Jack Kelly is a reporter and Sunday columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. For years, he has bashed Democratic politicians, and, as expected, these past 3 ½ years have seen a relentless barrage of criticism launched against President Obama.
Until Sunday, I often found his columns worthless but inadvertently funny. To wit: Two weeks ago, he wrote a column trying to convince readers of the notion that Obama is not very smart:
http://www.post-gazette.com/...
Also, he has a routine habit of citing very obscure folks to buttress his arguments. A typical Kelly sentence reads something like: “And no less an authority than Hans Gimmelschlut, writing in the highly respected German weekly Der Frudjengladje, said, ‘Obama, simply put, is not very smart.’”
Yeah, he’s really that bad, and his column is a complete waste of space. Imagine George Will but with absolutely no talent.
This past Sunday, though, he simply went too far. What did he do? He became a birther:
Barack Obama was born in Kenya, according to a booklet of clients his literary agency produced in 1991. "This was nothing more than a fact-checking error by me," said Miriam Goderich, who was an editorial assistant then and now is a partner in the firm.
Her "fact checking error" went undetected until Mr. Obama began his campaign for president. In the interim, the biography was revised three times.
The policy at Dystel & Goderich, as at most literary agencies, is that authors provide biographical briefs. How plausible is it that Mr. Obama failed to notice for 17 years that his birthplace was listed incorrectly?
http://www.post-gazette.com/...
Now, I’m not, to be honest, terribly surprised that a nonthinker such as Kelly would throw in with the birthers. And, to be perfectly honest, I love it when this nonsense keeps getting brought up, because I suspect that every time this happens, our side gains several thousand more independent votes.
So, please, birthers, keep it coming.
No, my disappointment lies in the Post-Gazette, who should know better. I interned at the PG several years ago, so I take this transgression personally.
Come on, PG. Your readers already endure the constant nonsense of sports columnist Ron Cook, the relentlessly bizarre rantings of food critic China Millman (a few weeks ago, she lamented that the hoisin sauce at a restaurant was “one-dimensional.” Yes, China, hoisin sauce with any fewer than five dimensions is an affront to humanity), and the thought-free ramblings of Ruth Ann Dailey.
And now you’re subjecting us to a birther, too?
It’s almost too much to bear.
Honestly, PG, is there nothing better you could put in the space you reserve for Jack “Birther” Kelly?