Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

Today's KNIGHTRIDDER PHILLY BROADSHEET MONOPOLY pulls a double-whammy on its readers. First is a front-page story bemoaning the city's awful homicide rate in ghetto neighborhoods. (Complete with ZOOMIFYING interactive map!!!!!) And that's all it does. One suspects that for weeks the cloistered suburban-dwelling IDIOTS on the Editorial Board debated whether to endorse solutions and decided against it because it might mean an increase in -- POLICE BRUTALITY. God knows NEWS HACKS have made enough righteous bad suggestions on how to improve things, but an article that whines and kvetches without advancing solutions doesn't have the dignity of being useless; it's cynical, and worse, it posits that some problems are TOO POLITICALLY CORRECT TO BE SOLVED. If KNIGHTRIDDER'S DIMWITS think they're going to restart their string of P-Ulitzers from decades gone by with this cowardly exercise in moral evasion they have another think coming. Worse, in their helpless flapping of arms KNIGHTRIDDER'S IDIOTS seem to have commissioned a COLUMNIST to endorse GUN CONTROL, which all but confirms the EDITORIAL BOARD DID debate this and DIDN'T WANT TO DO ANYTHING -- and wanted to make it appear that they DID. This ranks among THE MOST SHAMELESS BUNCOMBE IN THIS ROLL OF CHARMIN SINCE THE AMBASSADOR RIGGED AN ELECTION AGAINST MILTON J. SHAPP.

Second is a NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD WINNER -- an "A&E" piece by the paper's TV ad-blurb copywriter named Storm which shows conclusively that most articles (the P-Ulitzer tryouts excepted) pass from terminal to printed page without editing save for spellchecks. The guy brrrrrrrrapps in so many words that TV DRAMA IS BETTER THAN EVER!!!!! (Of course he doesn't have the guts to say THAT, but he says it.) If Harold Ross in a bad mood had met this piece of typing it would have self-incinerated on his desk. "Storm," he would have barked, "if TV's so great why aren't people watching?" The numbers he's foolish enough to throw out ("15.1 million," "12.6 million," "12.4 million," "11.7 million," "10.3 million") are generally less than five percent of the population, suggesting those viewing this BETTER-THAN-EVER TV are basically a TiVo-mad clique much like our enlightened blurbists. (This blurbist spends all day programming HIS. "Button, button, which button? So much BRILLIANCE!! MY HEAD'S GONNA EXPLODE!!!") He further dynamites his column with this Bartlettian masterwork of words: "[I]f TV history is a guide, the joy won't last forever. Like the stock market, prime time is a cyclical beast, and today's darling eventually becomes tomorrow's dog." HEY BOZO! You don't SUPPOSE that would include the IMMORTAL DARLINGS OF ENTERTAINMENT you've just spent A THOUSAND WORDS PRAISING, do you? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Oddly enough, for all its meritorious selling, it isn't the lead in the A&E section (though it's teased on the print edition's front page); that goes to a piece of twaddle by an ad-blurb copywriter once bylined Steven X. Rea who writes about the Kurosawa of ANIME. This is the guy whose MASTERWORK got distributed by ESPNCORP here in the states to huge indifference, which the blurbists ascribed to a "lack of marketing." Of COURSE it DIDN'T have anything to do with the fact that WHEN YOU'VE SEEN ONE ANIME CHARACTER, YOU'VE SEEN THEM ALL.

I repeat, TODAY'S DAILY NEWSPAPER IS NOT WORTH BUYING.

[Reposted from yesterday with addenda and links.]