During the second month, however, French words began to crop up unaccountably in news of local interest:
Boston, Mar. 27 (AP)—Howard Jones, vingt-huit ans, convicted on three counts of larceny here, was sentenced this morning to 20–26 months in Folsom State Prison, Judge Grath of 17th Circuit Court of Appeals announced aujourd’hui.
Working then through a succession of editors, proofreaders, and linotype operators, Grand gradually put forward the policy of misspelling the names of cities, islands, and proper nouns in general—or else having them appear in a foreign language:
YANKS HIT PARIGI
MOP-UP AT TERWEEWEE
During the war, when geographic names were given daily prominence in the headlines, these distortions served to antagonize the reader and to obscure the facts.
The circulation of the paper fell off sharply, and after three months it was down to something less than one-twentieth of what it had been when Grand took over. At this point a major policy change was announced. Henceforth the newspaper would not carry comics, editorials, feature stories, reviews, or advertising, and would present only the factual news in a straightforward manner. It was called The Facts, and Grand spent the ransom of a dozen queens in getting at the facts of the news, or at least a great many of them, which he had printed then in simple sentences. The issues of the first two days or so enjoyed a fair sale, but the contents on the whole appeared to be so incredible or so irrelevant that by the end of the week demand was lower than at any previous phase of the paper’s existence. During the third week, the paper had no sale at all to speak of, and was simply given away; or, refused by the distributors, it was left in stacks on the street corners each morning, about two million copies a day. In the beginning people were amused by the sight of so many newspapers lying around unread; but when it continued, they became annoyed. Something funny was going on—Communist? Atheist? Homosexual? Catholic? Monopoly? Corruption? Protestant? Insane? Negro? Jewish? Puerto Rican? POETRY? The city was filthy. It was easy for people to talk about The Facts in terms of litter and debris. Speeches were made, letters written, yet the issue was vague. The editor of The Facts received insulting letters by the bagful. Grand sat tight for a week, then he gave the paper over exclusively to printing these letters; and its name was changed again—Opinions.
These printed letters reflected such angry divergence of thought and belief that what resulted was sharp dissension throughout the city. Group antagonism ran high. The paper was widely read and there were incidents of violence. Movements began.
** ***
At about two P.M. on June 7th, crowds started to gather in Lexington Square near the center of the city. The Jewish, Atheist, Negro, Labor, Homosexual, and Intellectual groups were on one side—the Protestant and American Legion on the other. The balance of power, or so it seemed, lay with the doughty Catholic group.
It was fair and windless that day in Boston, and while the groups and the groups-within-groups bickered and jockeyed in the center of Lexington Square, Guy Grand brought off a tour de force. Hovering just overhead, in a radio-equipped helicopter, he directed the maneuver of a six-plane squadron of skywriters, much higher, in spelling out the mile-long smoke-letter words: F**K YOU ... and this was immediately followed by a veritable host of outlandish epithets, formulated as insults on the level of group Gestalt: Protestants are assholes ... Jews are full of crap ... Catholics are shitty ... and so on, ad nauseum actually.