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| Iraq |
| Michael Kelly, RIP |
| 2003-04-04 |
| Peggy Noonan's classy tribute to the late Mr. Kelly, from OpinionJournal. The death of Michael Kelly is a sin against the order of the world. He was a young man on his way to becoming a great man. He was going to be one of the great editors of his time, and at the age of 46 he was already one of its great journalists. And one's first thought about him, after saying the obvious--that he wrote like a dream, that he was a great reporter with great eyes, that he was a keen judge of what is news and what should be news--is this. He was an independent man. He had an indignant independence that was beauty to behold. He knew what he thought and why, and he announced it in his columns and essays with wit and anger. Virtually from the beginning of his career it was clear--he made it clear--that he would not accept the enforced Official Version of Reality that various luminaries and establishments attempted to force on him and others who report the news for a living. Was the vast American media establishment inclined to think one way? Then he would think another. Not necessarily the opposite--he was not a contrarian. He'd just think what he actually thought. And write it. He wouldn't let anyone tell him how to think. One would hope that would be a given in the world of big-league reporting, but newspapers and networks are full of journalists who let others tell them what to think. I knew him as most people did, through what he wrote. I'd met him and admired him easily, but the Michael I read I loved. And so today, without a particular right to, I feel heartbroken. When the news broke, Mencken biographer Terry Teachout expressed with concision what I felt and had not been able to articulate: "This is horrible, horrible news--[Michael] had evolved into a great force for journalistic good, not just as regards this war but in general, and his death will leave a black hole in the sky." Go read all of it. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #2 "Embedded" journalists are nothing new. Ernie Pyle got "embedded" at Ie Shima. :-< |
| Posted by: Ernest Brown 2003-04-04 20:19:30 |
| #1 Damn, I was a huge fan of Michael Kelly. Why couldn't it have been Ted Koppel? RIP Michael. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-04-04 19:52:08 |