Brain tumor, dire prognosis halt Robert Novak's long-running column

Robert Novak, a crusty, proud conservative writer who had the longest-running newspaper column in memory, announced his immediate retirement today.

The cause: a brain tumor found last week that forced him at the time to announce the suspension of his column, pending chemotherapy treatments. Novak's words were widely read by friend and foe alike.

And conservative politicians and their strategists invested considerable time in wooing a sympathetic presentation from Novak and, through him, his widespread audience.

A journalistic institution in Washington for more than a half-century, the 77-year-old Novak, with the white hair and comb-over, had admitted himself to a Boston hospital last week when he felt ill during a visit near there with his wife, Geraldine.

Today, a report on his home Chicago Sun-Times website quoted Novak as determined to defeat the malignant tumor. But the website also said the columnist's prognosis was "dire."

Besides his long-running newspaper column, originally begun with partner Rowland Evans, Novak was for many years co-host of "Crossfire," the now deceased verbal food fight that passed for political debate on CNN.

The columnist wasn't always right in his closely watched reports. Most recently, he admitted being tricked by a John McCain source into reporting that the Republican's vice presidential choice announcement was imminent. It wasn't. But, typically, as his scheming source well knew, Novak's online report ignited a mini-flood of other coverage and speculation. 

It was merely another twist in a continuous public relations game between presidential campaigns to distract each other, this time to attract a minor amount of attention away from the blanket media coverage of Barack Obama's recent foreign field trip.

Last month Novak was cited by police after hitting a homeless pedestrian in Washington traffic with his Corvette; the writer said he was unaware of any collision.

In recent years, of course, Novak was most famous for his printed revelation of what apparently quite a few people already knew, that a woman named Valerie Plame was a CIA employee.

That original leak turned out to be unintentional, but was widely cited as evidence of a Bush administration conspiracy to tarnish Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson. The investigation and trial eventually resulted in the conviction of Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on perjury charges. His sentence was later commuted by President Bush.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Photo credits: Alex Wong / Getty Images (above) and hat tip to MediaBistro.com for the unfortunate wire service typo.

Comments

[sethofdeath]

you can't escape karma

[Molly]

While I feel compassion for this man, as I do for anyone who suffers, I don't think its necessary to act as though he were some kind of journalist-hero just because he is dying. Being "duped" is unlikely when you have the connections he has, and if he were really "duped" then he's not that great of a journalist anyway. Remember the rules about checking your sources, not repeating mere gossip, NOT deliberately outing American spies as a means to help your party stay in power... His words and actions harmed countless people and helped drag a nation into an unjust war. So, peace to you, Robert Novack, and may the world forgive you.

[Abel Johnson]

Novak's shilling for the Repubican Party is sickening. I don't with anything he writes or what he stands for. All the pettiness aside, I wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to reading his articles in the near future.