Colummsts's Column

Columnists are a privileged class. When they run out of news and gossip, they can talk about themselves or each other. Last week, in the holiday news lull, they did.

P: New York Star Columnist John S. Wilson tossed Columnist Walter Winchell a 1948 award: "The hand-tooled, self-propelled backscratcher for the Most Excessive Narcissistic Applause."

P: New York Sun Columnist George E. Sokolsky cited bludgeon-wielding Hearst Columnist Westbrook Pegler as "one Of the most competent reporters in American journalism." Hearst's New York Journal-American ran a half-page promotion ad to be sure that no reader missed the compliment.

P: Columnist Pegler got another kind of compliment from Columnist Eleanor Roosevelt. In her question & answer column in the Ladies' Home Journal, she was asked why her "big, strong American sons" didn't horsewhip Westbrook Pegler. Mrs. Roosevelt's reply: "Why should they bother to horsewhip a poor little creature like Westbrook Pegler? They would probably go to jail for attacking someone who was physically older and perhaps unable to defend himself. After all, he is such a little gnat on the horizon . . ."

P: Herald Tribune Radio Columnist John Crosby, reviewing New York Daily News Columnist Ed Sullivan's television show, crossly asked: "Why is Ed Sullivan on it?" He "wanders out on the stage, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as if imploring the help of God, and begins to talk about 'his very good friends' . . . in show business."

P: The Trib's Sunday Columnist Lucius Beebe, appearing on radio's Author Meets Critic, gave the back of his white suede glove to Saturday Review of Literature Columnist Bennett Cerf, for lifting other wits' anecdotes. Said Beebe of Cerf's newest joke book: "Really an autobiography of Jimmy Valentine . . ."

With all this intramural chitchat going on, it was only a question of time until a column was started to copyread the columnists. Three months ago, the New York Star launched such a column as an experiment. It has worked so well that last week the Star was planning to run "So They Said," by Frank Columbine, three times a week.

Columbine is the Star's pseudonym for slim Tim Taylor, 28, a reporter turned freelancer. Taylor scans some 35 Manhattan columns a day in his Stamford, Conn, home and shows up at the Star only to write his column. He spends two-thirds of his time cross-indexing columnists' items to find out such things as 1) how many errors are made, 2) whom the columnists talk about most, and 3) how they correct their mistakes without openly admitting that they were wrong. Wrote Taylor: Columnist "Sullivan got himself in hot water when he identified Joyce Matthews and Arthur Lesser as a 'stem twosome.' Two days later he set the record straight when he disclosed the 'Arthur Lessers [are] celebrating their 16th wedding anniversary at New Haven.' "

With a little rudimentary research, he is able to trip up columnists who don't check their gossip. Thus when Dartton Walker asked in the Daily News, "Has Stanton Griffis, ambassador to Egypt, purchased the Brentano bookstores?" Columbine answered him in print: yes, 14 years ago.

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