Out of Line

It's nice to see a newspaper take one of their own to task in print, and Jack Lessenberry, the ombudsman for The Blade, does just that.

Does a columnist have the right to say anything he wants to?

That was the question a man from Monroe, Mich., asked. He was outraged by Jack Kelly's July 9 column in which he praised President Bush for commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

What bothered the gentleman was not Mr. Kelly's opinion about the Libby case, but an offhand comment about President Clinton's last-minute pardon of financier Marc Rich.

Mr. Kelly wrote:

"On his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned Mr. Rich after his ex-wife Denise [with whom Mr. Clinton reportedly had been sleeping] donated $1 million to the Democratic Party and $10,000 to the Clintons' legal defense fund."

The reader, whose name I unfortunately couldn't quite understand, said, "That sounds more like a gossip columnist than a national security writer. I think they teach you to have better standards in high school journalism classes."

Frankly, I couldn't agree more.

The comment by Mr. Kelly was scurrilous and unprofessional, and The Blade's editorial page editors should have taken it out. President Clinton's embarrassing and shameful personal history is well known.

But there is actually no credible evidence linking Mr. Clinton romantically with Ms. Rich. This isn't any kind of defense of the former president's behavior. The Rich pardon itself, following the exchange of a vast amount of money, is to my mind far more appalling than his low-comedy tussling with Monica Lewinsky.

To drag an unsubstantiated petty sexual allegation into the discussion was a cheap shot that actually weakened Mr. Kelly's argument.

This newspaper should have been more vigilant. Incidentally, Mr. Kelly, who is based in Pittsburgh, is no longer the national security columnist; his title is now columnist for The Blade and our sister paper, the Post-Gazette.

Jack Kelly is The Blade's resident right-wing troll; think of him as the poor man's Bill O'Reilly or Robert Novak without the charm. He can always be counted on to recite the Bush administration's talking points, and he is the embodiment of IOKIYAR. I suppose that makes him a valuable commodity in a paper that has earned a reputation for being somewhat blue-collar liberal over the years and owned by one of the more interesting families in the newspaper publishing business. Whatever; it's refreshing to see the paper's public liaison take both the columnist and the paper itself to task for cheap shots regardless of the target.