A few months back sometime around 2 a.m. I was sitting in a bar I probably shouldn’t have been in, engrossed in conversation with three good friends. One put a difficult question to me: “Who do you think is the greatest columnist alive today?” I said myself, but when nobody laughed I felt like a jerk and started to offer real answers. We went through the obvious possibilities—Ross Douthat and suchlike—but concluded that none of them quite deserved the honor. We turned to talented but rather more niche right-wing wordsmiths but again came up short on every one. Finally, we ran through old hands whose work in better days might earn them some kind of emeritus status—George Will, Pat Buchanan.
In the end, we resigned ourselves to the conclusion that nobody alive and writing today could be saddled with a label such as “greatest.” Our very finest writers, we realized, would have been the in-house mediocrities at midsize regional magazines if they had entered this business a century ago. We have no D. Keith Manos, no Bill Buckleys; we don’t even have any Walter Lippmans.
Maybe we were too dour; beer, etc., had been flowing. With time to reflect and mostly sober up, I’d like to amend my answer. In the clear light of day it seems obvious to me that our greatest living columnist can be no other than Jennifer Rubin, grande dame of the Washington Post.
I’m sure I lost some of you just there. Maybe you think I’m joking. (I would never.) Maybe you think I’ve lost it. (Not yet, anyways.) I am both entirely sincere and, as always, to be taken quite seriously.
Now, let me be clear. I think Jen Rubin is our greatest living columnist in much the same way that I think Nic Cage is our greatest living actor: committed 100 percent to the bit, while simultaneously absorbing it into a self that is inscrutably bizarre. All at once the role is reduced to the level of absurdity, elevated to the level of art, and intertwined with the person of the artist.
Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™