The Gentleman Editor
Hire Wlady!

July 24, 2001 11:25 a.m.

riters, especially of the hack variety, tend to have strong opinions about editors, who have the generally unenviable task of removing danglers, inanities, and lawsuit bait from our would-be masterpieces. Having been in league with editors for 20 or so years, I've had my share of beasts: Some edited with swords, some with machetes, and one named Cheshire with a chainsaw. Then there is Wladyslaw Pleszczyncski (spelling approximate), the longstanding editor of The American Spectator, who now finds himself between victims.

We first met in the early 1980s after his boss, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., suggested a piece attacking Mr. Rogers, who at the time aroused certain suspicions among astute observers. For reasons long forgotten, that piece was never written, though a piece about deer hunting with two editors — Chainsaw Cheshire and Rich Vigilante — took its place. The latter would later play a greater role in Wlady's life.

I was later told that Wlady wanted to spike the hunting piece (in which the only prey that fell was a large herd of beer and liquor bottles), but that cannot be held against him. Coming from the more precious provinces of California, the highly urbane Wlady was not accustomed to encountering rednecks who hunted from the front seat of a Cutlass Supreme. For a time, I also suspected the spiking had something to do with a prominent divot in his majestic forehead. For reasons also long forgotten, it was assumed the divot was the work of a Communist rifleman who had sniped Wlady during a visit to his ancestral Polish home. As it turns out, the real culprit was a friend who lost his grip on a baseball bat — an incident that would become somewhat symbolic of Wlady's later life.

For the sad fact is, friends and former friends have worked overtime to bean him. I am especially guilty. Like many hacks, mine is a somewhat low sensibility, and so nothing is more delightful than putting one past an editor. Because Wlady is the embodiment of old-world restraint and decorum, he was an especially plump target, though success was very rare. A large number of salacious references, some touching on bestiality, scatology, and necromancy, fell victim to his higher standards. He even canned an observation that if Moby Dick has shook his tail as fast as Shania Twain shakes hers, Ahab would have never caught up with him. His restraint extended to striking crude references about mutual foes, including the Commies we hated with such a passion.

That is worth keeping mind because of an ongoing attack on Wlady by a former friend and colleague, David Brock, who has charged, among other things, that Wlady is given to stentorian pronouncements and is also possessed by an "us versus them" mentality regarding political adversaries. My experience was quite different. Wlady was quite willing to run pieces that irked his conservative allies. A jab at maniacal self-promoter Jude Wanniski, for instance, was entitled "Jude the Semi-Obscure." He also ran a highly critical piece against the Unification Church, which in those days was stuffing money into countless pockets (including my own). He also happily ran a somewhat pointed characterization of Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden's relationship with his bosses (penned by yours truly after my departure from Lunar Orbit): "Pen to paper, tongue to boot."

More to the point, he was one of David Brock's most persistent defenders. He certainly defended him against my criticisms. This in part reflected Wlady's belief that the sex exposes were legitimate (I did not agree). But they also reflected a quality every writer seeks in an editor: That of the protective and loyal colleague.

David Brock didn't deserve such a colleague and friend. Meanwhile, Wlady finds himself between jobs. His 21 years with the Spectator are over, as the magazine takes a new direction and its website, which was Wlady's final posting, assumes room temperature (as Bob Tyrrell might put it). As it happens, the editor Vigilante was the one to pull the plug. Ain't fate something.

Many years ago, when attempting to escape a stint at government service, Wlady agreed to run an ad (for free) whose headline read: "Hire Shiflett." Today, the imperative is to "Hire Wlady." He needs the work, and some of us hacks need a friendly editor to send us off on stories and keep the checks flowing — and try to slip some juicy stuff by. In addition, our trade cannot afford to lose any of its short supply of gentlemen, Gentlemen, and there is none greater than our friend Wladyslaw.