Let’s hope we see a lot of Chapin in The Post to fill partisan commentary gap
The Denver Post’s new weekly columnist Rick Tosches is a great writer, no doubt, as anyone who’s followed him over the years knows. And he’ll be a great left-leaning addition to The Post’s right-leaning commentary section.
But he’s not the kind of raw partisan on the GOP side of the equation, like Mike Rosen and John Andrews, not to mention the not-so-raw partisan Vincent Carroll, who you see in The Post regularly (Carroll three times a week, Rosen weekly, Andrews every third week).
I mean, Rosen’s last column was titled, “Paul Ryan is no radical.” And Andrews’ last piece was, “Paul Ryan, Mountain Man.”
Not much subtlety there.
Tosches is too sophisticated to deliver crude Democratic talking points, like Rosen’s on the right. He’ll write about more interesting stuff, and only some of it will be political, you have to guess.
So that means The Post’s partisan gap on its commentary page may look like it’s going to remain open. (I’ve discussed this previously.)
But in announcing the addition of Tosches Sunday, Post Editorial Page Editor Curtis Hubbard wrote that The Post will also run columns from Democratic consultant Laura Chapin and others in the coming weeks, to offer more “voices on the left.”
I’ve heard from many of you in recent months that we need more voices from the left on these pages given the loss of Ed Quillen, Mike Littwin and others.
To that end, you’ll be seeing columns in coming weeks from two new writers: Laura Chapin, a Democratic consultant and former speechwriter for Gov. Bill Ritter; and Teresa Keegan, whose name may be familiar to you from her time as one of our Colorado Voices columnists.
Chapin is the kind of partisan writer who The Post needs to counter Andrews and Rosen. The title of her last Post column was, “Is there a GOP Obsession with LadyParts.”
Hubbard keeps a tally of the ideological bent of the content of the editorial page. Let’s hope he takes a close look at it, and factors in raw partisanship, as he decides how many columns he needs to add by folks like Chapin.