At least he didn't rip up a picture of the editor

Apologies to our readers for the light postings recently. P O'Neill is about to visit the periphery of the old Roman Empire -- specifically, London and Carthage, and the preparations are chewing up valuable blogging time. For the same reasons, the blog will be pretty quiet until a couple of days after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Since we've been finding the recent news less blogworthy anyway, maybe a couple of quiet weeks will restore some perspective. And the things we could blog about are so damned confusing.

For instance, take one of our less favourite columnists at the Irish Times, John Waters. Many will remember Waters best as the once Mr Sinead O'Connor and he is the father of one of Sinead's children. But his day job is writing what are usually insipid and whiny columns for the IT. Nevertheless, he decided to take a stand on one of the paper's labour-management sore points, and wrote a column criticising the senior executives for awarding juicy payments to themselves and the former editor -- the latter gets "non-compete fees" (an issue in the Conrad Black imbroglio as well) up to the year 2015.

Waters noted the seeming incongruity of these fees given the tight financial straits at the paper. His column was squelched, and he compounded his sin in the paper's eyes by going on RTE and slamming the editor as "compromised." At this point, the paper turfed him out along with the offending column. Except...he's in a union, and a pretty powerful one, too. 24 hours later, he has his job back and it's all sweetness and light between him and the editor. Some might view it as telling that it makes an internal money dispute to force a columnist to take on his editors -- as opposed to a dispute about the paper's editorial line.

But again going back to Conrad Black, not too many of the columnists in the Hollinger empire had much to say about its dubious financial dealings. So Waters was still willing to pick a fight that 90 percent of his fellow hacks would not. We are left with two thoughts. First, it would be nice if one of the writers at the papers of Ireland's own little Conrad Black -- Tony O'Reilly -- had something to say about that group's financial dealings.

And second, if Waters is still harbouring a grudge, someone at New York's Van ity Fair is showing the way to piss off one's editor using the full force of the law. New York City has a smoking ban similar to Ireland's imminent ban, including a ban in the workplace. And Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter, likes to smoke. As reported in Monday's New York Times, someone is ratting him out to the authorities, repeatedly. Just be sure, John, to make the calls to the cig squad on your mobile phone.