Nick Coleman, longtime bete noir/kicktoy of regional conservative bloggers, is back on the beach:
The message was eloquently written, but crystal clear. For one year now, Coleman had been a senior fellow at the school’s Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy & Civic Engagement. He’d tacked his title onto his opinion columns in the Star Tribune each Sunday. Now the school wanted him gone.
Budget challenges had caused the school to reconsider the fellows program, wrote Joe DesJardins, the school’s vice provost. But the real reason for Coleman’s ouster was spelled out in DesJardins’s carefully chosen next words.
“Unfortunately, many of our alumni and friends interpreted your by-line as a Senior Fellow of the McCarthy Center as an implicit SJU endorsement of the opinions you express,” DesJardins wrote. “This has brought St. John’s into the political sphere in ways that we had not anticipated and think is not in St. John’s best long-term interest.”
I’ll give Mr. DesJardins the benefit of a doubt; perhaps he was one of the monks, and he’d swore a vow of never reading the Strib, just like most otherwise independent-thinking and well-informed Minnesotans. Perhaps he had no idea about Coleman’s decades-long career as a DFL cheerleader, his “Air America Minnesota” talk show, and his history.
And it’s not like he had any road to Damascus moments while working for “Big Mac”; he pretty much romped and played in familiar territory, cheerleading the DFL establishment and catcalling the usurpers.
We’re not done with far-fetched:
“I do think something is out of whack when he’s a part of it and a liberal columnist can’t be,” Coleman says of Kennedy.
“I do think something is out of whack when he’s a part of it and a liberal columnist can’t be,” Coleman says of Kennedy.
It makes it sound like the termination was political. Which might make more sense if Amy Klobuchar weren’t giving the center’s next lecture, and the center blog didn’t have a subtle but distinct patina of Obama worship.
What Coleman didn’t know was that efforts to unseat him from St. John’s had been brewing for months.
Bob Labat, a 1959 St. John’s grad who has donated to the school every year since, noticed Coleman’s columns right away. Labat found Coleman grating—a quality he considered inappropriate for someone associated with the Catholic school.
“He has every right to be as caustic and as strong in his opinion as he wants to be, but when you’re also writing on the masthead of an academic institution, that’s a problem,” Labat says.
He wasn’t alone. In September, Len Busch, who has given $20,000 to the St. John’s theology department each of the last three years, authored a handwritten message about Coleman.
“As long as St. John’s has this man on the payroll, I will no longer give my money to St. John’s,” Busch wrote. “I will not support lies and false statements and half truths about anyone.”
A lot of us former Strib subscribers know the feeling.
But I don’t whistle past graveyards. I hope Coleman lands a gig soon. While there’s no shortage of material, one must neither take things for granted nor wish ill on people; I don’t believe in Karma, but I do think what goes around comes around.
So best of luck, Nick.
Oooo, a conservative was kept while a liberal was canned. Ominous.
Or maybe not.
Notice that the Center is named for Eugene McCarthy? Wonder why? Because he’s a St. John’s University alumnus (Class of 35).
Notice Mark Kennedy is staying on the list. Wonder why? Because he’s an alumnus, too (Class of 79).
Nick Coleman, in addition to all his manifold other sins, is not.
A private college dependant on alumni donations gives preference to an alum over a U of M grad. Who woulda thunk it?
.
Nick is always welcome to work a shift with the fundraising appeals department at St. Johns. He can even tout his own work as a fellow. Can he not save his own job?
Coleman quickly scanned the center’s website. The lecture series named after Mark Kennedy, the former Republican state senator and staunch pro-lifer, was still prominently associated with the school.
“I do think something is out of whack when he’s a part of it and a liberal columnist can’t be,” Coleman says of Kennedy.
The reason Kennedy’s name is on the lecture series is because he is paying for it. Maybe Coleman or Carlyle could have hired a “journalist” & dug up this fact?
I imagine that if Coleman wanted to pay for a lecture series (rather than being paid by St. Johns) they would be happy to take his money.
I wonder what St John’s was thinking when they hired Nick? He’s been a left wing attack dog for years. He’ll never change. They look very stupid.
He’s been a left wing attack dog for years.
Which is not entirely incongruent with a think tank named after Eugene McCarthy.
I often wondered why St. John’s would allow Slick Nick to spew his lies under their banner. Even if the administration there supported him, when their contributions were affected, they tossed him out like yesterday’s garbage. IMHO, they erred in waiting until those donations were in play and should have dumped him after his first piece in the Red Star.
I’m not a regular reader of Nick Coleman’s columns, and I don’t follow his politics.
But I do have to wonder why they would make Coleman a fellow, and then unmake Coleman a fellow, if nothing about his writing has particularly changed. This does seem a bit more driven by the politics of who is handing over money. Tenure exists to give professors some buffer for their academic opinions; clearly fellows are not tenured and do not have that protection.
Which leads me to wonder if it was only Kennedy who threatened to withhold his largesse, of if there were other less prominent complaints? And if there were complaints, were there any supporters, perhaps less generous ones?
It also raised the question in my mind, would the college have been satisfied if Coleman simply stopped using their name with his byline instead of firing him, resolving the question of St. John’s endorsing his views? This does seem on the surface to be about payback by Kennedy over Coleman’s political views, and less about other aspects claimed.
This does seem a bit more driven by the politics of who is handing over money
DogPrescottPile, it is incompetence: “As long as St. John’s has this man on the payroll, I will no longer give my money to St. John’s,” Busch wrote. “I will not support lies and false statements and half truths about anyone.”
Words from somebody with integrity – something you would know nothing about.
Interesting names at St, John: Labat, Busch… I was expecting next quote to be from Mr. Guiness.
Doggone, I would have to guess that other alumni complained, as reality is that while there are thinking liberal columnists, Nick Coleman is not one of them. Left or right, the man is an embarassment.
I wish Coleman well, but I have the hope that he doesn’t get another writing job until he learns that the kind of hackery he’s rightly infamous for is just plain tacky.
Which leads me to wonder if it was only Kennedy who threatened to withhold his largesse
Nowhere does the City Pages article say Kennedy interacted with anyone involved, much less “threatening” anything.
I also wish the guy well. He’s got young-ish kids to feed (good lord, man, slow down; you’re over freaking sixty), and while I’m sure he’s got plenty socked away from his decades at the Strib, being out of work sucks.
I don’t even care if it’s a writing job; in the blogging racket, you take material wherever you can get it.
Nick’s not St. Johns monkey anymore, but he’s like a turd that just won’t flush. He’ll pop up in some lefty toilet soon enough.
I’m actually surprised he’s not bobbing around with Joe Bodell already.
“being out of work sucks”
The Obama Depression continues.
He’s too old for humbling experiences… if he hasn’t caught on by now, he never will.
A mountain couldn’t damage a crushingly bloated ego like Nick Coleman’s.
I visited Nick’s Twitter feed to see if he took down that bit from his pretentious bio. I was amused to see that someone accused Nick of being a member of JournOlist.
I mean, come on. Even JournOlist had SOME standards.