Jon Carroll

“Conservatives can do nothing except withhold endowments, join think tanks and work for lobbying firms, whereas powerful liberals can be tenured English Professors.”
Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, uses bold statements and witty suggestive language, such as the above sentence, which was taken from a column written by Carroll, to attract his readers.

Carroll is such a busy columnist he was unable to comment for this article. Even after begging, an interview with Carroll was wishful thinking. I did learn a few things about Carroll though our brief correspondence: 1. He is very busy; 2. He loves to use the word alas. For example his e-mail responses to me read:

“Alas, this is a busy week. I wish you the best of luck.” Then as I continued to beg and offer an e-mail interview I received this e-mail, “Still a busy week. E-mail is not the solution to busyness, alas.”

Alas, the internet, and Jon Carroll’s home page, provided me the information I couldn’t acquire from an interview. Even though I couldn’t dig up an interview I was able to discover that Carroll was born in the same hospital Bobby Kennedy died in, the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. His first job with a newspaper was editing the crosswords, and then he went on to writing the capsule summaries for TV movies. After that I was able to find a laundry list of jobs he once worked and awards he received in the field of journalism.
• Rolling Stones 1970
• Assistant editor, Rags 1971
• Editor, Oui 1972
• Village Voice 1974
• National Magazine Award, 1979
Carroll was then forced to retire and in 1981 and wrote his first column for the chronicle in 1982.

Carroll’s style of writing is a freefall of thought pre-filtered from his mind; everything he’s thinking is dumped onto the table and sorted out with his pen. He ponders on events in the world and writes about them with his own spin and passion. There is an obvious stance and opinion in his column.

Even though I’ve never had the opportunity to interviewing Carroll, his views on Donald Rumsfeld were made apparent in his column on September 27. Carroll stated, “Donald Rumsfeld is not some guy who opposes sex education in schools, or believes that abortion should be illegal, or thinks that women should just stay home and make babies. He’s a guy who displaced 2 million Iraqi citizens. If the phrase “war criminal” means anything anymore, then Donald Rumsfeld is a war criminal.”

Statements such as the one made above is the sort of raw, almost uncensored free speech I like. I hear him thinking through his writing and I like that. I also like his views and sense of humor. Anyone who can make fun of themselves has a great sense of humor.

The picture was also found on Jon Carroll’s home page. The red edits to the picture show Jon’s sense of humor, and as he says, “classic good looks.”