Charlie Pierce
Encyclopedia
Charles P. Pierce (b. December 28, 1953, Worcester, Massachusetts
) is a nationally known American
sportswriter, author, and game show
panelist.
He graduated from St. John's High School
in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts
and from Marquette University
with a journalism major in 1975.
Pierce's first job was as a forest ranger for the state of Massachusetts, where among other duties he retrieved disposable diapers from trees so that raccoons would not choke on them. He wrote for Worcester Magazine in the 1970s, where he covered the Blizzard of 1978
. In the 1980s and '90, he was a staff reporter for the Boston Phoenix and, later, a sports columnist for the Boston Herald
.
Pierce currently writes for Esquire
, a position he has held since September 2011. He has also written for The New York Times
, the Los Angeles Times
, the Chicago Tribune
, the Boston Globe Sunday magazine, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sports Illustrated
, The National Sports Daily, GQ
, and the e-zine Slate
as well as the Media Matters
blog Altercation, hosted by historian/pundit Eric Alterman
.
Pierce also makes appearances on radio as a regular contributor to NPR programs Only A Game
and Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!. Recently Pierce has begun making weekly appearances on the Stephanie Miller Show. He also represented the Globe on several occasions on ESPN
's Around the Horn
. He also often co-hosts with Bob Ryan
on NESN's Globe 10.0.
Pierce is infamous for his 2003 Globe Magazine profile of Ted Kennedy in which he stated: “If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.” The passage was widely misinterpreted as laudatory of Kennedy; the full context makes clear that it was intended as irony. James Taranto
, an online columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote, "Charles Pierce must really hate Ted Kennedy," and described the excerpt as a "paragraph of pure poison." In an e-mail interview with Dan Kennedy (not related to the senator) of the Boston Phoenix, Pierce confirmed that he considered his reference to Kopechne as being a harsh observation about Ted Kennedy. Pierce criticized several conservative commentators who had cited the passage as an example of liberal media bias and added, "My respect for Mr. Taranto grows by the hour." Nevertheless, the conservative Media Research Center
made it its "Quote of the Year" in its 2004 DisHonors Awards, given to "the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2003."
In January 2010, Pierce ridiculed the notion that Republican
Scott Brown
could win the Massachusetts special Senate election
in a column published in the Boston Globe Magazine and formulated as a letter to Brown, with Pierce stating, "Well, we're almost here, aren't we? The end of a long, arduous, four-month campaign for a Senate seat that you have approximately the same chance of filling as you did the pilot's chair of the Starship Enterprise
" and "The notion that Massachusetts
would elect a Republican to fill the seat left vacant by Edward Kennedy
was the property of people who buy interesting mushroom
s in interesting places. You might as well expect the House of Windsor
to be succeeded on the British throne by the Kardashian
sisters." Despite Pierce's certainty that he would lose, Brown went on to win the Senate seat.
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....
) is a nationally known American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
sportswriter, author, and game show
Game show
A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...
panelist.
He graduated from St. John's High School
St. John's High School (Massachusetts)
Saint John's High School is a private Catholic boys' high school located in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. It is located in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester...
in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts
Shrewsbury, Massachusetts
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 31,640 people, 12,366 households, and 8,693 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 12,696 housing units at an average density of...
and from Marquette University
Marquette University
Marquette University is a private, coeducational, Jesuit, Roman Catholic university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1881, the school is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities...
with a journalism major in 1975.
Pierce's first job was as a forest ranger for the state of Massachusetts, where among other duties he retrieved disposable diapers from trees so that raccoons would not choke on them. He wrote for Worcester Magazine in the 1970s, where he covered the Blizzard of 1978
Northeastern United States Blizzard of 1978
The Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978 was a catastrophic and historic nor'easter that brought blizzard conditions to the New England region of the United States and the New York metropolitan area. The "Blizzard of '78" formed on February 5, 1978 and broke up on February 7, 1978...
. In the 1980s and '90, he was a staff reporter for the Boston Phoenix and, later, a sports columnist for the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
.
Pierce currently writes for Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, a position he has held since September 2011. He has also written for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, the Boston Globe Sunday magazine, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
, The National Sports Daily, GQ
GQ (magazine)
GQ is a monthly men's magazine focusing on fashion, style, and culture for men, through articles on food, movies, fitness, sex, music, travel, sports, technology, and books...
, and the e-zine Slate
Slate (magazine)
Slate is a US-based English language online current affairs and culture magazine created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004 it was purchased by the Washington Post Company...
as well as the Media Matters
Media Matters
Media Matters can refer to:* Media Matters for America, progressive media watchdog group founded by author David Brock* The radio program Media Matters hosted by communications professor Robert W. McChesney...
blog Altercation, hosted by historian/pundit Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman is an American English teacher, historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. His political weblog named Altercation was hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The...
.
Pierce also makes appearances on radio as a regular contributor to NPR programs Only A Game
Only A Game
Only A Game is a weekly sports program distributed by National Public Radio and hosted by Bill Littlefield. The show is produced at WBUR in Boston and airs on 210 affiliate stations around the country every Saturday...
and Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!. Recently Pierce has begun making weekly appearances on the Stephanie Miller Show. He also represented the Globe on several occasions on ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
's Around the Horn
Around the Horn
Around the Horn is a daily, half-hour sports roundtable on ESPN filmed in Washington, D.C. It airs at 5:00 pm ET, as part of a sports talk hour with Pardon the Interruption. The show is currently hosted by Tony Reali.-History:Around the Horn premiered on November 4, 2002, hosted by Max Kellerman...
. He also often co-hosts with Bob Ryan
Bob Ryan
Bob Ryan is an American sportswriter for The Boston Globe. He has been described as "the quintessential American sportswriter" and a basketball guru and is well known for his coverage of the sport including his famous stories covering the Boston Celtics in the 1970s. After graduating from Boston...
on NESN's Globe 10.0.
Publications
Pierce has written four books:- Sports Guy (2000)
- Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story (2001)
- Moving the Chains: Tom Brady and the Pursuit of Everything (2006)
- Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (2009)
Quotes
- "The Democrats are a timorous collection of trimmers and hedgers, one more bad beat away from whimpering themselves into a gelatinous goo just liquid enough to ooze under the door of some lobbying shop. They couldn't get laid in a whorehouse if they drove up in a Brink's truck. They spent a flat year trying to get one vote out of Olympia Snowe...And the Republicans are simply insane. Poor old John McCain is being primaried by J.D. Hayworth, once the dumbest man in Congress, at the behest of what might be called the lunatic fringe, if it wasn't the very mainstream of the party now. The energy of the party is wholly directed from the ancient, dark heart of American conspiracy theories, where it is not directed at simply standing athwart anything this president wants to do."
Pierce is infamous for his 2003 Globe Magazine profile of Ted Kennedy in which he stated: “If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.” The passage was widely misinterpreted as laudatory of Kennedy; the full context makes clear that it was intended as irony. James Taranto
James Taranto
James Taranto is an American columnist for The Wall Street Journal, editor of its online editorial page OpinionJournal.com and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. He is best known for his daily online column Best of the Web Today...
, an online columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote, "Charles Pierce must really hate Ted Kennedy," and described the excerpt as a "paragraph of pure poison." In an e-mail interview with Dan Kennedy (not related to the senator) of the Boston Phoenix, Pierce confirmed that he considered his reference to Kopechne as being a harsh observation about Ted Kennedy. Pierce criticized several conservative commentators who had cited the passage as an example of liberal media bias and added, "My respect for Mr. Taranto grows by the hour." Nevertheless, the conservative Media Research Center
Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is a content analysis organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1987 by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III...
made it its "Quote of the Year" in its 2004 DisHonors Awards, given to "the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2003."
In January 2010, Pierce ridiculed the notion that Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Scott Brown
Scott Brown
Scott Brown is a United States senator.Scott Brown may also refer to:-Sportsmen:*Scott Brown , American college football coach of Kentucky State...
could win the Massachusetts special Senate election
United States Senate special election in Massachusetts, 2010
The 2010 United States Senate special election in Massachusetts was a special election held on January 19, 2010, in order to fill the Massachusetts Class I United States Senate seat for the remainder of the term ending January 3, 2013...
in a column published in the Boston Globe Magazine and formulated as a letter to Brown, with Pierce stating, "Well, we're almost here, aren't we? The end of a long, arduous, four-month campaign for a Senate seat that you have approximately the same chance of filling as you did the pilot's chair of the Starship Enterprise
Starship Enterprise
The Enterprise or USS Enterprise is the name of several fictional starships, some of which are the focal point for various television series and films in the Star Trek franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. It is considered a name of legacy in the fleet...
" and "The notion that Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
would elect a Republican to fill the seat left vacant by Edward Kennedy
Edward Kennedy
Edward Kennedy may refer to:*Ted Kennedy, Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy , United States Senator from Massachusetts*Edward Kennedy , journalist who first reported the German surrender in World War II*Edward Kennedy, Jr., son of U.S...
was the property of people who buy interesting mushroom
Mushroom
A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi that...
s in interesting places. You might as well expect the House of Windsor
House of Windsor
The House of Windsor is the royal house of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V by royal proclamation on the 17 July 1917, when he changed the name of his family from the German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English Windsor, due to the anti-German sentiment in the United Kingdom...
to be succeeded on the British throne by the Kardashian
Kardashian
Kardashian is an Armenian surname. "Kardash" means 'stone' + 'carver' in Armenian and patronymic suffix "-ian".The most notable people with the surname Kardashian come from one family:First generation:...
sisters." Despite Pierce's certainty that he would lose, Brown went on to win the Senate seat.