Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Jack Anderson, RIP

Reform Clubbers have the privilege of previewing my elegiac article about Jack Anderson which will be publicly available midnight tonight at The American Spectator.

Have a swig:

Jack Anderson died Saturday at age 83. He was one of the great columnists this country has ever produced, not noteworthy for his prose but for his "relentless pursuit of the truth," to borrow Mr. Limbaugh's phrase. So much so that, much to my consternation, I have to share an observation that I prefer to reserve for cocktail parties with lots of beautiful and famous people listening.

It always amuses me to hear people, especially conservatives, speculating about the transition from the hard-bitten cynical reporters of The Front Page to the young, idealistic journalists who think they can change the world. People attribute it to the Vietnam War, to Watergate, but the truth is that it had already begun a decade or so before that with Drew Pearson and Murrow and Sevareid and some of their buddies. The real influence that created the modern American (and from here, it has spread across the world) crusading journalist was Superman.

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