Comments (0) Best Miami Herald Columnist - 2008
Fred Grimm
The Miami Herald has certainly employed some great opinion-makers over the years. Carl Hiaasen is tops. Pulitzer-winning Leonard Pitts did well for a while. Joel Achenbach and Gene Weingarten, who moved onto the Washington Post, were clever and mischievous. (Weingarten's Pulitzer this year was a tribute to the idea that spit-ballers can make good.) And Liz Balmaseda, who also won a Pulitzer in the role, changed the newspaper's (and the city's) dynamics at a time when it was an old boys' club. But for our money, the best of 'em is Fred Grimm. This is a guy who long ago covered the South and whose deep Southern roots flavor much of his writing. He's a gent with a smile and an encouraging word for colleagues — and old-style, kick-ass Herald sarcasm for just about everyone in elected office. Take a recent column that pointed out the hypocrisy of Florida supporting Scripps Oceanographic Institute in Palm Beach County and advocating teaching of intelligent design in schools. The message of "cracker" and "bible-thumping" Florida legislators to Scripps, Grimm wrote, is this: "Either do your so-called biomedical research by giving equal time to the seven-day creation theory, the 7,000-year-old earth theory, and intelligent design, or take your (monkey) tails straight back to Cow-lie-forn-ya."
