Rob Christensen

Who knows what goes on in the mind of a veteran reporter who has to crank out stories day after day, week after week. But whatever is going on in the mind of Rob Christensen, it's pretty damn sad.

As you may remember, Christensen's column last week was an ode to the Legend of Liddy Dole, filled to the brim with all her talking points and spin. There was no legitimate reason for the column, no news hook, no immediacy. It was just Rob Christensen at this worst, being played like a fiddle by our very senior Senator.

This week's column is even worse.

In an environment where things like this and this are happening, Christensen appears to have nothing better to do than slop up to the neocon trough to paint a pretty little picture of one of the most vile creatures to enter the political arena in fifty years. Tom Ellis.

Few people have had a chance to grasp the levers of history. Tom Ellis saw his chance, and he took it. Which is one reason why Ellis, the 87-year old pipe-puffing Raleigh barrister, will be honored Wednesday by the conservative movement he helped build.

Ellis never held elective office, nor has he ever been a public figure. But for the past 50 years, arguably, no Tar Heel has been more politically influential than he -- as the chief strategist for Sen. Jesse Helms, helping elect John East and Lauch Faircloth to the Senate, elevating his friends and proteges to the federal bench and shaping the modern conservative movement.

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I have always thought of Ellis as one of the Confederate generals whose portraits decorate his office wall -- iron-willed, shrewd enough to adopt new tactics and ruthless when he needed to be. I also think he is in politics for the right reasons -- he is man motivated by deeply held convictions and a love of country, not a man trying to advance his own career or feather his own nest. Whatever your politics, you have to respect that.

And there you have the problem with the new Rob Christensen in five simple words: You have to respect that.

The lead political reporter for the News and Observer believes you have to respect a stop-at-nothing racist asshole like Tom Ellis who loooooved his country so much that he would lie and cheat and divide for the sole purpose of gaining political power. The man who almost single-handedly drove American politics into the Republican gutter is someone you "have to respect?" Un-frickin-believable.

Of all the things Christensen could have written about this week, he's chosen to deliver another creepy Republican puff-piece. If I were Melanie Sill, the executive editor at the News and Observer, I'd have two words for Rob Christensen: You're fired.