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OPINION:
So Long, Frank
By Lookout Staff January 23, 20112 -- When Frank Gruber called us last month to tell us he could not continue to write his column because he would be running for City Council, our first reaction was "What about Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin?" After all, here were two writers -- an opinionated author who also happened to have launched The Village Voice and a popular daily columnist -- who ran as a ticket in the1969 New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary. But we knew the argument wouldn't fly. Frank mumbled something about how their candidacy was a joke and how we, too, must be kidding. Which, or course, we were. And besides, Mailer had recruited Breslin after the feisty columnist had quit to try his hand at fiction, which his detractors said he had been writing all along. All of which puts us in the unenviable position of covering someone who has been an integral part of our news family since his first column was published in October 2000. We know that Frank will expect nothing short of completely objective coverage of his campaign, and we plan to deliver that. We also know that it will be hard and that deep down, we'll be rooting for him to win. But before we see him go, a few words from the preface we wrote for his book "Urban Worrier: Making Politics Personal," a selection of Frank's best columns from his first five years at The Lookout. "Frank can write articulately about everything from the placement of a pedestrian crosswalk to a parent’s search for meaning in the wake of a child’s death. Frank’s prose shines a light on some of the dark urban corners we tend to ignore. His writing can make the intricacies of a bureaucrat’s zoning decision sound like it really can have a lasting effect on our lives. "Frank's column “What I Say” was written week after week, year after year during heavy workloads, long vacations, natural disasters and the interruptions of life in general. "They are what Frank Gruber has to say. They also happen to reflect what Santa Monica and its residents have been doing and saying during the early years of a new century." We wish Frank well in his new endeavor. We will miss him, and we are sure our readers will, too. |
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