God to Brink: Drop Dead

William J. Brink, former editor at the New York Daily News, has died at the age of 89. Brink is best remembered for the most famous headline since Dewey Defeats Truman. In 1975, President Ford refused to help the city out of its fiscal crisis. While other editors toyed with headlines about refusing aid, Brink put it more succinctly: Ford to City: Drop Dead. Ford himself conceded that headline helped cost him the state in the 1976 election, and with it, the White House. And as proof that the New York Times does have a sense of humor, this was the last line of the Times obit: The corresponding headline in The New York Times that day, FORD, CASTIGATING CITY, ASSERTS HE'D VETO FUND GUARANTEE; OFFERS BANKRUPTCY BILL, remains unsung.