October 18, 2026 - Auburn Stuns No. 1 Georgia 27-24

Soon after I passed the bar in 1987, I hung a shingle on a townhouse in Center City, Philadelphia, but first had to decide what it would say. J.D. Lawyer. Attorney at Law? Any of them would have been accurate, because I’d passed the Pennsylvania bar on my first sitting. Instead I chose “Counselor at Law,” because that was how I saw myself back then. I still have the plaque in my attic.

BTW, the day those bar results arrived is a story in itself. It involves former Philadelphia Mayor Frank L. Rizzo, for whom I’d worked the year before and who had just received a result of his own: a disappointing election return in his rematch against W. Wilson Goode, the only person ever to defeat him at the polls, and who did so twice. Maybe I’ll tell that story on the radio. When I told Mayor Rizzo who was standing in his Chestnut Hill kitchen that I'd passed the bar, he teared up. The Big Bambino was a softie at heart. Anyway, all of it came back to me this week as I watched Katie Zacharia’s tenure as White House press secretary come apart in five days.

Don’t count me among those celebrating her demise. I’ve reviewed her social media over the last few years, and we are not exactly kindred spirits. Still, I have compassion for what she just went through.

Zacharia graduated from Pepperdine’s law school in 2011, failed the California bar, and never retook it. Plenty of famous people have also failed a bar exam. I won’t amplify their embarrassment by naming them here. Zacharia’s mistake was not the failure, but calling herself a lawyer on television. Over two years she reposted at least 15 headlines and segments that billed her as an attorney. Asked where she’d passed the bar, she answered, “When I moved to China.” That was a mistake.

Too bad she didn’t simply describe herself as a Pepperdine law graduate. That is accurate and nothing to be ashamed of.

Still, the zeal with which some in the media came after her was telling. Some who excoriated her lone press briefing turned into pontificators and acted sympathetic after her departure. If she’d never set foot in a law school and said she was a lawyer, I’d feel differently. Her biggest mistake was taking the podium unprepared, after a harrowing personal travel schedule and with a binder handed to her that morning.  

I hope she lands on her feet.

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Auburn rallied from a 14-point deficit to stun No. 1 Georgia 27-24 on Saturday, with Gunner Stockton’s late fumble setting up Alex McPherson’s game-winning 34-yard field goal.

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