In an interview with Christopher Buckley in the December 4 edition of the New Yorker, gossip columnist Ann Landers lashed out at Pope John Paul II and the Polish people. After first making a favorable comment about the Pope, Landers remarked, “Of course, he’s a Polack. They’re very antiwomen.” In a carefully worded statement, Landers later apologized for the crack about the Pope, but made no direct apology for her snide comment about the Polish people.
The Catholic League sent its own comments to the New Yorker and further disseminated its views via a news release and radio interviews. The league said that “The irony is that by blaming all Polish people–including the Pope–for being misogynists, Ann Landers reveals herself as the true bigot.”
The hypocrisy of the nation’s elites to the Landers attack was also noted by the league: “If Landers were treated by the elites in our society the way people like Al Campanis, Jimmy the Greek or Marge Schott were, she would be subject to far more than `40 lashes with a wet noodle.’ She would either be terminated or shipped off to some mind-control sensitivity training workshop.”
It should be noted that in the wake of this controversy, at least one newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, has decided to drop Landers’ column, beginning in 1996.
