For the past few days, an essay purporting to be “Charley Reese’s final column” has been making the rounds on Facebook, Twitter, and various other internet venues. In the column, Reese urges that we fire the 545 people responsible for our problems — namely the House of Representatives and the Senate.
As Snopes points out, Charley Reese did write such a column. However, it didn’t have all the stuff added to the end of the column that seems to accompany it in Internet posts. Nor was it “Charley Reese’s final column.”
Charley Reese
Charley Reese was a crotchety libertarian columnist for the Orlando Sentinal for many years. The Flyer ran his column via syndication for several years after I became editor in 2000. Those who venerate and send around Reese’s “last” column would probably be quite surprised to learn that Reese, who was a veteran and a blue-collar guy, came to despise the Bush/Cheney adventurism in Iraq, thought the U.S. kow-towed too much to Israel, favored gay marriage, and thought John McCain was a horrible candidate.
Charley was a hell of a writer, and not one easily categorized as liberal or conservative, as we like to do these days. If you’re interested, you can read his real” final column, and many other of his columns, here.
