A Writer's Fall From Grace

摘要

The front-page editor's note was terse. "Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene has resigned and will no longer appear in the pages of the newspaper," began the statement signed by Ann Marie Lipinski, a woman who has been in the top job at Chicago's famed broadsheet since February 2001. "Green's resignation was sought after he acknowledged engaging in inappropriate sexual conduct some years ago with a girl in her late teens whom he met in connection with his newspaper column." Would that it were so simple. Greene, a best-selling author and one of the country's best-known columnists, did continue to appear in the pages of his old paper. All week, articles, editorials and letters cluttered the Tribune. It was an operatic tale: a man who made his name opining on the lost innocence of high school, the horror of childhood abuse and the redeeming love of a good family had destroyed his career because of a tawdry encounter in a downtown hotel with a 17-year-old high-school student.