Category: default || By jt3y

Deep thoughts from my shallow mind:

• Bob Casey Jr. (D-Daddy's Boy) and U.S. Sen. Rick Torquemada Santorum (R-Penn Hills, Va.) meet tonight for another televised debate ... or as I like to call it, Jackass 2.



• Old colleague Eric Heyl found a silver lining in the Route 65 mudslide ... as long as one homeowner can rent a dump truck.



• Following Friday's Almanac, an Alert Reader noted that the Post-Gazette had no problem back in August mentioning the proper name of the Daily News. Perhaps instead of its real name, I should start referring to that publication on the Boulevard of the Allies as A Local Newspaper.



• The Post-Gazette A Local Newspaper announced on Sunday that it's surveying readers to find out their favorite and least-liked comic strips. I can call that one already: "Mutts," "Blondie" and "Garfield" at the top, and "Doonesbury," "Zippy the Pinhead" and "Get Fuzzy" at the bottom (although I wouldn't be surprised to see a hip, "with-it" feature such as "Beetle Bailey" make it to the top of the poll --- the kids today love 1950s-era Army hijinks).



• The president of the National Cartoonists' Society says polling readers about comic strips is a dumb idea:
  
  

  First, newspaper readers tend to be associated with an older demographic. Older readers tend to vote more often and for the favorite strips they’ve been reading --- sometimes for decades. Younger readers tend not to participate in comics polls, so you’re left with a skewed result.

  
  
  

  Even if you had 90 percent participation from readers, polling is a lousy way to choose a feature. No contributors in any other part of the newspaper are subjected to this arbitrary and unfair practice. No newspaper asks its readers to vote on a columnist or sports writer based on two or three lines of their writing.

  
  
  

  Features editors make decisions daily as to what goes into the newspaper, yet they abdicate this responsibility when it comes time to choose a comic. The readership and professional cartoonists would be better served if editors did the job they were hired to do and made the best choice of comic strips for their newspaper.




• Here's a radical thought: Instead of catering to a demographic that --- by definition --- is getting smaller every year, perhaps A Local Newspaper could find some new comic strips we haven't heard of? After all, aren't the first three letters in "newspaper" "n-e-w"?



• Or, they could keep printing wire stories that we saw on the Internet or TV yesterday. Let me know how that works out.



• I was kind of worried about implying that A Local Newspaper's readers are set in their ways until I realized they're unlikely to find their way to the Internet.



• Don't blame me! A Local Newspaper said as much. In the article that appeared in Sunday's paper, the writer noted that "if you don't have a computer" you can vote by regular mail. That line didn't make it into the online story --- thank God. The logical paradoxes that would have opened might have destroyed the universe.



• Except for the lack of "Classic Peanuts" and "Doonesbury," I think the Tribune-Review Greensburg Astonisher has a superior comics page to the Local Newspaper. And the chances of "Doonesbury" ever appearing in that newspaper are roughly equivalent to the chances of me being named "Archbishop of Canterbury."



• On the other hand, the Astonisher runs the truly awful (bad art, bad writing and not funny) "Mallard Fillmore." I'm not sure, but I think "Mallard" is part of an affirmative action program for Republicans who can't draw.



• For an example of a funny conservative comic strip, see "Prickly City," also in the Astonisher.



• And yes, I realize the inclusion of "Classic Peanuts" violates what I said about finding "new" comic strips --- but the 47-year-old "Peanuts" strips running right now are still fresher than most of the current strips. That says as much about how far Charles Schulz was ahead of his contemporaries as it does about the dullness of most current comics ("Pluggers"? "Pickles"?).



• Schulz had a real knack for angst.



• In light of the Sienna Miller flap, Chris Potter notes that Picksbergers are their own worst enemies when it comes to defending their home tahn: "If someone wanted evidence that Pittsburgh is a hick town, they wouldn’t need to hear Miller’s remarks. They could just listen to the city’s response." (A tip o' the Tube City hard hat to another former cow-orker, Jonathan Potts.)



• In an off-line conversation, Jonathan correctly noted that there's a long tradition of bigger towns dumping on smaller towns, including in our area. How many Picksbergers haven't cracked wise about Our Fair City? Hell, people from McKeesport mock Glassport, and people from Glassport mock Clairton. That doesn't make it right, but jeez, Picksbergers: Grow up!



• Now, the only thing I can't figure out is who the hell Clairton mocks ... maybe, Finleyville?