Donald Kaul is an American journalist. After decades of writing columns for the Des Moines Register, he is now syndicated by OtherWords, a national non-profit editorial service. He currently lives in Michigan ^[1] and his OtherWords columns run in many publications, including Progressive Populist,^[2] Insider Iowa.^[3] Kaul established his liberal and satirical style during his time at the Register. He was named twice as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary.^[4] He is one of the co-founders of the yearly week-long RAGBRAI bike ride across the state of Iowa.

Following Mr. Kaul's heart attack last July, OtherWords.org featured an article titled, Donald Kaul's Breather, about his life and accomplishments. ^[5]

Gun Ownership

On December 19, 2012, Mr. Kaul - generally a satire writer - wrote a controversial article titled, The New Agenda on Guns We Need after Newtown that he intended as satire but which was not labeled as such at the Otherwords.org site he used for distributing his work.^[6] The article was later picked up by the Des Moines Register and published on December 30, 2012 as an op-ed titled, Nation needs a new agenda on guns but the work continued to not be labeled satire. In the article, Mr. Kaul controversially wrote that:

• The Second Amendment should be repealed,
• The National Rifle Association be declared a terrorist organization, with an option to raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth,
• The ownership of "unlicensed assault rifles" become a felony with approval of "prying the guns from the cold dead hands" of those owners who refuse to give them up,
• and that Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, should be tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged around until they saw the light on gun control.^[7]

The article generated publicity on the internet in part because it was written by a prominent writer, because the prose was very strong, and because it was unclear to many readers whether the writer was employing a literary tool like satire. On January 4, 2013, Mr. Kaul wrote a clarification piece in Otherwords.org titled Deploying Satire at My Own Risk where he clarified that his original work was intended as satire and that he had received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls, some of them threatening, regarding his original article. He further clarified that he was using strong language as a literary tool and that he did not intend physical harm to anyone nor did he advocate the repeal of the second amendment, merely suggesting that the second amendment was being misinterpreted currently.^[8]

References

External links

• Donald Kaul Bio and list of columns

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