Category: default || By jt3y

I know this humble webpage is read in hallowed corridors of power --- in fact, many people print out the Almanac on two-ply paper so they can use it when they sit on their thrones in the corridors of power --- so I'll toss this out to the crowd in the hope that someone in authority will take notice.

Why, oh why, is the Daily News printing the execrable Ann Coulter column on its editorial page?

When I was a tad, the editorial page of the great, gray lady of Walnut Street was regularly graced by Georgie Anne Geyer and Art Buchwald. Buchwald, as most people probably know, is a satirist, and a gentle one. He's still writing, though he's no longer at the height of his powers, and hasn't been for some time. In his day, however, few people wrote prose that was so charming, yet still deftly skewered pompous asses in Washington, D.C., and beyond. I heartily recommend Buchwald's memoir of working for the International Herald Tribune, called I'll Always Have Paris, and his heart-wrenching story of growing up in and out of orphanages, Leaving Home.

Georgie Anne Geyer is still around, too, I was delighted and surprised to learn this week. As a kid, I found her much more difficult to read than Buchwald, but still fascinating. It astonished me that she seemed to know so much about so many things, and that she seemed to travel so extensively. When I was a kid, the Iranian hostage situation was still very fresh in everyone's mind, the Reagan administration was lobbing missiles at Libya, and the Israelis were still fighting in Lebanon. I can even remember the nuns in elementary school asking us to pray for several journalists who had been kidnapped. So it impressed me that Geyer was often writing from the heart of these combat zones. (She's recently written her autobiography, Buying the Night Flight: The Autobiography of a Woman Foreign Correspondent.)

That brings us to the loathsome Ms. Coulter, who is Geyer's lineal (but not spiritual) replacement in the News, and whose smirky, perky face leers out from this week's Time magazine. Buchwald grew up on the mean streets of Queens, served in the Marines in the Pacific during the worst days of World War II, and ground out piles of journalism for pennies at the old Herald Trib. Geyer grew up in Chicago, got a job on the Chicago Daily News as a society reporter, got a grant to go to the Middle East and Latin America, and in between writing she was jailed and threatened with death. They know what it's like to work for a living, and they got to the tops of their profession with a lot of blood, sweat and toil.

Ms. Coulter, by comparison, grew up in an upper-middle-class section of Connecticut, the daughter of a union-busting Republican attorney, was sent to law school, got a job flacking for a Republican senator, and quickly became a TV pundit --- probably, frankly, because she's attractive, thus fulfilling one of television's main requirements for appearing on-camera. She's never worked as a reporter, and has never held a difficult job in her life.

Coulter's column is unremittingly nasty, and it aims its broadsides not at Washington party hacks (like Buchwald's) or at tinpot dictators (like Geyer's), but at the poor, the working-class, senior citizens, minorities and the dead --- in other words, people who can't fight back. She's also a misogynist, which is fairly astonishing to think about. (Among other things, Ms. Coulter has argued that women should not be allowed to vote, because they don't understand how money is earned, and because they too often vote for liberals.)

The best humor and satire doesn't come from targeting the weak. It comes from puncturing pomposity. You may despise the left-wing politics of Michael Moore and Al Franken, for instance, but they take on big powerful targets, who can and do fight back. Ann Coulter, by comparison, targets people on food stamps, people in prison, immigrants, and the illiterate --- in other words, the weak and out-of-power. Picking on the weak makes her a bully. And that makes her despicable column a stain on the pages of the Daily News, and any other newspaper that carries her drivel.

It's quite a shame, because the News' editorial page is otherwise pretty interesting these days. When I was a kid, the paper rarely editorialized about local subjects; now practically every editorial is local in focus, or else explains how a national issue will affect the Mon-Yough area. The letters to the editor are usually lively, too, and the syndicated editorial cartoons that the News uses are by some of the best artists in the country.

I have no objection to conservative writers or philosophy. I own practically all of P.J. O'Rourke's books and faithfully read John Leo's column in U.S. News & World Report (which is also regularly reprinted in the News); William F. Buckley Jr. remains the gold standard of conservative writing, and I think he's terrific, while Geyer was and is conservative as well.

Something else about O'Rourke, Leo, Geyer and others --- they actually report, rather than just bloviate. (And yeah, I know I bloviate here, but I'm not getting paid for it, unlike Ms. Coulter.)

There have to be other syndicated conservative columnists who could take Ms. Coulter's place. Townhall.com lists dozens, many of whom (Neal Boortz, for instance) are quite good. James Lileks' political columns, which are also right-wing, are also good, and are available through Newhouse News Service.

Anyway, nobody asked me, but the News could do a lot better than the likes of Ann Coulter.

...

From the Tube City Almanac National Affairs Desk, we read of one man's frustrated tirade at Fred, a telephone fundraiser soliciting donations for something called "Friends of John Kerry":

Fred, you just called me and woke up my sleeping baby daughter, presumably to ask for more of my money to give to a guy that's married to a billionaire, and that I watched mount the most inexcusably inept and pathetic presidential campaign imaginable. You people with millions and millions of dollars, some of them mine, couldn't figure out how to beat a half-witted charlatan that had launched this country into a war over nothing ... NOTHING, FRED ... N-O-T-H-I-N-G ... NOTHING! ....

Five months later, his approval rating is in the 40s, Fred, in the 40s, and he still beat "my friend" John, and by complicity, you Fred. He beat you, and now you ask me for more cash. For what? To do what? What the f--- are you going to do with it?

I've edited out some of the nastier bits, but you can read for yourself what he tells John Kerry and Teresa Heinz to do with a bottle of 57 Sauce. Ouch.

I'm just surprised to find out that Kerry still has "friends." (Tip of the Tube City hard hat to Wonkette.)