Stranger In A Strange Land

I am so far behind on my Commercial Appeal and Memphis Flyer commentary, it's embarrassing. But, I couldn't let this notice pass.

Seems James W. "Woody" Brosnan is being laterally promoted from being the CA's Washington bureau reporter to doing so for other Scripps-Howard papers, but not the CA. There's something going on here, of course, but the CA won't report that. Nearly every major bureau chief is gone now; only Nashville's Richard Locker remains from a tri-state bench. All the old columnists are gone, too. Thomas is still new and finding her wings; Waters is thankfully still confined to the religion desk. The change-over has been spectacular. Yes, new editor Chris Peck is trying to create a "community-based" paper, but he's stripped all the in-house voices seemingly in favor of "voice of the day/topic." It's good to see new names in the paper, but the paper loses its public face with the loss of all these constant writers. We no longer have the view into the paper's thinking that they provided, even if we sometimes had to decode what was being said.

Brosnan will be replaced by Bartholomew "Bart" Sullivan. Ye Gods! Bart is an old-style, unreconstructed, bleeding-heart Socialist. I mean that word choice -- not Liberal or liberal or left, but Socialist. Regular CA readers know what I mean; I'm sorry I don't have time to show newer readers. He longs for the days of New Deals and Great Societies, believes that people will only thrive if they have the steadying hand of government at their back, and sees government as a force of benevolent good. He's an anachronism and, in this city, an anomaly. Even in the orthodox black leadership, you won't find folks as far to the left Bart.

He's being sent to Washington, a city that is trending more and more Republican as time progresses. I can hardly wait to see him "report" on doings up there. Woody was bad about his own Democratic leftism, but could rein it in sometimes. Still, his Ford- and Gore-worship was hard to take. I can't imagine how much worse it'll be with Bart. I can't see him getting along but with a small handful of the folks he's being sent to cover, which probably won't bother him -- he just won't report on them! [Insert snooty "sniff" here.] Remember: he's now the only explicitly political reporter/columnist to get a regular, high-profile soapbox; all the others are gone or diminished.

So many Memphians have wanted change at the Commercial Appeal and now we're getting it. But who knew it would look like this? I almost -- almost -- wish for the return of Susan Adler Thorpe. This new, mushy, "people-centered," self-effacing Commercial Appeal is like oatmeal after the wrongly-seasoned gumbo of old.