Political Humor Columnist Trifecta: Who Must Die Next?
Molly Ivins died today in Austin after her cancer came back again, making the Texas columnist the second nationally-syndicated American humorist to die this month. (Art Buchwald died two weeks ago. For you kids who only use newspapers as masturbation rap-metal aides on the MySpace, both of these people wrote "columns" for "old people" to "read.")
The obvious question is Which National Humor Columnist Will Die Next? This is an uncomfortable subject, of course, but journalism often requires the asking of the hard questions so our democracy is better served. Let's run down the list, after the jump.
*Dave Barry: The one-time Miami Herald weekly columnist has cheated death (for now) by retiring his weekly column. He maintains his blog. But as our agent always reminds us, blogging is not the same as having a syndicated newspaper column seen by the old people who still run everything.
*Richard Cohen: Not even funny in an ironic "he doesn't know he's funny" way. Will probably live to be 600 years old.
*Erma Bombeck: Already dead.
*Mike Royko: Been dead for a decade.
*Gene Weingarten: Officially a local columnist -- it's called "Below the Beltway," right? So he gets to live. For now.
Well, that's about it. One "funny" thing about newspapers is they never replace great and/or beloved columnists when said columnists die off. And then the newspaper editors say "Boo hoo, nobody reads our suck-ass newspaper anymore." Yet somebody has to die to make the Humorist Trifecta come true. Who, oh who will it be?
*Michelle Malkin: We totally forgot about her, again, but there's no doubt she's the funniest columnist in America. True, she's about as "nationally syndicated" as that crackhead who's always screaming down on the corner at 3 a.m., but beggars can't be choosers. Malkin's wickedly subversive humor is in her uncanny impersonation of a brain-damaged cretin staggering around in a circle muttering "USA! USA! I pooped myself! USA!" Surely, America will mourn the loss of this great talent.