Barry Zorthian would neither nor confirm nor deny reports that he died last Thursday from a staff infection. Zorthian was President Lying Pains Johnson's spokesman in Vietnam, creator of the Five O'Clock Follies, the daily Saigon press briefings where administration officials gave obtuse and evasive answers to journalists who played along with the joke and gave us the world we live in today.
Zorthian was 90 and came from the planet that bears his name.