The Silence of the Lambert

It appears the chill wind has blown through Brian Lambert's cubicle at the Pioneer Press. Some months ago we were alerted to the pending "reassignment" of the entrenched veteran entertainment columnist. I now point you to the archive of his recent work.

It's all over. His sneering, partisan voice, hectoring us from what should have been a non-political beat has been silenced once and for all. And that silence is golden for conservatives all over town.

This is a huge development in recapturing credibility for the Pioneer Press. Because no right thinking Minnesotan could take that paper seriously knowing Lambert was waiting in the Variety section to lecture us on how objective Minnesota Public Radio is while chronically dismissing all of conservative talk radio as "right wing howler monkeys" or comparing Fox News to Al Jazeera. For those sins against reality, I'd like to believe, he got the lead pipe message.

It was a nice run for Lambert. He was around for what, 20 years? Over this time he got fat and happy distorting the news and furthering his political agenda under the thin veil of journalistic integrity. I'm sure he thought the ride was never going to end. Why would he, given the traditionally leftist newsroom culture at the Pioneer Press? Sealed off in this context, over time he became more unbalanced, lost perspective as to what he was hired to do, and became nothing more than a political hack and a propagandist. All while writing an entertainment column, mind you.

But it appears things are starting to change at the Pioneer Press. We've never been told exactly why Lambert was reassigned. (In fact, this sounds like a story a good local entertainment columnist would be working on. Star Tribune - where are you on this one? I can't believe it's a secret in local MSM social circles. Why is it a secret to the public?) My guess is that some responsible person in executive management at Knight Ridder finally realized what a drag Lambert was to the paper's integrity, while offering no benefit in terms of attracting readers. A simple business decision really, one that should have been made years ago.

To be clear, Lambert hasn't been fired. Within the past couple of weeks I noticed he popped up in Austin, MN doing some flood coverage. To his credit (or maybe his new editor's credit), it was clean copy, just the facts, no attempts to blame the rain on Tim Pawlenty or anything like that. But you have to believe this is killing Lambert. I'm sure he didn't get into journalism for the purpose of reporting the facts. What's the fun in that? He was supposed to change the world. Exposing his political enemies, afflicting the comfortable, and all that good stuff he saw in All The President's Men. That's going to be hard to do now, while writing about people filling up sand bags in the rain. But if anybody could find a way to twist that, it's Lambert. For this reason, he'll continue to bear scrutiny.