With Mike Hashimoto’s retirement, the Dallas Morning News found itself down one smart conservative voice on its editorial board. Today Hash’s replacement introduced himself. His name is Jay Caruso. I am going to ignore for the moment that he didn’t begin writing professionally until 2014 and that as recently as last year his full-time job was as a logistics analyst for the Home Depot (hey, in this day and age, you have to be open to making nontraditional hires, and, besides, logistics is important); and I am going to leave aside for now that he cites as one of his major influences a book written by Rush Limbaugh (hey, he also fell hard for William F. Buckley); and I am going to raise only a single eyebrow at the notion that this guy from Atlanta by way of Jersey, who, judging from his Twitter feed, seems interested mostly in national politics, will have anything worthwhile anytime soon to say about Dallas issues (hey, when you launch a national search for a job candidate, you can’t exclude Jersey or Atlanta); and I will instead just point out that Caruso wrote the following in his first outing for the paper:
“I am humbled that my colleagues are willing to take a chance on a writer without a traditional background in journalism.”
He doesn’t know what the word “humbled” means. Caruso is the opposite of humbled. If he’d been fired from his job at Home Depot and forced to work as a cashier at Dollar Tree, then he’d be humbled. Getting hired by the Morning News, still a large and rather influential media organization, that should make Caruso feel honored.
Congrats on the new job, Jay Caruso, and welcome to town. Here’s hoping the new gig works out.
