Abridged Daily News Columnists

Stu Bykofsky: Ha, ha, Stu thinks Philadelphians thought the “Curse of Billy Penn” was real and not just a story to sell t-shirts that were so ugly they should have been bootlegs.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Jill Porter: “LOOK! Men in high heels! I assume I’ve got your attention, because what could be more curious than guys with hairy legs and heavy socks in four-inch patent-leather pumps?” Umm, off the top of my head:

• LOOK! Women in high heels!
• LOOK! Women in [anything besides a burka].
• LOOK! Free heroin!
• LOOK! Free Hershey’s IceBreaker Pacs!
• LOOK! Busta Rhymes!
• LOOK!

Elmer Smith: Fourth graf: “I was colored when I left home for Fort Jackson, S.C., in 1965. I had become a black man by 1968.” Oh, that’s a great line. I’m going to stop there because I don’t think it can get better than that.

Stu Bykofsky: Barack Obama better not get too close to “far left” bloggers — whatever that means — or he’ll be recalled or impeached or something!

Christine Flowers: I actually need to email Christine Flowers to ask her a question before I recap this column. Update to come.

Update: I actually emailed her, concerning her column today. Then I realized I didn’t care so I had any reply automatically sent to the trash! (Not really, I’m far too lazy to do that.) Consider this your Christine Flowers abridgment for today.

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: This story, four pages online, is about improprieties at the local SPCA. Ooh!

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

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

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.”

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Stu Bykofsky: There’s really nothing I can do to even try to sum up this, but I will point out that it’s not “Citizen’s Bank.” Come on, people. No apostrophe, just like Veterans Stadium.

Jill Porter: We’re obsessed with race. How does Porter prove it? Not one, but two interracial weddings were among the top-viewed stories on Philly.com. “I’ve never seen a same-race wedding attract that kind of attention.” Di and Charles? Kerri-Lee and Whatshisname? Surely they got some attention, even if they didn’t make it into the coveted most-viewed list on Philly.com.

Abridged Daily News Columnists

Stu Bykofsky: “But in today’s wired world, anything that happens anywhere is just a YouTube click away from being seen from here to Alpha Centauri.” Who knew YouTube had a reach of over a parsec! After the ever-popular Alpha Centauri reference, Stu tells all of us to wear red tomorrow for the Phillies.

Then it just keeps going, with Stu writing dogs and mailboxes and subway cars and firetrucks should all be red. Then he makes an ever-popular Plagues of Egypt reference (”If I were Moses, I would make the Schuylkill run red”), and basically he’s saying everything should be red, and, really, I think the lone comment on the column right now sums it up: “Stu… you’re on something NOBODY has ever smoked.” Actually, I don’t really get that either. If nobody has ever smoked it before, how can we know what its effects are? I think I’ve been lied to by an Internet commenter.

Deborah Leavy: John McCain is a racist and the Republicans are suppressing the vote. Or something like that, I dunno.

Elmer Smith: Who knew all you had to do to undo selling the Iraq War to the UN (with Powerpoint!) was to endorse a Democrat for president? Ooh, Colin Powell, everybody loves you again!

John Baer: Best three paragraphs in the paper today:

Meanwhile, McCain’s campaign, in TV ads and on the stump, is calling Obama’s tax- cut proposal a “government handout” and “welfare.” McCain yesterday said it’s “just another government giveaway.”

Whom do you think that’s aimed at?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe lower-income, less-educated white voters for whom “welfare” and “government giveaway” means black people?

Thank you. While we’re on this topic, would you tell somebody at your newspaper what word “thug” is a replacement for, please? Oh, they already know? Oh dear.

Ronnie Polaneczky: Ha ha, some Roman Catholic priests are aghast at other types of Catholics and their liberal ways. (Seriously, this is a pretty entertaining story.)