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Sat 17 Dec, 2005 11:54 pm
WASHINGTON ?- Jack Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning muckraking columnist who struck fear into the hearts of corrupt or secretive politicians, inspiring Nixon operatives to plot his murder, died today. He was 83.
Anderson died at his home in Bethesda, Md., of complications from Parkinson's disease, said one of his daughters, Laurie Anderson-Bruch.
Anderson gave up his syndicated Washington Merry-Go-Round column at age 81 in July 2004, after Parkinson's disease left him too ill to continue. He had been hired by the column's founder, Drew Pearson, in 1947.
The column broke a string of big scandals, from Eisenhower assistant Sherman Adams taking a vicuna coat and other gifts from a wealthy industrialist in 1958 to the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran in 1986.
Thanks for the tip, Edgar. I hadn't heard.
Anderson was from the old school of journalism, where muckraking was considered a virtue, not a vice. He stepped on a lot of toes in so doing. My one gripe against him was that he could wrap himself in a shroud of noble moral probity, then make a mountain out of a molehill. The Sherman Adams episode was such fiasco. He practically ruined Adams's career over something that, in the long run, was of little significance and only passing interest to most newspaper readers. But de mortuis nihil nisi bonum.
Damn!! We lost another one, we just can't get a break.
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