CSotD: Back to Reality … in just a minute …
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I'm posting from a Holiday Inn in Denver on my last day out-of-pocket, and feeling a bit like this April, 2000, Arlo and Janis classic.
I'm near the airport, I've got a noon flight and I have time to do a regular posting about today's comics, but … well, first of all (Arlo side), I still have some old favorites in the file folder on my desktop that I haven't used yet.
Second of all ("Second of both"?), I've been kind of tied up with youth literacy for the past several days and, to be honest, the glimpses I've caught of the outside world have not made me eager for re-entry (Sorry, Janis).
So here's some silly stuff:
In this Sept, 2004, Rhymes with Orange, Hilary Price shares my opinion about the alco-pop phenomenon.
I'm appalled that the liquor companies have so blatantly targeted underage drinkers, but, then, I'm equally appalled that anyone who is of age would drink this swill and apparently they do.
We started out with 7-and-7's and whiskey sours and Southern Comfort and sloe gin when, at 15 or 16, we were first learning to get high without having to taste that which was making us high.
Now Southern Comfort — "whiskey should be enjoyed, not endured" — comes in flavors, which is like saying, "The Archies have released a new album, only this one is pop music."
And my son had a theory that "To Catch A Predator" should have been sponsored by Mike's Hard Lemonade, because every creep they caught attempting to seduce a 14-year-old seemed to show up with a six-pack of the stuff under his arm.
Come to think of it, I'm appalled anyone would watch that show, too, but let's not drift too far off-topic.
Except to switch from alcohol to tobacco and note that Finland does not allow e-cigarette makers to sell flavors for vaping, which should pretty much shut down their appeal to underage vapers and probably of-age ones as well. (That article is very interesting but absolutely, completely off-topic. If that matters to you.)
Juxtaposition of the Ridiculous
To make up for that long rant, here's a pair of cartoons with no rant attached at all. But they both made me laff, nearly a year apart, nearly two decades ago, and they still do today.
Easing back towards reality …
Despite Wiley's sarcastic intent, this June, 1993, Non Sequitur reminds me of what I loved about being a reporter at a small paper, but, then again, I always went into things knowing how ignorant I was, which sources seemed to respect because I would actually ask them fundamental questions.
I've been interviewed from time to time by the instant experts Wiley mocks and I learned what it was like to pick up the morning paper as if it were ticking.
Perhaps that made me more cautious about my own reporting, but it certainly made me more impatient when I was in the Big Chair.
When I was an editor at a very small paper — I had two reporters, double the staff of the first newspaper I edited — I had a conversation about a bond issue story with one of my young j-school grads in which I asked, "What does this mean?"
She replied "That's what he said," or, in other words, if she quoted him accurately, she didn't have to actually understand the issue.
I never had those sorts of conversations at the earlier paper because my sole reporter was not only not a journalism major but hadn't been to college at all. She was just a damn good storyteller. I loved working with her.
And when I was a reporter at a small daily, I was one of about a dozen and a half reporters, a large enough staff that we could have regular beats and actually develop some expertise in the topics we covered.
An issue covered in this Pearls Before Swine from October, 2005.
As with the Non Sequitur, I laffed, but it was gallows humor.
Just as long as it all looks mahvelous …
Brad Guigar had a strip called "Greystone Inn" back in the olden days, and he also obviously had spent some time in the newspaper trade. This sequence from April, 2004 could only have come from the inside of the pit:
Richard Thompson explained all these things in more detail in 2008:
Coffee Break's over: Back on my head
Ah, well. I haven't been entirely out of touch this week. I've been hiding.
David Horsey's current cartoon and the column that goes with it bring us back to reality.
And, just in case his thoughts on the situation aren't enough to bring you right down, here's an excellent, chilling analysis from David Frum*, a former GWB speechwriter and button-down conservative, which makes his thoughts even more frightening.
Unfortunately, it is required reading for anyone who gives a damn about where this handcart is headed.
* (His mother would be proud.)
Now here's our moment of zen
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