In a sickening turn of events, David Frum, who can best be described as “Sarah Palin without lipstick,”
Down, I tells ya
has found a new home at the Daily Week.
Frum is well known as the fellow who wrote The Song that Made the Young Men Die, but he will be better known by readers of the ALLDERBLOB as the man whose recent bicycle repair here in Southern Ontario included an unexpected “Homeland Security fee” of $1,000.
And The Week, as our readers will know, is an upstart British publication with a focus on U.S. news and events, set to challenge the hegemony of car advertisers Time, Newsweek and Scholastic Upfront all at once. It publishes both a weekly print edition and a daily online edition, and strives for a balanced mix of opinion from the far right and (at least what passes for it in the U.S.) the far left. We like reading the Week. For the past month or so, a link to it has appeared on our pages under the heading “Research Dept” (for the time being it gives the lie to the notion that car advertising is necessary to keep an online magazine afloat).
But citing the far right is one thing. Allowing further air-time for that would-be American patriot (he’s Canajun, eh?) David Frum is truly a sickening turn of events.
Why? Perhaps a digression is in order.
The executive editor of the Week is our colleague [a-heem! –ed.] Francis Wilkinson, a writer whose career we have followed with interest since his days as a busboy at the Golden Inn in Avalon, N.J. His internship in the 1980s with Alexander Cockburn at the Nation was an inevitable next step. Wilkinson resurfaced (for us) in the early 1990s when we started seeing his name on the masthead at Rolling Stone magazine, where he was National Affairs Editor. He subsequently worked as a consultant for Democratic political candidates at the firm Doak, Carrier, O’Donnell, Wilkinson (famous for its lost battle to preserve California Governor Gray Davis against the Arnold Schwarzenegger juggarnaut in 2003, and its winning fight to elect Antonio Villaraigosa mayor of Los Angeles in 2005). Then, even as ALLDERBLOB day was proclaimed here in Toronto, Wilkinson parlayed his strengths and experiences into a new position. He was proclaimed “blob editur” [please fix spelling before publication –ed.] at that little-known ALLDERBLOB competitor, the Huffington Post. In short order he was writing opinion pieces at the Guardian Online as well as chronicling the U.S. presidential race on the pages of the New York Times and Car Advertiser. Around July 2008 however all this opinion writing came to a jarring halt.
Silence from the charmed pen of F. Wilkinson.
What next, the world asked.
The answer was not long in coming: as announced at the Wall Street Journal and Car Advertiser in August, Wilkinson had the new job as executive editor at the Week.
Here at the ALLDERBLOB, we have in the past made sporadic and obscure reference to Mr. Wilkinson and his work. Most recently, we pointedly compared David Frum and Mr. Wilkinson on the fame-o-meter, and found Wilkinson wanting.
But now, likely in direct response to our provocative comparison, Wilkinson has hitched his wagon to Frum’s star. Suddenly the words DAVID FRUM (and no, sadly, the capitals are not our invention) have appeared on the Week’s online content. We can only warn Mr. Wilkinson of his folly. We cannot take responsibility for the imminent fall from grace the appointment of Sr. Frum portends for our old pal Frank.
Frank, drop Frum. Drop him now; drop him without hesitation. Frum’s rancid ink will not only soil your pages. It will darken your soul. Stay with Frum and you will one day soon be writing alone, in the darkness of your living room, with your loved ones quiet and asleep and unaware. Stay with Frum and at best a future blobbing will be your fate.