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RIP Peter Freyne
Jan. 8th, 2009 07:12 amEvery 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. :)
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. :)
