And I Said to Myself

Any century is lucky if it has a clown or two. The last century had one in Ed Wynn. Not a comic, a clown. THE ED WYNN SHOW, starring this genius, this clown, a must see in the earliest days of black and white television, had one detractor, a television critic named Jack Hellman. Hellman had written one or two blistering articles about the Wynn TV effort when one day he decided to visit the set with the show's publicity man, Henry Rogers. Hellman, a notoriously unattractive man, was coming down the center aisle with Rogers when Wynn, who'd never met Hellman, spotted him from the stage. "Who's that with Henry," he asked his director. "Jack Hellman," came the response. "I'm glad," said Wynn.

I recalled that story this morning when I read on Yahoo yet another twisted, venomous attack on Americans, now including so many conservatives, who dare to suggest we may have made some mistakes in Iraq. Accompanying the piece, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY; A VAST SLEEPER CELL, was a photograph of its author, Ann Coulter, rendered singularly unattractive by that hard, jaw-jutting up yours look from which her singularly sick attacks spew.

And I said to myself: "I'm glad."