From the U.S. Senate floor: Johnny Isakson on Bill Shipp

By retiring this week, 75-year-old political columnist Bill Shipp has created an impish, Tom Sawyeresque moment.

Very few people get to hear what’s likely to be said at their own funeral. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Johnny Isakson just got finished with a tribute.

Here’s a large piece of it:

”It’s said that all of us are replaceable. I’m not really sure Bill Shipp is replaceable. He began his writing in Georgia as a political columnist for the Atlanta Constitution.

“Starting in the ‘50s, he covered the late Ivan Allen and the late Dr. Martin Luther King and the governor and politicians of that era from George Wallace to Lester Maddox to Jimmy Carter to Carl Sanders. He wrote about the transition of the Old South to the New South. And in Washington he covered the Civil Rights Act in the middle and late ‘70s.

“He was a writer whose perception was keen, whose wit was sharp, and whose pen was even sharper. Now, for 32 of his 50 years, I was in elected office in Georgia. And I can make a true confession: When he wrote a column, you went to the paper, and you read Bill Shipp first.

“And there was a reason for that. If you were going to be the victim of the day, you might as well go out and find out what he was going to say about you. But you weren’t the victim of the day, you could relish in seeing some other politician being skewered by that pen…..

“I love Bill Shipp for many reasons — one because he and I have had the pleasure living in the same county for the last 40 years. The other is I’ve learned a lot from him.

“See, in politics in Georgia, Bill Shipp is the equivalent of Helen Thomas in a presidential press conference. When a Georgia politician has a press conference, Bill Shipp’s there. And when time comes for questions, he always has one. Or when it came time to roll a grenade in the middle of the room and blow things up, Bill Shipp could do it.

“He did it to me. He did it to others…..”

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