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Jayne: Its tremendous what I’m doing for newspaper columns

By Greg Jayne, Columbian Opinion Page Editor
Published: April 30, 2017, 6:02am

I write the best columns. Nobody writes better columns than I do. They’re huge; they’re beautiful; everybody loves my columns. Believe me.

You already knew that; I have written about it before. But it is worth mentioning because I recently was interviewed about my first 1,365 days as the Editorial Page Editor and was able to recount my many, many huge successes. So many successes; tremendous successes. I have been so successful that I am tired of winning all the time.

The 1,365 days? That’s an artificial number, of course. It’s made up by the media. Never mind that when I took this position I unveiled a 1,365-day contract with readers. I have accomplished more in my first 1,365 days than any columnist in history. It has been huge and beautiful.

During my interview, I talked about a meeting with a colleague. I said: “Well he said, you’ll be the greatest columnist in the history of, but you know what, I’ll take that also, but that you could be. But he said, will be the greatest columnist but I would also accept the other. In other words, if you do your job, but I accept that. Then I watched him interviewed and it was like he never even was here. It’s incredible. I watched him interviewed a week later and it’s like he was never in my office. And you can even say that.”

Really. I said that. Verbatim. It’s not fake news. You can look up my interview with an Associated Press reporter.

OK, OK, you might think that sounds like word salad. Like I am incoherent and can’t put together a competent sentence.

A bigly vocabulary

Just because my predecessor would speak and write in complete sentences, some people think that I’m too undignified to be a columnist for The Columbian. But I inherited a mess. I’m a big improvement. Complete sentences are overrated; I have a tremendous relationship with the English language. Tremendous. And people love me for it. Like I said in the interview:

“No I have; it’s interesting; I have, seem to get very high ratings. I definitely. You know Chris Wallace had 9.2 million people; it’s the highest in the history of the show. I have all the ratings for all those morning shows. When I go, they go double, triple. Chris Wallace, look back during the Army-Navy football game; I did his show that morning. It had 9.2 million people. It’s the highest they’ve ever had. On any, on air, (CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ host John) Dickerson had 5.2 million people. It’s the highest for ‘Face the Nation’ or, as I call it, ‘Deface the Nation.’ It’s the highest for ‘Deface the Nation’ since the World Trade Center, since the World Trade Center came down. It’s a tremendous advantage.”

Really. I said that. Verbatim. You can look that up, too.

And I called it, “Deface the Nation.” Get it? That’s a play on words, because I have a bigly vocabulary. Mashable.com broke down my interview and found that of my 6,220 words, all but 67 percent of them had more than one syllable. That might be fake media, though. I don’t know, but that’s what some people are saying.

The guy who was here before me used big words, like he was smart. But I have the best ratings; that’s what really matters for a columnist.

And I have bigly readers. Do you want a Coke or anything? And my readers say my columns are the best thing they have ever read. They voted for me; I got 306 votes. Well, the interviewer never asked about that, so I had to mention it on my own eight times. Eight times! Nobody asks about how many votes I got, so I bring it up when I can. Because people voted for me.

And the media treats me unfairly. So unfair. Sad! I don’t pay attention. Like I said in the interview: “I don’t watch things that are unpleasant. I just don’t watch them.” It’s better for a columnist to avoid unpleasant things than to be informed.

That way, we can make columns great again. After all, it’s not like I’m president of the United States or anything.

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