Something To Talk About
I'm sort of ashamed to admit, I don't often read newspaper humor
columnists--or newspaper columnists in general. My memory, from the time when I
did read columnists regularly, is that even the very best of them tend to bat
around .300. This is not, I suspect, their fault: The economics of newspapers
and the tastes of readers more or less dictate that a columnist has to appear
at least twice, and preferably three times, each week. That's 2,400 words. Very
few people can turn out 2,400 words of penetrating insight every week. As a
result, columnists often tend to turn to filler--mock outrage over the scandal
of the day; rants on solidly uncontroversial topics (the New York Post 's
Maggie Gallagher, I noticed, devoted an entire column yesterday to advancing
the rather daring notion that adults should not have sex with children); and,
in certain cases, paeans to the comforts of their family. I'm pretty sure that
there are few fates worse than being the child of a columnist struggling with
writer's block and a deadline. In the early 1990s, I could easily imagine Anna
Quindlen turning to one of her kids and saying, "Please, for the love of God,
say something innocent yet wise! And if it could have some bearing on a
contemporary issue, all the better!"
Again, I'm not really blaming the columnists here: They have a deadline to
meet; they have space to fill. They do what they have to do. But I do think
they're symptomatic of a larger problem: Journalistic overcapacity. Which is to
say, we now have so many news outlets, with so many writers, that we are now
saying far more than needs to be said, covering far more than needs to be
covered. I might suggest that many of the mini-scandals that pop up and
dominate the news for a few cycles do so not because anyone's legitimately
upset or outraged over them but because people like you and (especially) me
need something to talk about. Thus, all the silly debates over, say, a
flag-burning amendment, or the "Sensation" show. Sure, the discussions tend to
be reductive and overheated. But at least they're something to fill an hour of
Hardball .
(This, in turn, ties into a favorite fantasy of mine: I am invited to appear
on Hardball With Chris Matthews to debate, say, flag burning. I am
introduced as being for it. I give my little speech: "They give such warmth,
and oh the rosy glow ..." And my opponent--let's imagine Charlton
Heston--lights into me: "An outrage ... should be ashamed to be an American ...
an enduring symbol of our national freedom, freedoms which you so clearly don't
deserve ..." And so on. To which I reply, "You know, Charlton--may I call you
Charlton? No? OK--I never thought about it that way. Never thought about it
that way at all. And now that you mention it, you're quite right: It is a
travesty. I agree with you completely." We are now about five minutes into the
broadcast. What we do with the remaining 55 minutes is a mystery to me.)
