Who is your favorite political writer/reporter?

[Soral]

Just curious.

I couldn't make this a poll, because there are too many to list.

My top right now, and has been for at least a year, is Ezra Klein.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/

[mucifer]

1. Mike Royko. He died a while back. He was a great political writer.

He was well known in Chicago. He had offers to write in other cities. Chicago was his town. He stayed here.

[babylonsister]

2. Steve Benen is up there. nt

[rucky]

3. Because Robert Reich.

Ezra Klein is great, too. His Twitter feed is worth following.

[marmar]

4. Ezra's OK, but I think his reach exceeds his grasp sometimes.....

...... Robert Parry, Steve Benen, Matt Taibbi & Joshua Holland are among my favorites.

[saltpoint]

5. Bob Herbert ain't bad. Katha Pollitt in THE NATION is

always good, too.

I'll read Frank Rich on any topic as well.

[CanonRay]

6. Matt Taibi

[lumberjack_jeff]

8. +1 n/t

[FSogol]

7. Eugene Robinson n/t

[sufrommich]

9. I love Bob Herbert. nt

[HopeHoops]

10. Well, believe it or not, George Will. I'll explain.

Most of the time I do not agree with the point he is trying to make, but unlike the other conservative political writers, he does do the research behind what he writes. Sure, he selectively omits things that don't support his point, but he doesn't suck shit out of his ass like most of them. Sometimes the entertainment value comes simply from bitching at the newspaper because his omissions were so obvious that they pissed me off. Dogs DO NOT understand this sort of behavior in humans.

Then there are the times when I DO agree with him and I find it refreshing to see that such thinking is still alive on their side of the fence. There is so little evidence of that elsewhere. You certainly won't see it on FOX and he obviously isn't allowed to exhibit rational thinking when he appears on that channel.

[immoderate]

12. I once saw Will grilling a conservative candidate as part of a panel...

of conservative interviewers (no Donaldson that day. Will, as if realizing that no one else was there to do it, started asking tough left liberal questions. I thought he did well. Never saw him do that again. For the moment though, I saw him put himself in my shoes.


--imm

[HopeHoops]

14. The guy isn't an idiot. He knows his audience and role in a situation. Unfortunately, that's FOX.

At least recently.

[Klukie]

11. Robert Reich and Matt Taibbi

[NightWatcher]

13. Hunter S Thompson

[SteppingRazor]

15. You mean other than me?

Kidding, kidding.

Of the big guns, I like both of Rolling Stone's hit men, Matt Taibbi and Tim Dickinson.

Newspaper columnists, I dig Gene Robinson, Bob Herbert, Frank Rick and Paul Krugman, with occasional doses of Clarence Page and the boys from the Herald (Pitts and Hiaasen especially, though they've both been phoning it in for a while now.)

As far as political reporters, I agree with the OP about Klein, for the most part. With Anthony Shadid and David Finkel, the Post also had some of the best on-the-ground reporting on the Iraq War. (Leaving aside the paper's abysmal record in the lead-up to the war.)


Authors, Ron Suskind and Jeremy Scahill are both great.

If I had to read a conservative columnist every week, Kathleen Parker doesn't make me want to punch something, though her recent foray into Cable World has been lame.

And there's a ton of others I'm forgetting. The folks at the Nation and the Atlantic do good work, for example.

[yellowwood]

16. Amy Goodman, without a doubt

Find her here:
http://www.democracynow.org/

[political_Dem]

17. Eugene Robinson, Molly Ivins and Greg Palast. n/t

[stevedeshazer]

18. Matt Taibbi

[Zoeisright]

19. Rude Pundit, Margaret and Helen, and Eugene Robinson.

Ezra Klein too.