Drew Turns 100! A Column and A Podcast to Celebrate This Historic Milestone

Advance humorist Drew Gallagher celebrates his 100th column with a reflection on the column’s suspect origins, pansexual dolphins, and potential residency in a gulag.

By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST

Drew Gallagher with his daughter, Ellen, with their matching tattoos inspired by the Shel Silverstein poem “Signs.”

In Hollywood, they say it’s not what you know but who you know. Sadly, that seems to also apply to humorists writing for Fredericksburg-based online publications because I apparently did not know anyone in Hollywood who could put me in touch with legendary actor Chris Elliott to interview him for my 100^th column.

I can hear my journalism professor Steve Watkins now admonishing me for burying the lede. This, ladies and gentlemen, is my 100^th column…Ta Da! (Cue the 100 white doves flying one way over Caroline Street.)

The creation myth of this humor column, as told by my editor Martin Davis, is that in the infancy of the Advance he was sitting at a downtown bar with his friend and collaborator, Shaun Kenney, and in a moment of inspiration they looked to the end of the bar where I was passed out in front of a half-finished pint of Guinness and tossed beer nuts at me to wake me, so they could ask if I would write a humor column for their Quixotic attempt to resuscitate local journalism in Fredericksburg. The truth of the matter is that I was at the end of the bar on that fateful night, but I was drinking seltzer water with lime, pondering the radical skepticism of Rene Descartes, and getting ready to go out into the chilly winter night to help raise funds for the Friends of the Rappahannock, Legal Aid Works, and Empowerhouse by giving of myself until I had no more self to give.

Regardless of how this column came into being, no one ever thought it would live to see 100.

As I’ve approached this milestone, I’ve had many readers ask if I have a favorite column or is picking a favorite column akin to picking a favorite child? This is silliness mostly because no reader has actually asked that question, and I am contractually obligated to say that I love my two children equally. But there is one column in particular that continues to give me too much joy, and I have referenced it often. Simply Google “Drew Gallagher Gay Dolphins” or click here: https://www.fxbgadvance.com/p/let-that-pride-flag-and-those-dolphins

This column is a favorite for a number of reasons but mostly because the hypocrisy on display by a founding member of Moms for Liberty was almost something you could not make up. Almost. Moms for Liberty was essentially founded to ban books that were not written by or about heterosexual white people while also extolling the virtues of a moral lifestyle predicated on denying rights to anyone who was not heterosexual and white.

Unfortunately, founding Mom Bridget Ziegler engaged in a number of threesomes with her Christian husband (his name and faith) and another woman. This, apparently, was not included in the founding documents of Moms for Liberty because, well, it qualified for a number of the letters in the verboten LGBTQ.

Ziegler’s actions in a Florida bedroom coincided with the release of a new research paper on the mating habits of dolphins that showed that this staple of Florida tourism participated in same sex behavior and apparently really liked sex regardless of the mate or object. Of course, I am but a mere humorist and did not have the academic chops to opine convincingly on pansexual dolphins. Fortunately, Dr. Dominique Didier, a Professor of Aquatic Biology and Ichthyology at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, spent extra years in college so she was able to provide great quotes to underscore the loving lifestyles of everyone’s favorite mammal of the ocean-going mammals.

Though the column was a personal favorite, there were obvious political overtones which have proven to be a conundrum as my column has developed (or devolved). Let me be clear, I absolutely hate Donald Trump and hate how he continues to destroy this great country and the very essence of democracy. But I recognize that he was the preferred option of many Americans, so we are stuck with him for another three years provided he actually observes the Constitution’s limits on presidential terms. The Republicans and Mothers for Liberty have won. Stop being angry and demeaning, and bask in the orange-tinted glory of this new era.

But writing about Trump and his reprehensible behavior is, dare I say, too easy and better addressed by writers and talk show hosts who are funnier than I am and have a stable of writers and graphic designers at their behest. Donnie Johnston lambasts Trump in the Advance almost weekly (and is available for parties), so your subscriptions to the Advance still get to scratch that itch. Just because I concede the floor to the Great Scribe from Culpeper does not mean I hate Trump less; it’s just that I feel I have to try to find humor elsewhere and, sometimes, less successfully in the greater world than if I make fun of the continued incompetence of King Con (special thanks to Charlie Young on the nickname).

I appreciate all of my readers, from those who have deigned to read one part of one column or those who have read all 100. (I should make up t-shirts for these happy few.) Hopefully, these columns have elicited the occasional smile or chortle in a world gone mad. I choose to believe that I have another 100 columns in me and that the Advance will continue to be viable and a standout for local news coverage because of the dedication of its writers and its subscribers.

If the day comes when all artists who dare to be different or diffident are shipped to that great gulag in the ever-warming climate of the north, I may find myself among them, and I will miss my children equally per my contractual obligation. But like Sisyphus before me (the Albert Camus version), I too will be happy: “The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy.” Thank you.

And Now … The PODCAST!!!

Drew and his court, i.e., Tyrone, join NPD to talk about, well, whatever happens to come into Drew’s head!

Listen to the Podcast

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