Here’s a way to mitigate the widely held perception that the U.S. news media is dominated by the left: Hire former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a staunch conservative.

We’ve reported this previously, but today saw his first column entry for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He started with a catalog of epithets the paper has hurled at him in the past.

Imagine these words next to your name in your high school yearbook - disingenuous, snake oil peddler, smug, arrogant, chicken-livered, intolerant and fatalistic. And most of those labels were in news stories.

My new employer also claimed not so long ago that I “inspire contempt” and “have lost my mind” and that my actions bore a remarkable resemblance to Joe McCarthy’s. You know? The namesake of McCarthyism . At the time, I took solace from the implied compliment. At least The Inquirer thought I was making a substantial mark on my generation. Not bad for someone they also called a “doofus .”

Doofus?

Santorum also poked fun at the business case for hiring him: What could have possibly possessed Chris Satullo to invite me to be a columnist shortly before he decided to step down as Editorial Page editor? Maybe it had something to do with his moving on. Other theories range from premature senility to guilt.

Judging from the flood of letters to the paper that followed the announcement, most believe it was a pure business decision to attract more readers. I see: Bring on a writer who got less than 20 percent of the city vote and about 40 percent of the suburban vote in 2006 to expand readership. Shrewd.

Senator, this is the newspaper industry. Good luck!