IT'S not quite a national holiday yet, but today, April 18th, soon will become as recognizable as Labor Day and National Artichoke Day. Today is National Columnists Day. Really. National Columnists
Day salutes PyleDon't feel bad if you didn't get me a present. That's all right. A lot of people aren't familiar with National Columnists Day yet. That's why we have orders from our Exalted Grand High All-Seeing Wizard of the Word Processor and President of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists (Jonathan Nicholas of the Portland Oregonian) to write a column explaining to the masses the importance and history of National Columnists Day. Recognition has been slow in coming for a number of reasons, not the least of which was a typographical error in a press release that the society sent out to 182,000 newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations announcing April 18 as National COMMUNIST Day. Ho. Ho. Well, we had fun explaining that one.
JUST so you know, we are card-carrying columnists, not communists, although, we certainly are willing to write a bout communists if they do something noteworthy or at least funny or, well, anything, actually, that would fill a column for a day. I'm not pointing fingers, but some of my colleagues have been known not only to fill an entire column with a discussion of dust mites but actually win contests with same. That's extreme admiration, not jealousy, talking. I'm no piker in that category, having filled miles and miles of column space with such drivel as how to kill cockroaches with a spritz of WD-40 (which renders the little fellows not only fast as lightning but unable to stop when they approach brick walls), the health benefits of Spam Juice and a description of what it's like to walk for 6.1 miles behind a guy with a huge butt during one of those silly Walk/Run/Jog/Skate/Skip-to-My-Loo-My-Darlin' charity events (a view so disturbing, by the way, that it makes having to look at Madeline Albright downright spiritual.)
This is not to say that all newspaper columnists fill their space with this type of writing. It is a specialty reserved, frankly, for those who can get away with it. There are heaps of columnists who write about serious things. And they are more than willing to talk about those serious things whenever they get you cornered at a party. I find a cattle prod generally serves in those situations, although the setting has to be adjusted alarmingly high. Their suits apparently are constructed of some Kevlar-type material that, while capable of deflecting large jolts of electricity, holds criticism like a magnet. This criticism piles up on their shoulders which tends to make them very angry drunks, which in turn causes them to spew venom like a fire hose in their columns on just about any subject. Again, that's admiration talking, not envy. Sometimes I think I'd take a life to fill a column, or at least beat up someone smaller than me.
One guy who would have been smaller than me and who I wouldn't have tried to fight under any circumstances, was Ernie Pyle, the famous World War II columnist whom we honor on National Columnists Day. It was on April 18, 1945 that Ernie was killed while riding in a jeep on a speck in the Pacific. The NSNC decided to honor Ernie because he embodied the spirit of what column-writing is all about, namely to go anywhere, do anything and risk all to be a columnist.
Granted, following a guy with a big butt in a foot race isn't as dangerous as living in a fox hole during a shooting war, but I think Ernie would appreciate it. He hated covering war and was scared a lot of the time. I like to think that if Ernie ever had a chance to spray a cockroach with WD-40 and watch him slam into a brick wall, he'd go for it. And I would have loved to read his column about it.