WWWFD*

(* What would Will Ferrell do?)

Not sure exactly where I'm headed with this post, but here goes nothing. It's about an obit for a newscaster I'd never heard of until today, but as I dug in, some of the links ended up being kind of interesting, tragicomic or just comic, so I thought I'd share.

Looking at the Chicago Tribune's site this morning, I noticed a headline for a story on the death of Ron Hunter (as it turns out, a stage name he chose to sound more middle-American), a former Windy City TV news anchor, who in the 70s shared a desk with Maury Povich and Jane Pauley. Journalism doesn't get much better than that, does it?

Anyway, the obit also had a link to a 12-year-old story from the Tribune archives about Hunter's rapid and stunning fall from grace -- from earning six figures in Chicago in the late 70s (which should have bought him unlimited steaks at Gene & Georgetti, or just about anything else) to getting fired from jobs in smaller markets, having his wife commit suicide and having to steal $3 worth of food from his neighbor. The gist of the story seemed to be that all of this happened because he was such an arrogant blowhard that nobody could stand working with him, despite his fabulous head of hair.

A Google search led me to a site called Forgotten Buffalo -- wait, isn't that redundant? -- which had this, um, interesting remembrance and photo gallery on Hunter. The classy 70s photos alone are worth the price you've paid by reading this entire post. You'll note that the site references Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell's character in Anchorman, and after reading all of this stuff, I suspect Ron Hunter may actually have been the inspiration for that movie.

RIP.