Bob Dunning takes a bow

     "Journalism," G.K. Chesterton famously observed, "largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive."
     That's a good thing — better late than never. Also unavoidable. Even the most educated person is ignorant of nearly everything. By necessity much of what we read is bound to be news. Also a good thing — my definition of boredom is being told what you already know.

     When a reader forwarded without comment the last column of Bob Dunning, who wrote for a California newspaper for 55 years and was unceremoniously sacked this week, I did not feel embarrassed that it was my introduction to the man. Nothing shameful there, even though he's written for The Davis Enterprise since I was in 4th grade. Davis has a population double that of Northbrook, and is 2,000 miles away. A local oddity myself, I understand and accept my status as a mote of dust in a continent-wide wordstorm. If after writing for the Chicago Sun-Times for 40 years, one out of 10 Chicagoans were vaguely familiar with me, I'd be surprised and gratified. It's probably closer to one in 100. 

     When others of my ilk deliver their swan songs, it's typically how the greater world first learns of us. Birth announcement and funeral pyre in one brief flash, a tiny puff of smoke far away on the horizon alerting outsiders to our existence even as we vanish.
    Dunning's ave atque vale begins:

    "This is a column I thought I’d never have to write. Through these many years, the local owners of this newspaper regularly told me that as long as The Davis Enterprise existed, I would always have a job. ..."

     And you believed them? Well, there's your mistake right there, Bob. The owners of the Sun-Times never gave me such assurances, nor would I put any stock in them if they had. Any boss who flashed me a vulpine grin, and cooed, "Don't worry, Neil, you'll be here forever...." would leave me shaken. And I have the security of a union. If it weren't for the Chicago Newspaper Guild, I would have been put out to pasture years ago. I might still be, despite it.  It's happened before.

     Quality has nothing to do with it. The Tribune allowed the consistently excellent Eric Zorn to go without even trying to keep him. The great Gene Weingarten, who won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for the magnificent "Fiddler in the Subway," was banished from the Washington Post for the sin of making a joke about Indian food. If it can happen to them, who can't it happen to? Certainly Bob, or me. We are all dead men walking.
     "I upheld my end of the bargain," Dunning continued. "They did not."
      What are you saying? That life isn't fair? Let me jot that down for future reference.
      Sorry. I'll stop now. It takes a lot of ego to fill that blank space, day after day, year in and year out, and a lot of humility to realize it doesn't matter to anyone else a fraction as much as it matters to you. Easy for that delicate balance to get out of whack, particularly in moments of duress. I don't want to critique the dying gasp of a colleague, even one I've never met or knew existed. When my time comes, I like to think I'll tip the executioner and lower my head to the block with quiet dignity. But who knows? I might clutch the radiator and shriek like James Cagney at the end of "Angels with Dirty Faces." 

     I'll try to stop, anyway. One does drone on, as I'm illustrating here. Dunning expended over 2300 words, triple the word count of my daily column, to valorize his exit. That's like the last act of "Tristan & Isolde." You can really like Wagner and still think, "C'mon, get it over with." I've been on staff at the paper for 37 years. However I go, I'm not going to shake my fist at the sky and demand, "Why Lord, why?!?" I know why: the profession is falling apart in big chunks. I'm not indispensable.  On days my column doesn't run, they still publish a newspaper. It was a good run. 

     Dunning writes with candor — he mentions his pay, which most writers would not, particularly when that pay is $26 an hour. He wasn't doing it for money, clearly, he was doing it for love, and nothing feels worse than love unrequited.  He has my sympathy. The Davis Enterprise should have treated him with a modicum of human compassion. Stop the presses: that is in short supply in newspaper owners. 

     Then again, life is precious because it ends. We all have an arc, and now that I'm well into my downward plunge, and see the canyon floor racing toward me, I hope I can splat with a certain finesse and not too much indignation.  The world has changed. Newspaper columnists offer the answer to a question fewer and fewer bother asking.

     I'm 63. Bob Dunning is 77. So maybe I'm displaying the casual cruelty of youth — not something I get the chance to trot out much anymore. But the end can come at any time from any direction. When that sad day arrives, it isn't up to us, but to others to determine what value we  had, if any. When my time comes — tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or at 77, or 90 — I hope that I don't go on and on telling what few readers who have stuck around how unfair it all is, and how much I enjoyed writing for them. Hopefully, they'll already know.