I think it's safe to say Wyatt Earp would hate me. I'm part of the press, or, as he might call it: media scum.
If you don't believe me, look at how disgusted Wyatt Earp is in this photograph from the 1920s.
Wyatt Earp Disgusted, 1920s
The truth is he had good reason to be angry. For one thing, he hated the press, especially after what they did to him after the infamous Sharkey-Ftizsimmons fight in 1896. That was in San Francisco and Earp was the referee in a heavyweight fight where Earp called a foul on Fitzsimmons and threw, or, ahem, awarded the purse to the underdog, Sharkey. The newspapers had a field day calling it a fixed fight and calling Earp a crook. From Wyatt's point of view, they printed lies, they never did fact checking and they had no shame. You can see the disdain in his eyes 30 years later, and you can almost hear what he's thinking: "You're not going to dredge up a bunch of crap about my life once again, are you? And then print it in some damned rag?"
Well, yes we are, but with all due respect, Mister Earp, we did extensive fact checking, everything is totally true and we actually have some shame issues, just not on this subject.
"Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children."
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
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