Clay Robison penned a typically shrill column for the Chronicle‘s editorial page this past weekend, and one that is highly reflective of his worldview.
Here is an excerpt:
While controversy continued to swirl last week over Texas’ poor record in protecting abused children, Gov. Rick Perry was in Dallas bragging about a major cause of the problem.
In a speech to the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank, Perry touted “limited” government and his role in perpetuating it in Texas.
“I believe there is not only a limited role for government, but also a legitimate role for government,” he said, patting himself and the Legislature on the back for bridging a $10 billion revenue gap last year by squeezing needed services rather than raising state taxes.
Excuse me, governor, but abused children have had about all the limited government that they can stand. So have frail, elderly Texans with no one to look after them.
This is the sort of demagoguery one hears from the minority party in Texas all of the time, especially on blogs. As we’ve noted time and again, if the Chronicle is determined that staff editorials shall be childish and simplistic, that’s entirely the prerogative of the editors (although one wonders why even have an editorial page at all if the newspaper’s resources and vaunted trained journalists cannot produce higher quality than the better left-of-center blogs in the state).
In any case, the problem with Robison is not so much the substance of these columns, but that as he’s serving as hyperpartisan weekend editorialist, he also serves as the head of the Chronicle‘s Austin news bureau.
It boggles the mind that the newspaper expects readers to believe that Robison can engage in such partisan flamethrowing on weekends, yet cover the majority party and politicians in the state capital fairly during the week.
A quality newspaper would make him a full-time editorialist and find a more credible newsman to run the Austin operation.
