Where I Stand 1978 — Hank Greenspun: Making peace is all business

Friday, Jan. 19, 2001 | 9:22 a.m.

Note to readers: This column by Sun founder Hank Greenpsun appeared on February 24, 1978.

Before this newspaper can get involved in history-making events like sending its publisher to bring feuding parties together in the interests of world peace and tranquility, it must make certain the trip is justified in dollars and sense.

The dollars are recaptured in the form of IRS write-offs and the sense is making it possible for the wife of the publisher to go along, or else the free world may go down the drain.

With taxes taking the bulk of man's and business' earnings no human being can undertake a mission to bring world leaders together or stop wars without first justifying his role as a business expense.

And no married man can embark on historic missions without his wife, because usually behind every great man is a little woman who has to kick him in the pants to get him started and then run in front to clear a path for him.

Before we set out for Egypt, Israel and the confrontation states of the Middle East, it was the good wife who had to make the arrangements and one of the conditions was that we went as an entry or none or us could go.

With the fate of civilization hanging by a nebulous thread it was imperative that she go along -- not as a visitor at her own expense, which is the IRS' conditions when the wife's trip cannot be justified as a business expense -- but as an involved participant which would qualify her as a write-off.

Barbara embarked on a history-making epic as a legitimate photographer for the Las Vegas Sun and I as the newspaper's reporter.

We covered President Anwar Sadat in Cairo and Prime Minister Menachem Begin in Jerusalem with a few side excursions to London and Paris to report on fashions, and Greece to pictorialize the archeological recordation of the first of the ancient and highly developed civilizations.

The United States government pays far more than its share in furthering world peace through its subsidization of the United Nations and other ineffective and inconsequential world organizations than the results can justify, so a few minor tax deductions to the Las Vegas Sun wouldn't break it.

Before we get involved in telling these momentous events and episodes, we must first satisfy the IRS, which is not the easiest to convince because there is no group of bureaucrats in the history of civilization who are more iron-headed or autocratic, plus a little arrogant to boot.

Beginning this Sunday in the Sun pictorial section, we intend to run an entire picture page to prove we were there. If a few double and triple exposures show up, ample testimony can be produced at a tax trial to show it was not Barbara's ineptitude with the camera that two prime ministers came out in the same shot or President Sadat appeared on the same negative both upright and standing on his head, but more the fault of the manufacturer who forgot to inform her that a roll of film contained 20 exposures instead of 36 as she kept shooting.

The many decapitated people standing in front of the pyramids or a camel's backside appearing where a group of Egyptain security people should have been shown guarding the peace missioners is proof positive that only the Sun's official photographer could have shot the pictures.

No one else would have the courage to insist on photo credits.

Now that we have established a predicate for a business expense write-off, we urge you to read the Sun for the further adventures of the hairbreadth reporter and topsy-turvy photographer, who not only recorded history in the making but brought the pictures back almost alive. Most of them died aborning.