Posted 3:44 PM by Gene

Have you ever been stuck in a hospital room, fighting an intransigent hospital gown, itching like psoriasis to get out, and all you have for reading matter is a backdate Reader's Digest? I've just come across the latest issue and can say without fear of contradiction that it's the worst magazine in history. This number is devoted to humor, which when RD is through with it is literally no laughing matter. You're led inside with the promise of 50 jokes -- only to leaf and leaf through rag and discover you can't find them! From there it's onto an article by a groveling ex-ATWOLA hack named Stefan Kanfer about the funniest movies ever -- only you soon learn it has a catch. "Now STEF," said some editor seeing the number 11 on the wall, "WE DON'T WANT ANY MOVIES FROM BEFORE KENNEDY WAS SHOT! We don't want newbies to think our readership is stuck in the distant past in some old trailer park with Ike and Lawrence Welk! WE WANT A YOUNGER DEMOGRAPHIC! So REMEMBER Stef, NO OLD MOVIES!!" And Stef, knowing what it is like to be a Lucean bobblehead, gives a hearty "Yes-SUH boss," and commands his upper extremities, "Hands, do yo' stuff!" and Stefan Fetchit writes exactly what his editors wanted -- which, as it happens, is pure unreadable buncombe. (Don't be misled by the Web version. Only THE MOVIES FROM AFTER KENNEDY WAS SHOT are in the rag.) So numbing is the RD formula that even Joe Queenan, the free-lancer who defines acerbic, had his style bleached out. This magazine should be burned, or taken out back somewhere and put out of its misery.