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As far as we're concerned, one of history's all-time greatest ledes comes from the pen of Edna Buchanan. Calvin Trillin described it in a 1986 New Yorker profile of the then-Miami Herald reporter:

The fried-chicken story was about a rowdy ex-con named Gary Robinson, who late one Sunday night lurched drunkenly into a Church's outlet, shoved his way to the front of the line, and ordered a three-piece box of fried chicken. Persuaded to wait his turn, he reached the counter again five or ten minutes later, only to be told that Church's had run out of fried chicken. The young woman at the counter suggested that he might like chicken nuggets instead. Robinson responded to the suggestion by slugging her in the head. That set off a chain of events that ended with Robinson's being shot dead by a security guard. Edna Buchanan covered the murder for the Herald—there are policemen in Miami who say that it wouldn't be a murder without her—and her story began with what the fried-chicken faction still regards as the classic Edna lead: "Gary Robinson died hungry."

Compare that, if you will, with a piece in today's Post:

A wild-eyed Brooklyn man was busted at McDonald's for unleashing a McFury of homophobic slurs on a worker who would not serve him a McFlurry, law-enforcement sources said yesterday. David Eisler, 19, of Gravesend, and a friend walked into the fast-food restaurant at the Staten Island Mall at around 7 p.m. Saturday, and bypassed a long line to demand a McFlurry - an ice cream and candy concoction. When counterman Melvin Miles, 17, told Eisler that they were out of ice cream, Eisler asked for a cheeseburger. But Miles told Eisler he would have to wait his turn, which sent Eisler into a profanity-laced tirade of anti-gay epithets, sources said. "I am homophobic! I hate faggots! McDonald's shouldn't hire faggots!" Eisler allegedly said before he and his pal stormed out, sources said.

Far be it from us to offer advice to the wordsmiths at the Post (and we use the plural since it took three people to write this story), but we might have gone a couple of other ways with this. For example:

  • "Happy" may be a synonym for "gay," but there was no Happy Meal for one Brooklyn man at the McDonald's in the Staten Island Mall yesterday.
  • McDonald's McFlurry is a delicious mash-up of ice cream and candy; but when you add in a few homophobic slurs with your order, the recipe quickly goes from sweet to sour.
  • A Brooklyn man was definitely not loving it when he was told that he'd have to wait his turn at a Staten Island McDonald's yesterday.
  • I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. But for one Brooklyn man, those screams included a series of homophobic slurs.
  • Okay, this is actually harder than it looks. Give it a shot in the comments if you like.
  • 'ANTI-GAY' MAC ATTACK AT MALL [NYP]