Another day, another pundit payola scandal. This time it turns out that Maggie Gallagher, a syndicated columnist whose work appears in the New York Post among other places, accepted $21,500 from the federal government for “marriage-themed writing projects.” It’s not as much of a direct payola deal as the one that brought down Armstrong Williams, but Gallagher nevertheless failed to disclose that she was being paid by the Bush Administration to do exactly what she was doing in her columns.
I must confess to a bit of Schadenfreude here, simply because I’ve found always Gallagher’s columns- which focus, almost exclusively, on bashing gay marriage, gay adoption, and gayness in general- trite, poorly argued, and insulting, and don’t consider her deserving of such a high perch. And I’m also not buying her excuse that she’s “not a journalist”- she has a column on an op-ed page, of course she is.
It doesn’t pain me in the slightest to see her professionally embarrassed; the only thing better would be if she turned out to be a lesbian.
There’s also news that Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol were present at a White House meeting in which ideas for the president’s inaugural address were discussed. But since the two apparently didn’t know it was a strategy session, and since they (as far as we know) weren’t paid, I’m inclined to give them a pass.
And speaking of Charles: this column, given the headline “Charles Krauthammer: Arafat’s Heir,” makes it sound as though Krauthammer IS Arafat’s heir. Actually, it’s a column BY Krauthammer, giving that designation to Mahmoud Abbas.
Posted by Stephen Silver at January 26, 2005 10:37 PM