>This is the guy who writes those incredibly bad (even for jokes) poems for
>The Nation. I've often wondered if he used to be some hot shot, so they
>let him do these. Il've also wondered if he actually got paid for these. I
>think of him as the Andy Rooney of the left, though Rooney is sometimes
>acidentally amusing as well as irritateing.
Trillin - "Bud" to his friends - started doing those poems for The Nation after he took up a syndicated column, and the syndicators didn't want him doing a Nation column anymore. So his old friend Victor Navasky prevailed upon him to do those poemlettes instead. Trillin famously described his Nation column fee as being in the high two figures; don't know what he gets for his poems, but I doubt he writes them for nothing.
Doug