Jon Carroll

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Jon Carroll is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, beginning in 1982. He is featured on page 2 of the Datebook (the newspaper's entertainment section) on weekdays. Locally, he is best known for his moderate-to-liberal politics and his cat columns. On the internet, he is known for starting the Unitarian Jihad movement.

Carroll was born in Los Angeles and raised in nearby Pasadena. He attended (but did not finish) UC Berkeley, where he edited the campus humor magazine, the California Pelican. Before becoming a newspaper columnist, he worked in the editorial vineyards at Rolling Stone magazine (assistant editor, 1970); Oui, a Playboy spinoff (editor, 1972); the Village Voice (West Coast editor, 1974); WomenSports magazine (Consulting editor); and New West magazine (editor, 1978, where he won a National Magazine Award in 1979).

Carroll has long lived in Oakland, with his wife, author Tracy Johnston, and two cats named Archie and Bucket, occasional subjects of his columns (the cats, that is, not his wife). Sadly, Archie passed away on July 20, 2007.^[1]