Abridged Daily News Columnists

Jill Porter: It’s sad, enough police officers have died recently that we know exactly what the local media is going to write every single time and we don’t have to read it. So this is one of those things.

Elmer Smith: Hey, more fun time news! Carol Campbell died yesterday. Geeze, columnists, can’t you write about something that’s not a total bummer so I have something to mock here? Man, think about me sometimes.

John Baer: Oh, goodie, noted drug warrior Tom Corbett could be governor in 2010.

Michael Smerconish: And, naturally, here’s Michael Smerconish writing about the Flyers, and playing hockey growing up and hour a thousand people paid a couple bucks to see the Stanley Cup. Right.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

John Baer: Bill DeWeese — in charge when House Democrats made decisions that led to a probe (ouch!) and some charges (double ouch!) — is of course going to get a promotion to Speaker of the House. Dennis M. O’Brien, we hardly knew ye.

Ronnie Polaneczky: Think of the message it would send if the Obamas intentionally lowered the quality of their childrens’ education to send a message! Uh, wow, that would be quite the message. “Wow, Michelle and Barack Obama are a bunch of loons who hate their kids!”

I wonder how Michelle and Barry would do it. “Hey, kids, you know how we kind of permanently changed your lives forever by having Daddy run for president and actually win, and while it’s cool and all, it’s totally going to make things awkward for you and everyone who interacts with you? Yeah, well now you’re going to a shittier school. Sorry, some people on the Internet signed a petition; as you can see, we have no choice.”

Elmer Smith: Ooh, Obama is sending “hopeful signals” to big cities. Hopeful! Signals!

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Michael Smerconish: “At the end of the day, I was on info overload. So I downloaded the new John Legend CD from iTunes and plugged in my iPod.” This is the both the worst and greatest sentence Michael Smerconish has ever written.

John Baer: Oh, it’s that time of the year again, when Pennsylvania bigwigs gather for a party in Manhattan. You should read Baer today, really.

Ronnie Polaneczky: This, friends, is drama:

Jim asked if I would arrange the meeting, then write about it.

Hmmm, would I?

Well, yes, I bet you did, since you’ve already written a column about it.

Stu Bykofsky: The city might bill the Mummers this year for parade cleanup! Oh, this could end poorly.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Stu Bykofsky: Because Barack Obama is president, no one should complain about racism anymore. This is pretty much the same thing Bill Bennett said on TV the other night. I would compare Stu to him, but that would be mean. This column is way more upbeat, though.

John Baer: Bob Casey is pals with Barack Obama! What, you mean Obama doesn’t hang out with Pennsylvania’s senior senator, 135-year-old Arlen Specter?

Ronnie Polaneczky: “Two days ago, as I cast my hope for Barack Obama, I didn’t want to leave the blue-curtained cocoon of the voting booth.” That’s the first sentence; I’m not reading any more than that.

Dave Davies: This one is worth a few minutes of your time. It’s a good read!

By the end of the day, “Black Panther” was the second-most- frequently-used search term on Google, and Stalberg was fielding a call from a London reporter asking about Black Panthers’ intimidating white Republican voters at a polling place.

“Basically, it was all horsebleep,” Stalberg said yesterday. “I assured him there weren’t a lot of Republican voters there, and it wasn’t much of a problem.”

Ha, ha. Still a newspaper man at heart, Committee of 70 head Zack Stalberg says “horsebleep” so they don’t have to censor his words.

Michael Smerconish: Two days after the election, political radio host Michael Smerconish is writing about… ways to make the Phillies parade better, of course. I hope Christine Flowers writes about how much she loves Hersheypark tomorrow!

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Jill Porter: So, ah, black people are excited for the first black president.

Elmer Smith: Man, black people who have died sure would have been excited for the first black president.

John Baer: That election sure was historic. And not “historic” in the sense of “stupid,” like in Florida eight years ago. (Joke probably copyright Dave Barry, 2000.)

Abridged Daily News Columnists

John Baer: Oh, look, it’s one of those columns that tells you no matter what your political stylings, it’s your job to vote tomorrow. I never get that. I’m not one of those people who doesn’t like someone because they don’t share my political views, but I certainly don’t want those people to vote! Obviously.

I also have a sneaking suspicion voting might not matter (I do it anyway because it’s fun), and so sometimes I read these columns as the lady doth protesting too much.

Anyway, this column is awesome because it mentions Mike Gravel.

Stu Bykofsky: And here’s Stu, with breaking Mummers news! He drops in an Obama reference just to let you know there’s still an election tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t watch the Mummers’ parade in person so I have no idea what his column is talking about, but it all sounds pretty good I guess.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Jill Porter: This is a Phillies celebratory column probably written before the game was played. Whatever, that’s fine. Let me just quote a little bit of it.

Dingy? Crumbling? In ruin?

This, the next great city in America, glimmering with new skyscrapers?

This, the so-called 6th borough of New York because of the folks who relocate and commute there?

This, a town internationally renowned for its history, its restaurants, its hospitals and universities?

This, one of the few American cities with a thriving, growing Center City?

Ha, ha, all it took was three years for “sixth borough” to be viewed as a compliment.

Ronnie Polaneczky: Convicted felons can vote in Pennsylvania, who knew?

John Baer: Oh, yeah, Obama was on the teevee last night, too. Oh no buying up all the TV ad time for a giant infomercial is apparently Big Brother-ish!

Michael Smerconish: This is the first paragraph of Smerconish’s column:

IT TOOK me only a few seconds of my hairy-eyeball test to conclude that McCain-Palin volunteer Ashley Todd, who said she had been assaulted and branded with a politically tinged scarlet letter, was full of it. It was the same internal alarm that sounded when I first heard of the alleged Duke-lacrosse rape. No way, I thought.

Man, why do we even have courts when we can just get Michael Smerconish to use his “hairy-eyeball test” to decide everything! Also, um, it’s Christine Flowers who needlessly mentions the Duke rape case, Michael, don’t steal her shtick.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

John Baer: Just one column today, and it’s a good one. (How often does this happen?!) Baer writes about how Republicans are explaining Obama’s loss not by admitting they nominated such a bad candidate a black dude is going to win the presidency fairly easily but by saying the media is “in the tank” for Obama.

Here’s my favorite part:

I took the “tanking” issue to Keith Woods, dean of faculty at the respected Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla., a 33-year-old school dedicated to improving journalism.

“I don’t agree,” he told me, likening perceived Obama bias to the reaction to media coverage of child disappearances, in that some get intensive coverage and most get none.

Ha, ha, yes, that’s a great comparison, because it’s always black children with names like “Barack” who get the most intensive coverage.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Stu Bykofsky: Ha, ha, Stu Bykofsky stole from the PTA when he was younger. (Back in the 19th century, bada-bing!) Anyway this has something to do with Vince Fumo, I guess.

John Baer: Mr. Baer reminds us of the best part of this election so far: There’s only about a week left! Oh, happy day, everything is going well right now.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

John Baer: A couple days ago, John Baer wrote the best column in the Daily News in a long time. And guess what? Idiots got pissed off at it!

Apparently, many wrote, calling a white person “cracker” is just as offensive as calling a black person a “nigger,” thinking that is way more racist than not voting for Obama because he’s black. I’ll give Baer the mulligan for the “column about reader mail” column just this once, because the first one was solid. But no break on writing “the Daily News has never been a slave to political correctness.” Um, dude? Once I overhead a conversation in the media room at the Palestra where Daily News editors cut a joke about Anna Nicole Smith. If you can’t make fun of her, you guys might as well be in charge of political correctness.

Ronnie Polaneczky: There have been about a million stories about the Phillies in the past week. Pretty much everything has been written about the Phils. Lo and behold, then, when Ronnie Polaneczky ends up writing something different! Apparently, her father (a Franklin Institute scientist) was the one who cost the 1964 Phillies the pennant. Neat. And thanks a lot.

Stu Bykofsky: Everyone wore red on Friday because Stu Bykofsky asked them to.

Michael Smerconish: The research for Smerconish’s column this week involved driving around a couple neighborhoods and counting Obama signs vs. McCain signs. Really I like the fourth comment on his piece better: “White folks never cease to amaze me. You come up with cute little phrases (i.e., The Bradley Effect) to mask the real issue: The inherent racist nature of the European.”