Overpaid, Underworked Chronicle Columnist, Citing That “Middle Aged, Achy Feeling,” to Take Five-Month Sabbatical

Writing that one column that could have been interpreted as being mildly critical of Mayor Bill White must have been too much in the way of exertion for the Houston Chronicle’s Rick Casey, who in his most recent Sunday offering abruptly announced that he’s taking off for the next five months to “relax, read and reflect.”

The columnist signed off in typical fashion, recounting a story leftover from his days as a columnist at the San Antonio Express-News that has less than absolutely nothing to do with Houston. But apparently it’s a special story---according to Casey, “one of the most salacious, compelling, fascinating and downright outrageous stories I’ve ever stumbled across.”

One small thing we’ve learned over the course of our half-century or so is that anytime a writer prefaces a story by telling you how compelling, fascinating and downright outrageous it is, you can usually assume it’s none of those things (you show, you don’t tell, as they teach in Good Writin’ 101). And that’s the case with Casey’s story, which has something to do with two San Antonio lawyers and … ah, who cares.

Casey reports that he’ll be filing dispatches (whether during or after his "sabbatical" is not clear) from the trial of these two San Antonio lawyers, a trial that we’d bet will be staged in San Antonio, and he humbly suggests that readers follow these dispatches not for the “prurient details” (right!) but for some reason that we frankly can’t understand, even though we read Casey’s explanatory paragraph three-and-a-half times.

Oh well. We wish Mr. Casey the best in his pursuit of readin’, relaxin’ and reflectin’ and will presume to speak for many subscribers to the daily newspaper when we say, “Don’t hurry back!”