Posted 1:42 PM by Gene

7. Frank Rich: In Defense of the ‘Balloon Boy’ Dad [Home-page "Most Popular" link]

The credulous might find this a worthwhile essay -- and one could mount a defense of the man, however unlikely. It might make for decent writing. Not being that credulous I did a little experiment: using Find in Firefox I typed in four letters:

B - U - S - H



Ta-DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't bother reading it.

Here we have a reason newspapers deserve their troubles. A computer could type out most of the contents. Pinch pays this bozo what? A million? To repeat himself all the time? Perhaps he's a profit center. We should recall though when Pinch tried His first experiment with paid content no one missed him -- or any of His other columnists. His approach deprives us of unconventional viewpoints -- not conservative vs. liberal, but truly unconventional ideas, like a defense of the Balloon Boy's father. Absurd -- but it could make people think. Instead we get the usual 800 words of verbally-induced coma.

The press's collapse has not deprived the most deserving of unemployment of their jobs. The time has come.