Life has not been good for Tennessean editor Frank Sutherland lately, especially since his appearance in an Al Gore fund-raising video and his embarrassing “Me and Al, we’re tight” defense on the op-ed page of his newspaper.
But things are looking up for Sutherland; last week he won a prestigious “Best of Gannett” award from the media chain that owns The Tennessean.
The editor’s weekly wine column, “Wine in Nashville,” was entered, apparently without his knowledge, in the “Humor Writing” category of the competition, where it was the judges’ unanimous choice for first prize. The judges’ comments were glowing.
“Sutherland displays a Twain-like ear for the pomposity of language often employed by those who have nothing to say, and his dead-on parody of such a character left me in stitches,” wrote one. “It begins with the column’s title—with the unintentionally hilarious implication that wine is somehow different in Nashville than anywhere else.”
“We were reading his columns aloud in the judges’ conference room and we all had tears running down our faces from laughter,” wrote another judge, who added, “Congratulations to the worthy successor of Thurber and Benchley.”
Sutherland, perhaps the only person associated with the wine column who doesn’t realize its humor value, was said to be undecided about whether to travel to Washington, D.C., next month to pick up his award.
“He’d love to have a ‘Best of Gannett’ award,” a source close to the situation said. “He’s thinking about throwing some wine jokes into his next few columns and pretending he meant to be funny all along.”
