By: Greg Oguss
The news on the Robert Novak front has come hot and heavy over the past few weeks, which is just the way an ultra-right wing syndicated columnist like Novak prefers his news stories, the kind that can be told in bold strokes that play on emotion and where the facts are easily open to manipulation. I’m assuming he isn’t crazy about the facts in this case, which are that he has just been diagnosed with a brain tumor and has been forced to go on indefinite leave from writing his newspaper column. But this news certainly builds public sympathy for a guy who has been in the news over the last year or so for a host of unsympathetic acts. Last week, he ran over a homeless guy with his car and attempted to flee the scene before being stopped by a bicyclist. He was also the first “journalist” (which really needs to be in quotes even before that brain tumor brought on an Alzheimer’s-like senility) who publicly revealed the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame as payback for her husband’s criticism of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy.
It’s unlikely the tumor was to blame for his behavior in the Plame incident. Conceivably, it could have contributed to him mistaking that homeless dude for a pile of rags or something. But everyone knows that Novak hates black people and bums. So that seems like a shaky excuse. I’m willing to believe the tumor could have damaged his memory to such an extent that, within seconds, Novak had completely forgotten about the accident. That’s probably why he was preceding calmly on his way as if nothing had happened when the bicyclist stopped his car. Personally, I do absent-minded shit like that all the time. When I wrote a column in LA Snark on the incident last week, I totally mixed up the facts, suggesting quite improbably that Novak had run down the bicyclist and the homeless guy had chased after him to flag down the car. And as far as I know, I’m tumor-free.
