Reminds me of that scene at the opening of the Steve Martin movie "Roxanne."

Martin cheerfully plugs a quarter into the newspaper machine and takes out his newspaper. Within a few seconds he's screaming, terrified by what he's reading. He fumbles around for another quarter, plugs it into the machine, dumps the paper back inside, closes it, and his mood is instantly cheerful again.

True, dat.

At least the car chase story ends on an upbeat note:

"The driver fled on foot but was caught by St. Paul police. Television reports show the driver's pants falling to his ankles as police arrested him."

Nancy - HAW! That must've been one angry clown.

Hey...waitaminnit...

Well at least the folks who found the body parts in a ditch turned them into the police, as opposed to pocketing the limbs for their own sundry purposes. The glass is half-full.

This headline now on the Strib site should cheer you up:

"Minneapolis early childhood money cut for budget gaffe"

Mitch, it's a newspaper. There's no difference between it and the parade of human debris on daytime (or nightime, for that matter) television. They feed off of abberition. This sensationalism has been stock in trade of the press for centuries. Investing any emotional capital in the Barnum and Bailey freakshow that is modern journalism is a mistake. Judging your fellow man based on this perverse medium is a grave error.
IMHO.

And then there is this horror...

"What a feeling! The 80s are back in fashion"

"What a feeling! The 80s are back in fashion"

AWESOME!!

I knew there was a reason I saved my penny loafers, square-ended knit ties and my Izod polo shirts. However, my Members Only jacket got too big of a rip in the fabric. Regretfully, I had to part with it. :-(

The explosives one is kinda funny:

"Police say they have linked the family to a half-dozen mailbox explosions in rural Freeborn County over the past few months and the bombing of a portable toilet in Albert Lea, Minn. during hte past week."

Oh right - you guys are probably aghast at the cops' disregard for the 2nd Amendment.

6.8/10, AC. C'mon, Marsha can troll better than that with half her meds tied behind her back.

Yup. the 2nd ammendment doesn't apply to explosives. Just arms useful in dispatching gummint revenooers.

Well, now, wait a minute, Kermit. Not to put words in your mouth, but: If the newspaper *does* report on all the crime and perfidy, it's accentuating the abberations. If it *doesn't,* some would suggest it's purposefully covering up the crime wave for ideological reasons.

If the paper put out a section called CRIME that dealt with nothing but, well, crime, it would be immensely popular. If we could convince all the professional atheletes to commit the crimes, and put out a combo CRIME + SPORTS page, they'd sell 900K copies a day.

Oh Great One,
I was not the person expressing depression at the content of your fine product. I was merely pointing out the historical context of it's content. Note that I didn't even call it *biased*, though I did pin *perverse* on it.
At least your management hasn't resorted to the tactics of the British press and started including Page Six Girls. Although that would improve circulation.

Mr. Lileks:

The papers already put out a section combining sports and crime. It's called the sports section.

Kermit: Page 6 is the NY Post gossip column. The Sun (UK) is the paper with the glorious "Page Three" girls. I'll leave it to someone else to provide the punchline to your "Although that would improve circulation" line.

I can't find a link to what, exactly, they found in the way of explosives.

144 Black Cats? 2 10-pound cans of muzzle-loader black powder? A gross of M-80's? What?

Reminds me of the stories breathless reporting the cops seized "hundreds of rounds of ammunition." So, not quite a brick of .22's, then. Color me unimpressed.

.

Page three, page six, whatever. Either way it could be the only hope for the dead tree media.

I like your blog. KaraX