Witty, Wicked Ed Donohoe Not Least Of Curmudgeons

Last Tuesday's spasm in this space was about curmudgeons.

This department has been called a curmudgeon, a lofty title but undeserved. I have the necessary ill temper but not the wit. A genuine curmudgeon must get off a wicked bon mot or string together a choice selection of venomous adverbs to qualify.

Then the phone rang. "Curmudgeons, indeed," a voice said, "but you left out Ed Donohoe!"

That is true, a flagrant oversight. The late editor-columnist of the Washington Teamster was this town's longest-running scold.

One victim wrote to him: "You are a small-town clown, a malicious racist and a bigot. Additionally, you are a gutless maggot, safely and legally hiding behind your perverted idea of freedom of the press."

That riposte was by the late John Haydon, former port commissioner, writer, politico and governor of American Samoa. One wonders at such bile. All Donohoe had done was refer to Haydon as "the sourpussed governor of far-off Samoa who looks like an evil serpent sent by the gods to foul native nests."

Back to Donohoe in a minute. For now, our most durable curmudgeon is Henry Gay, the distinguished terrorist of the Shelton-Mason County Journal.

Henry is an ideological bipartisan critic of the scene. He skewers conservatives and liberals with equal ease and dispassionate contempt. He is far wittier than Donohoe ever was.

But Eddie was major league. We were good friends, but he frequently attacked me, mainly because I admired Jim Ellis, the great civic activist, whom Donohoe scorned.

He once called me a "limp-wristed liberal." He followed the attack with a cackling phone call, inviting me to lunch. We spent two hours over lamb shanks, mutually trying to make Seattle a better city with our ideas; no mention was made of limp wrists.

Eddie, of course, never attacked the Teamsters. He knew that bread is buttered only on one side. He was an ardent Catholic; he frequently criticized the church.

But let somebody else question Catholic doctrine or personalities! Eddie would come out scratching and snarling like a cornered ocelot.

When he called the League of Women Voters the League of Women Vultures he was genuinely puzzled as to why they might take offense. Equally, he attacked Irving Clark Jr., a radio talk-show host. He savaged UW athletic figures, PONCHO, the World's Fair and the Pike Place Market.

One sample: "PONCHO is an acronym that stands for a societylike cotillion, where equal parts filthy rich and nouveau riche are mixed with Julio Gallo's finest domestic bouquet to produce a sort of Lost Weekend for the honor and glory of our Pacific Northwest art culture.

"Someplace between posturing, swilling and leering at plunging decolletages . . . an auction is held where these fools buy such exotica as an abandoned Great Northern caboose or a second honeymoon for two or more in Alluring Antarctica."

Donohoe got away with murder. Unattacked people savored his tirades against others. His column, "Tilting the Windmill," skyrocketed the Washington Teamster's circulation, and he would send free subscriptions to his favorite victims.

In a misguided attempt to raise circulation, the P-I (which now runs Henry Gay's column) once hired Donohoe to write for it. Eight months later a team of white-faced, horrified libel attorneys urged the paper to have second thoughts. So he was fired.

Which brings us to another question. Are there any other real curmudgeons in our future? Probably not.

Fourth Estate establishmentarians, the power structure of 1990s newspapers, journals and magazines, have become too bland, too timid, too unimaginative to tolerate any gifted misanthrope. Donohoe today would be a dinosaur, victimized by our environment of caution. A pity.

Even in the most tolerant of circumstances, a true curmudgeon runs other risks.

My friend Jim Halpin once did a magazine profile of Donohoe. He unearthed the fact that Eddie had been admitted to Providence Medical Center because of bad stomach cramps.

"Eddie was an inveterate hypochondriac," Halpin remembers. "He had recently roasted Providence for raising its prices. So when he arrived at the hospital, Donohoe's doctor ordered an enema and a nurse inserted a barium enema tube into his plumbing.

"Then the doctor sighed happily, `If only the good sisters could see you now.' "

Emmett Watson's column appears Tuesday and Friday in the Local section of The Times.