It's always sad when a beloved writer becomes an adversary. Some time time ago, I discovered a man whose biting commentaries were tempered with humor and no matter how strongly he felt about an issue, he always treated the people on both sides as... well... people. He spoke truth to power; truth that wasn't meant to wound, but to heal. Politics and elections, war and peace, Social trends, religion and the Church, gay issues... everything was a smile and a chuckle waiting to happen. His politics were clear, but he wasn't above a potshot at his own party if he thought it was justified. I remember waiting every day to read a new installment, and I learned a lot about the American social and political fabric from this guy.
Then he went on a hiatus, and I had to satisfy myself with old archives and went through a kind of withdrawal. When I heard he was coming back, I eagerly dived into his daily offerings again. But something had changed. Where he had been gentle, he now focused all his most vitriolic attacks on our president. Never perfect, I nevertheless felt like the president was doing the best he could and was about as competent as he could be under the circumstances. But my hero could speak no good about the man, and instead seized on every stick with which he could beat the leader of our country. I was forced to conclude that his hatred of the president was greater than his love for America, and I've begun to despair of the old, kindly tone ever coming back into his discourse. I don't know what happened to cause the change from humor to anger, and I'm afraid to ask.
Frankly, he's just no fun to read anymore.
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