Australia is infested with them. One newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald , is weighed down by more than one dozen columnists in its weekend edition alone. Recently one of the Herald 's highest-paid columnists, a walking sedative called Leo Schofield, resigned after a hissy fit with the editor over something or other. Media folk reacted as though the sun had been extinguished but, challenged to remember anything Leo had written, most couldn't recall a single item. At least Leo knew his stuff, even if it was numbing to read.
Some local columnists know less about their subject than do their readers.
Judging from his writing, Dennis Pryor, a teevee critic at the Melbourne Age , quite possibly doesn't own a teevee. The Herald 's Peter Fitzsimons believes the Weekly World News is a serious news source, recycling the tabloid parody magazine's bogus stories in his own column. Still, these guys aren't the worst. Other times she fretted over her house. Or her kids.