The author of this sentence is Clayton Kirkpatrick, the Chicago Tribune editor who died in 2004. His obituary in the Washington Post— an ideological rival— states that he transformed the newspaper from “its legacy as a nasty, partisan broadsheet to a professional, centrist publication.”
Kirkpatrick was the first editor in the nation to publish the full transcripts of President Richard M. Nixon's Watergate tapes in a 44-page special edition May 1, 1974.
A week later, Kirkpatrick called for the president’s resignation under the heading, “Listen, Mr. Nixon.”
The editorial said, in part:
"It is a lack of concern for morality, a lack of concern for high principles, a lack of commitment to the high ideals of public office that make the transcripts a sickening exposure of the man and his advisers. . . . He is humorless to the point of being inhumane. He is devious. He is vacillating. He is profane. He is willing to be led. He displays dismaying gaps in knowledge. He is suspicious of his staff. His loyalty is minimal."
As the Washington Post obit reported in 2004, “For a paper that for a half-century was considered the bible of Republicanism, the turnabout was shocking.”
We live in interesting times, once again.
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