You can always tell when banker Doug French has the writing duties in the execrable e-mail Liberty Watch newsletter: It’s when it’s literate.

Don’t believe us? Well check out a few passages written recently by perennial loser (and English composition dropout) George Harris, the newsletter’s publisher:

“Steve Wark Strike [sic] Again

“It seems the Assembly District 21 race has got some bazaar [sic] twist [sic] and turns going on. Sources close to Liberty Watch explained the anointed candidate Kris Munn was promised by Billy Rogers that he would be taking a pass on the District 21 race because he was over-committed and that made Munn as happy as a pig in slop. …

“I don’t think Michele did it. No, my little cape crusaders, [sic] this smells like the work of dirty political trickster Steve Wark. Chances are, Billy Rogers is telling the truth. Heck, I don’t think he even knows who Michele Sanders is.

“Steve Wark hasn’t won a race since Pete Ernaut plucked him out of obscurity to be ‘grassroots’ coordinator for Kenny Guinn’s governor’s race, which by the way had no competition. The position allowed this nit-wit [sic] Wark to become a grassroots genius. It’s a title that to this day Pete Ernaut rues because like many of us, he believes Wark is a Dork. [sic]”

Oh, by the way, guess who else hasn’t won a race? That would be Harris.

But our point is, when Harris wisely turns the writing duties to French, whose first language is apparently English, the newsletter is at least readable.

Now, as far as content, we think Liberty Watch is … how to phrase this diplomatically? … generally full of no less than one maritime ton of bullshit.

Such was the case on June 27, when French took on the entire Review-Journal organization, starting with Publisher Sherm Frederick. (FULL DISCLOSURE: Frederick is president of Stephens Media Group, which owns both the R-J, CityLife and Various Things & Stuff. As such, he’s our corporate overlord-in-chief.)

“The R-J’s publisher Sherman Frederick has his own column now to blather on about absolutely nothing each and every Sunday,” French slammed.

“But as if to really annoy their loyal readers, the R-J has decided that Geoff Schumacher and Erin Neff should dominate the Sunday editorial section. As if we don’t get enough of what these two nitwits go on about from either the Sun or virtually any other paper in the good old US of A, excepting the Orange County Register.”

(MORE FULL DISCLOSURE: Schumacher is our boss in the Stephens corporate hierarchy, and Neff is our friend, to say nothing of being a great columnist and a mean poker player.)

French then attacks Schumacher for believing in planning and Neff for believing in global warming, neither of which French has much use for. (When he’s floating around the remains of an ill-planned city, perhaps his views will be different?)

Anyway, Frederick gently poked back at French in Sunday’s paper, noting that the R-J also publishes conservatives like Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer. (He left out our in-house favorite Vin Suprynowitz!)

“Come on, folks. It’s the Fourth of July weekend. Celebrate freedom through diversity of speech. The soreheads at Liberty Watch should be the first to get that concept,” Frederick writes.

Indeed they should, if for no other reason than this: In that very same Sunday newspaper there appeared an op-ed column by none other than Doug French.

Say what you will about Frederick, and the rest of the R-J organization, but don’t say they aren’t truly committed to free speech, open dialogue and promoting divergent points of view. You can tell because in the same Sunday section that French laments for having “nitwits” for columnists, his own work is published.

Does that make him a “nitwit”? No, just a hypocrite.