Voting Station

Jack Anderson

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Commentator

The Resume

    (October 19, 1922-December 17, 2005)
    Born in Long Beach, California
    Investigative journalist
    Took over the syndicated 'Washington Merry-Go-Round' column after the death of Drew Pearson
    Co-founder of Citizens Against Government Waste (1984)
    Wrote the books 'The Case Against Congress' (1969), 'The Anderson Papers' (1973), 'Confessions of a Muckraker' (1979), 'Alice in Blunderland' (1983) and 'Peace, War and Politics: An Eyewitness Account' (1999)
    Corespondent on Good Morning America (1975-84)

Why he might be annoying:

    While working as Pearson's legman, he was caught bugging a room at the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel to try to record a presidential aide accepting a bribe (1958).
    He got out of that jam by paying a witness $1,000.
    He worked with Richard Nixon to smear political rival George Wallace, using leaked info from Wallace's IRS files to write a column questioning his finances (1970).
    He falsely accused George McGovern's running mate Thomas Eagleton of having been arrested for drunk driving (1972).
    He killed a story about Frank Sinatra's mob ties because he and Sinatra were partners in a business venture.
    He arranged trough a middleman the purchase of some land owned by one of his best sources and later conceded that it was a payoff.
    He wrote in a bombastic, self-congratulatory styles.
    Many columns, especially in his later years, were ghostwritten by his assistants.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was married to Olivia Farley for 56 years.
    At its peak, his column was syndicated to 1,000 newspapers and had 45 million readers.
    He won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the US government secretly favoring Pakistan in its border war with India (1972).
    His disclosure that the Justice Department had settled an anti-trust against ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph) on surprisingly favorable terms after ITT secretly donated $400,000 to Nixon's re-election campaign got him a place on Nixon's enemies list.
    White House Plumber G. Gordon Liddy went so far as to investigate the possibility of poisoning Anderson or possibly slipping him LSD before a scheduled TV appearance.
    The CIA tapped his phone and kept him and his family under surveillance to try to find who was passing government information to him.
    He said, 'I have to do every day what Woodward and Bernstein did once.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 9 Votes: 55.56% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 7 Votes: 85.71% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 74 Votes: 45.95% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 11 Votes: 45.45% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 12 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 30 Votes: 60.0% Annoying