Well, this just makes me pig-biting mad! I've apparently been attacked by some alien space ray, because I somehow missed the news of the demise last month of Weekly World News editor Eddie Clontz. It was on Romenesko and everything! The man's "Ed Anger" columns sustained me through the dark days of J-school, and I have to learn of his passing from the freakin' Economist? I hang my head in shame!

Anyway, The Economist's appreciation is suitably droll:

His own politics were mysterious. Under the pseudonym “Ed Anger”, he wrote a News column so vitriolically right-wing that it possibly came from the left. Anger hated foreigners, yoga, whales, speed limits and pineapple on pizza; he liked flogging, electrocutions and beer.

Here was a man who simply refused, as a matter of principle, to allow truth to get in the way of a great story.

Give Elvis a hug for us, Eddie!

>Eddie Clontz [The Economist]
>Aliens Beam Editor to Tabloid Heaven [Washington Post]