I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
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"Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into The New York Times while drinking crude oil out of Keith Olbermann’s skull.” --Stephen Colbert
Maureen Dowd at the New York Times must have had something to do. She turned over her column to Stephen Colbert yesterday. Perhaps she should make it a regular occurrence.
Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.
Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.
Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.
What do I offer? Hope for the common man. Because I am not the Anointed or the Inevitable. I am just an Average Joe like you — if you have a TV show.
Oh, by the way, do the New York Times editors fact-check the opinion page? If not, how does one explain the opening sentence of Verlyn Klinkenborg's column today? Especially egregious since Klinkenborg once taught in Minnesota without apparently knowing where he was.
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