The "Fat Man" Passes Away

We lost one of our great political reporters this week when Jack Germond died at the age of 85.  Germond wrote for the defunct Washington Star and the Baltimore Sun for years, with a career spanning 50 years.  He was perhaps best known as a fixture on the shout-fest "The McLaughlin Group," where he often provided the only voice of reason and frequently mocked host John McLaughlin's transparent Rethuglican boosterism.

Germond was one of the reporters appearing in Timothy Crouse's classic "The Boys on the Bus" book about covering the 1972 Presidential election campaign of Richard Nixon.  He later wrote his own memoir, "Fat Man In A Middle Seat," which recounts tales of life as a political journalist.  Tributes to Germond's wit and reputation are numerous;  Esquire.com's Charles P. Pierce wrote this:

"I have never met anyone who loved what he did for a living more than Germond did. He was funny and generous, and he put up with my stumbling attempts to figure out how a process this fundamentally insane ever managed to produce a president of the United States. One anecdote from Crouse's book sums him up perfectly. Germond is covering a media event that the fake Nixon campaign was staging in New York City. (The actual Nixon campaign, as we came to learn, was being conducted elsewhere, with surgical gloves, laundered Mexican cash, and lock-picks.)

'Jack Germond was pacing the pavement at the back of the park. "Jesus," he said, ''this is the ultimate media event. Nixon at the Statue Of Liberty! It's a piece of fiction. I just hope we get to the OTB parlor before five o'clock. I got a good horse in the eighth."'"

We hope his horse won that day. RIP.