RIP Peter Freyne

[jayfurr]

Every town I've ever lived in has had a free "alternative newsweekly". Vermont's local version is called "Seven Days" but it's otherwise COMPLETELY LIKE the one in your town. Reviews of bands, restaurants, a few snarky columns from people with more bile than wit, and the required weekly investigative piece. For as long as Carole and I have lived in Vermont, though, the one thing that really made Seven Days worth reading was its Vermont politics column, "Inside Track", written by a local gadfly, Peter Freyne. (To be completely honest, I normally avoid reading Seven Days because Carole at times has a bit of an obsession with it and tends to assume that I've read it cover to cover, even if she's only just gotten home with the weekly issue that she made a special detour to get a copy of, and I don't want to encourage her.)

Freyne's sarcastic and biting wit spared nobody. On either side of the aisle. He was equally as merciless toward Democrats as toward Republicans and could spot a pile of BS a mile away. I never had the pleasure, personally, to watch him in action but apparently one of the real pleasures of the journalistic profession, locally, was to watch Freyne stand up at a press conference to ask some smug politician a question. No one deflated a stuffed suit like Freyne. He also appeared on a local public TV show, "Vermont This Week", and made the show really worth watching (which, not being a TV junkie, I rarely did). But his true genius was in his columns. I don't know how he did it, but he spotted stories that no one else thought worth covering and brought a lot of garbage to light -- with his trademark humor and even-handed, fair, and absolutely spot-on derision.

He retired from Seven Days when he came down with cancer, and when he was declared free of cancer, we all sort of thought "Well, what's next?" Apparently what was next was a brain infection. He died on Wednesday.

An obituary from Seven Days is linked below. Note how EVERYONE in power in Vermont, just about, knew him and had to admit a healthy respect for him, even though they just about all also admitted being gored by him on more than one occasion. Of course, that could just be them being nice, but if you read Freyne, you'd understand.

http://7d.blogs.com/blurt/2009/01/draft-peter-freyne-19492009.html

And here's another obit from the Rutland Herald:

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009901080306

So long, Peter. Give 'em hell up in Heaven. :)

Comments

[jhvilas.livejournal.com]

W.r.t. Carole: Would it help to ask her to pick up 2 papers, and you could both then have a shot at looking at simultaneously?

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

That's not really the issue.

Carole, being an Asperger's type, was basically born without empathy. She has a very hard time thinking from the other person's perspective. If something is very important to her, then it must be important to everyone around her as well. I've come back into town from the West Coast, landed on a Friday, walked into the house, and within ten minutes of walking in had her start jabbering away at me about some article from that week's Seven Days that I couldn't possibly have read. And when I reminded her that I hadn't read it she had a very hard time getting her brain to absorb this datum, and even when it did she'd want to *tell* me all about the article so we could, then, "discuss" it. Which would consist of her telling me what *she* thought of it since I would obviously not have an opinion of it, not having read it.

She did this for so many years, so consistently, that I finally had to tell her "From now on I will NEVER READ SEVEN DAYS FOR ANY REASON. Just ASSUME THAT." I started referring to it as "The Evil" and would roll my eyes and sigh in a very passive-aggressive way if we were out shopping and I'd see her make a wide detour to stop by a Seven Days rack so she could grab the latest issue.

I still call it "The Evil" but once in a while did sneak a peek so I could read Freyne's column and Roland Sweet's "News Quirks". She doesn't seem to have fallen back into her bad habit, thank Jeebus. Took long enough to break her of it. :)

[vttale.livejournal.com]

I like Seven Days. IMO it is better than the alt weeklies with which I'm familiar.

I liked Freyne too. He was the kind of journalist who would confront a politician on not having answered the question that was asked, unlike the typical US journalist. I find that maddening about US journalists, that they just take whatever shit spewed out of a politician's/spokesperson's mouth regardless of whether it answered the question and then roll on to the next one. Freyne generally wouldn't, or at least would emphasize the dodge later.

The only thing I didn't like about Freyne was the way he had to have a nickname for *everybody*. It was so very fourth grade.

[jayfurr.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right. It was a bit grating, but after a while I just sort of got used to it. The other parts of his writing made up for it.