Friday, December 12, 2008

a crying shame

If Illinois' first lady, Patti Blagojevich, cries on camera to Barbara Walters or someone of that sort and apologizes for using salty language to express her feelings about the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago Tribune, then I hope a newspaper headline the next day uses my favorite riff on her maiden name: "Patti Melts."

I saw an ad on TV last night for AmeriCash Loans, which used fake newspaper headlines to illustrate all the bad news about the economy that people have been receiving lately. It didn't point out, of course, that newspapers are suffering right along with banks, real estate companies, the auto industry, etc. Newspaper headlines are still the norm for quickly conveying information in ads like the one for AmeriCash Loans.

Even in last Sunday's Simpsons episode, when Homer had a vision of the future in which honey didn't exist, he was alerted by a "Honey Famine Continues" headline on the front page of a Springfield Shopper lying on the ground. This future also included a WALL-E robot that scavenged for valuables such as a bear-shaped honey dispenser. Thanks, Homer, for imagining a postapocalyptic future that has room for robots and newspapers, but a lot of people would place bets on robots—and political corruption, which will never go out of style—being more commonplace than printed news 100 years from now.

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