Abridged Daily News Columnists

Ronnie Polaneczky: The Daily News columnists can’t stop writing about Wilson Goode’s aide, the one who held up the Fox 29 are racist sign. Yes! Apparently, this is an important story. Polaneczky is upset still because no one got up to grandstand when she held up her stupid signs.

Now she’s decided the city will not prevent hate speech! Of course, one might say the city has no authority to prevent any speech, hateful or otherwise, but Polaneczky is having none of that. The law has “no teeth.” It’s just not tough enough on black people.

And why no one from Council took a stand against Bryant’s actions is baffling. This is the legislative body that, last year, voted to strengthen the prohibition of ethnic intimidation in the city by forbidding the display of three “symbols of virulent animus: a noose; a burning cross; or a swastika.”

Yet they still couldn’t see fit to at least chastise Bryant for making a sign implying that a white reporter belonged to a group that routinely uses these symbols to intimidate blacks and other minorities. [...] Ironically, it seems fitting that a new law with no teeth resulted from an incident that no one can prove even happened.

I won’t quibble with the use of ironically but of routinely. You’d think if the KKK was out there every day routinely putting up nooses, burning crosses and drawing swastikas, it wouldn’t be too hard to find an incident one could prove. Welp, it’s off to jail for me, I believe I just violated a new speech law the Daily News columnists dreamed up.

John Baer: Hey, a Harrisburg aide went against the family!

Michael Smerconish: This column is about Bill Ayers, apparently, and how everyone has friends that do bad things. Smerconish then gives some hilarious examples of his friends who have done bad, such as one person who tried to commit suicide and another who succeeded. He also took G. Gordon Liddy to lunch! Clearly, Smerconish is unfit for duty.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Ronnie Polaneczky: Every few months or so, somebody in the media has to do a report about how cab drivers lie and say their credit card machines don’t work (because they’d rather have you pay in cash). Polaneczky drew the short straw this time, apparently, so it’s her turn. And after this report, the cab drivers will go right on telling everyone their credit card machines are broken and they can only take cash.

John Baer: The candidates are now hunkering down and talking about the two most relevant issues to Americans in 2008: the Weather Underground and Lincoln Savings & Loan. (I wish this statement weren’t true, but it is.)

Deborah Leavy: ” It is true that Palin exceeded expectations - the lowest expectations of any candidate in a vice-presidential debate.” Ah, yes, in the storied history of vice presidential debates, no one had expectations lower than Sarah Palin.

Elmer Smith: Oh, yeah, O.J. Simpson is going to prison for life and nobody noticed.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Fatimah Ali: This is a letter to grade schoolers, who as we all know are devoted readers of the Daily News.

Elmer Smith: Wow, the candidates don’t care about the poor, who knew?

Ronnie Polaneczky: Fine story and all, but what a weird way to pick a career:

Houser had always thought about police work as a career, but the desire gelled 18 months ago when he and two friends were robbed in Fishtown while skateboarding. “The cop who helped us was totally competent, professional and friendly,” he says.

He handled himself so well that Houser thought, “That’s the job I want.”

The Philly PD should start putting that on the sides of their cars. “Totally competent!”

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Ronnie Polaneczky: Holy shit, Ronnie Polaneczky wants to the city to charge the Wilson Goode aide who held up the Fox 29 are racist sign with a ethnic intimidation. She wants Latrice Bryant to go to jail!

While Bryant didn’t use a noose, burning cross or swastika in her handmade message, she implied that a TV reporter belonged to a group that routinely uses these symbols to intimidate blacks and other minorities. If that kind of hate speech doesn’t constitute an act of ethnic intimidation, the law ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

In her next column, I bet she’ll call for the imprisonment of the guy who played the Soup Nazi.

Michael Smerconish: Ha ha, Michael Smerconish discussed a poll about race on his radio show and people called up and told him that, yes, indeed, they hate black people.

Take Linda, for instance. She told me the word “violent” describes most black people, and cited the lifestyle choices and irresponsibility that has “permeated their culture.”

“First is when they chose the welfare program over marriage. Second, when they embraced this idea that if you’re black and do well in school, you’re a white wannabe. And third is when they embraced gangsta rap . . . There are more, but they are the three main things that ruined the blacks, and they don’t want to admit it,” Linda told me.

Yes, the number three problem in the black community today is most certainly rap lyrics. Rap more like crap am I rite???

Stu Bykofsky: Stu wrote about online commenters in the paper today, and even references the Karen Heller column about commenters that referenced me.

It’s Christmas morning and Santa brought me everything I asked for and more. What an incredible trio of columns. I’ve been doing this feature for damn near three years, and this is the best day of Daily News columns I’ve ever read. I don’t even think it’s close.

Stu takes Heller’s cute closing line and puts it into practice, asking the paper to print everyone’s real name. When told that won’t happen, he says to scrap ‘em entirely. In the comments, there are comments bashing Dan Gross, which is the average Philly.com commenter’s third favorite pastime after racism and misspellings.

Heller wrote: “The blog ‘Philadelphia Will Do’ has noted that Philly.com is among the most racist sites in the region, due to the verbal waste of our posters.” Aw, thanks, guys, you hadn’t mentioned me in forever! I do fear the attention will have the cops hauling me off to prison any day now after receiving a tip from Polaneczky.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

John Baer: The presidential race is suddenly serious and is going to be decided on the issues this year. Oh, John Baer, you’re such a kidder!

Deborah Leavy: Polls are overrated, but not because it’s still September! No, here’s why: “AND DON’T forget about the other candidates: independent Ralph Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr, and the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney.” Yes, Cynthia McKinney is going to toss the race in, uhm, somebody’s direction. And how curious of Leavy to leave out the guy Ron Paul endorsed!

Ronnie Polaneczky: Um, apparently donors to animal shelters have their identities protected, and that’s a stupid rule, she says. Oh, hmm, it’s not a rule at all, it was just some employee who screwed up! Wait, what?

Elmer Smith: # of racists who won’t vote for Obama < # of racists needed to swing election. (First ever abridged Daily News column expressed as an inequality?)

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Stu Bykofsky: This column is headlined, “Autistic boy goes to camp, and it changes a family.” I put up with a lot of shit, but you’re going to have to read this one yourself.

Ronnie Polaneczky: Yes, not having health insurance sucks, and sometimes even having health insurance sucks if it doesn’t cover your expensive operations. But apparently Ronnie Polaneczky has nice union health insurance, and she’s doing just fine, thank you.

Michael Smerconish: This column is about what’s on the candidates’ iPods. “Bach or Beck? Franz Schubert or Franz Ferdinand? Moby or Toby Keith? Tell me, and I can size you up . . . in an iPod-nanosecond.” Forget it, I would rather read Stu’s column today than this crap. I like that Smerconish’s references are pretty much all from when people still kinda liked President Bush, though. Fitting!

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Fatimah Ali: Aww, it’s so cute how people still read Drudge Report, probably while listening to the Spice Girls. Everyone’s favorite columnist was linked on Drudge recently and got a bunch of racist responses from people on the Internet. Then wrote a column complaining about it. The most impressive thing, though, is she somehow got the Daily News to print all of this.

Update: Thanks to Chrissmari for noticing the best line of this column; I read over it even though I peruse these Daily News columns ’til they’re summarized as succinctly and accurately as possible.

I hate violence, but I do see a growing wave of intolerance sweeping the nation. And most of the responses were hostile, like one from someone who identified himself as Dennis Van Pelt: “Obama runs like a porch monkey in Alabama during a KKK concert.” But, not all white Southerners feel like Dennis. Russ Nelson wrote: “I am a white male who was proud to cast my vote for Barack Obama in the Alabama state primary. He inspires me!”

Nelson sounds more like the liberal whites I grew up with in West Mount Airy, a community that pioneered integration in Philadelphia and kept me wearing rose-colored glasses. I didn’t personally experience racism until I was 40, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

This is way less accurate than any comment about a race war if Obama loses.

Elmer Smith: Oh, look, it’s about the SEPTA subway attack and the second-straight poll from that magazine that may or may not actually exist that ranks Philadelphia last in attractiveness among 25 cities.

Ronnie Polaneczky: Somebody got robbed, the cops responded to two burglar alarms but nobody was ever caught. Hey, shoulda put up a note instead of telling the newspaper.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Oh, hell. It’s 9/11. That means the news is going to be full of annoying tributes and fake politicians who insist they’re putting politics aside. So let’s just do a baptism by fire and read Michael Smerconish’s 9/11 column right away.

Michael Smerconish: Oh, no! It’s an excerpt from his new book, to boot, and it opens with the “why don’t people care about this story as much as I do” construction — always an enticing intro for a columnist, but one you should always remember to edit out once you finish.

This opens with three rhetorical questions, the third of which is, “What’s changed since the days when any suburban soccer mom would have strangled either of them with her bare hands if given the chance?” Then it’s just a bunch of stories about how great it is to be Michael Smerconish or Osama bin Laden.

Then there’s some more stuff — this thing is three pages long — and Smerconish then randomly bashes Hillary Clinton near the end. Neat!

Ronnie Polaneczky: TV news-style crap turned into a column. On the plus side, we learn that if she were God, Polaneczky would send bad wedding photographers to hell. Yeah, I’d do the same with columnists. Rimshot!

John Baer: Yes, presidential campaigns aren’t about the issues, and TV news and blogs certainly aren’t about the issues, as much as they tell us they are.

Stu Bykofsky: This is about 9/11, too, I guess, but the best part is when Stu compares Obama to Gentle Ben.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

John Baer: I really enjoyed this quote from George Pataki in Baer’s column today: “I don’t want a citizen of the world as our next president, I want an American patriot.”

Ronnie Polaneczky: In another episode of “the Daily News columnists not understanding correlation versus causation,” Ronnie Polaneczky thinks that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy proves abstinence-only education doesn’t work! (Not that abstinence-only sex ed works — it doesn’t — but I don’t really think that’s the issue; surely Polaneczky wouldn’t want to change from the current DARE formula of abstinence-only drug education — which also doesn’t work — would she?)

Then she quotes some blog comments from the New York Times, to make this column even better.

Fatmiah Ali: My favorite part of this column is how Langston Hughes is referred to as “Poet Langston Hughes.” Thanks for that identifier, I was going to be a little confused there otherwise.

Breaking: Larry Mendte Not As Bad As Detroit’s Mayor

In a baffling column from today’s Daily News, Ronnie Polaneczky draws the comparison between Larry Mendte and Kwame Kilpatrick, Mayor of Detroit and noted adulterer. These are two very different men, in very different situations, in very different cities, but that doesn’t stop Polaneczky from arguing that Detroit’s scummy mayor is worse than one of Philadelphia’s scummy news anchors.

Polaneczky also calls Kilpatrick “the Anti-Mendte,” who’s appearance was foretold in the news broadcaster’s Bible lo many years ago.

The basic point of the column is… well, I don’t know. This guy is worse than that guy, but only kinda-sorta? But now that Mendte has been martyred, and the Anti-Mendte has appeared, it’s only a matter of waiting out the news broadcaster’s End Times. Which anchors will be raptured?

UPDATE: A concerned reader points out that this column is nearly a month old. Apparently I got confused because it was at the top of philly.com’s special Mendte-Lane coverage section. This is why I am guest editor and not permanent editor.

Ronnie Polaneczky: Mendte’s not so bad compared to the Anti-Mendte[Daily News]