NYT's Frank Rich: I'm "Anything But An Apologist for the Lefties and All of Their Causes"

September 30th, 2005 5:02 PM

Before you go further, finish your drink. Put down the baby. CBS MarketWatch columnist Jon Friedman reported today that raging lefty New York Times columnist Frank Rich stresses that he is "anything but an apologist for the lefties and all of their causes.'I trend liberal but I had no use for John Kerry,' he told me."

Riiiight. See the TimesWatch.org Frank Rich page to see if you agree. I'd just quickly cite, on the supposedly-indifferent-to-Kerry front, a Clay Waters report from September 8, 2004: "Frank Rich is back from vacation and in full foam in his Sunday column, 'How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man,' which begins: 'Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man.'" Rich was also steamed that "Mr. Kerry was said to appear 'French.' (That's code for 'faggy.') His alleged encounters with Botox and a Christophe hairdresser were dutifully clocked on Drudge. For Memorial Day weekend, the redoubtable New York Post published hypothetical barbecue memos for the two contenders, with Mr. Bush favoring sausage and beer (albeit nonalcoholic) and Mr. Kerry opting for frogs legs, chardonnay and creme brulee." But Frank's not really a fan of the wronged "war hero." Mm-hmm.

PS: Don't miss the family fervor of Mrs. Rich when it comes to the spat with Mel Gibson:

If Rich could shrug it off, his wife, New York Times reporter Alex Witchel, couldn't. "Mel'd better watch out," she told me. "If I ever meet him on the street, he'd better hope someone up there is listening to him." While Witchel underscored the tension of that time, Rich good-naturedly stressed that she was speaking "tongue-in-cheek."