Crossfired

Or
The Other Prince of Fucking Darkness
Robert Novak, well known Grinch lookalike, has died of brain cancer at the age of 78, a crushing blow when the current health care debate could really use his level-headed, even-handed approach to the events of the day. As a columnist published in more than 300 papers his career had taken him as far from his cub reporter beginnings as it had from reason and civil discourse. He once griped that his Thanksgiving dinner had been ruined by the sight of so many homeless people on television, but later got his revenge by running one down in his Corvette, then denied he had seen the man splayed across his windshield. At the same time he was bashing anyone who dared question the Bush administration, he was outing Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer, yet somehow his decision to jeopardize a member of the U.S. intelligence community “in a time of war,” to use the justification du jour, did not make him a pariah in the patriotic right community. He also managed to evade investigation during Louis Libby’s trial for perjury about releasing the name, while The New York Times’ Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify, and later admitted to having confirmed sources that had outed themselves. During the Nixon years, he and his columnist partner Rowland Evans had written more than 120 columns on the Watergate burglary, and broke a story detailing a White House plot to blame the CIA for the break-in. He also helped bury George McGovern after he had won the Democratic primary with a column where he said a Democratic senator had discussed McGovern’s support for abortion rights, legalizing marijuana and providing amnesty to draft dodgers. He refused to name the source, prompting many to accuse him of making up the quote, but in 2007 he attributed it to Thomas Eagleton, McGovern’s one-time running mate before getting dropped from the ticket for having undergone electroshock therapy to treat depression. Would such a paragon of journalistic integrity who only names sources when it’s convenient for him have simply made up a story after Eagleton was dead and couldn’t refute it? Hey, I just report, you decide. A regular on CNN programs including “The Capital Gang,” “Crossfire” and “Evans, Novak, Hunt and Shields,” he left the network in 2006 after storming off a live set during an argument with Democratic wingnut James Carville to avoid discussing the Plame investigation.