I am back from my hiatus and thought I would start off slow. I usually don’t write about this kind of stuff but I just ran across an article in The Washington Post that I must share with you folks. It is an article about John Karr and is written by Hank Stuever. Mr. Stuever is allegedly a "Washington Post Staff Writer". Here is the first paragraph from the article:

So you’ve maybe got a famous murderer in the family. Or you were married to one. He’s extradited, he’s very much in the news, and he’s just as creepy as you remember him. You’d like to smack him upside the haid. You’d also like to prove to the world what a complete, dweeb-faced liar he is.

And here are the last few paragraphs:

So you may have a murderer in the family.

Well, you’ll show him. You’ll show CNN, too. You’ll go through every one of these shoeboxes, and then everyone will see how right you are.

An alibi: It can be such a nice thing to have, in most families.

The trash between the first paragraph and the last few I quoted above are of the same caliber. My question is this: Is this kind of article considered journalism? You will remember a few months ago that the Washington Post Ombudsman, Deborah Howell, raised a big stink about Dan Froomkin being confused for a reporter when in fact he was a columnist. Why is this clown, Hank Stuever, masquerading as a "staff writer" when he is not reporting but writing opinion pieces? What is Deborah Howell going to do about it?

With reporting like this its no wonder the Bush Administration had no trouble hoodwinking the American public into a war with Iraq. I suspect with reporting like this it won’t be long before we are told that Iran has made a pact with the Devil and must be destroyed.