage drama.
In a March 28 e-mail addressed to aforementioned Post city editor Evan Dreyer that later circulated throughout the Post's internal communications system, Bartels wrote of her horror upon discovering "the purloined Press Club picture of one Chuck Green, aka The Dogfather, Gus's Dad, Upchuck, ChuckBenét, Chuckie Wuckie, Dinky's Deep Throat or, as we fondly think of him here at the Rocky, El Correcto." She then listed fourteen requirements that had to be met before she would turn over the portrait, among them "The italics key from Chuck's keyboard," "A halt to any Ranger column with a Wyoming dateline" and "One box of lime green Jell-O" -- a U-Haul trailer's worth of which had been delivered to the Post a month earlier by a Salt Lake City radio station offended by an anti-Utah column from the pen of sports columnist Woody Paige ("Woody Goes Limp," February 21).
Bartels threatened serious consequences: "If our demands are not met by the time we have to share the same sewage system, the picture is dead, dead, dead, dead, dead." But she proved willing to bargain, pledging to turn over the portrait if she and fellow Rocky journalist Peggy Lowe were treated to a lunch, on Dreyer's expense account, at Morton's, the Palm or, in a worst-case scenario, Chick-fil-A -- "but we get to order fries."
Remarkably, Dreyer didn't take this deal, putting News writer John Ensslin, who's also a boardmember and program coordinator for the Press Club, in a tough spot. Ensslin wanted Green's portrait in its proper place prior to the watering hole's June 1 closure for renovation. (The Club is trying to raise $120,000 -- and has already received separate donations of $25,000 toward that goal from the Post and the News -- to restore its first floor to the splendor it exuded at the time of its 1925 grand opening.) But he refused to compromise his principles along the way. "I want Chuck back on the wall," he said. "I just don't want to give in to terrorists."
He didn't need to. Last week, Bartels conceded that Green's resignation (or whatever) had destroyed her bargaining power. "I feel totally robbed out of an expensive dinner on the Post expense account," she said bitterly. "Because now, the ransom's worthless." Afterward, Bartels gave Ensslin permission to take possession of the Green drawing, which made its return to the Press Club in auspicious fashion. On May 24, former News international editor Holger Jensen, who said at a gathering in his honor that the Press Club had been more loyal to him than several of his past employers, unveiled what he thought was his own portrait, only to discover the one of Green instead. The Jensen sketch was produced a moment later, and a good laugh was had by all.
Guess that means it was a victimless crime -- although Green might disagree. Yet one thing is beyond dispute: Confession is good for the soul.
