Denial of the obvious

Kathleen Parker shot to journalistic stardom and a regular slot on the Washington Post’s op-ed page last year by a successful campaign of self-advertisement as a comely conservative female who was nevertheless prepared to adopt the liberal media’s line on Sarah Palin as an overpromoted airhead who owed everything to her looks and incongruous handiness with a moose-rifle. Yet suddenly Miss Parker found herself all a-flutter and reduced to what she represents as the hero-worshiping condition of Katharine Hepburn’s Rose Sayer in The African Queen during a much publicized bout of newsroom fisticuffs between the Post’s Henry Allen and Manuel Roig-Franzia. Actually, it was one punch that may or may not have been more of a slap by Mr. Allen in response to having been called, in what may or may not have been a light-hearted manner, an obscene name by Mr. Roig-Franzia. The suddenly...