Impress them with our prowess
Why am I holding out the threat of summary execution over your clever pop-culture reference? Probably because I'm as idiosyncratic as the rest of your readers. Ledes like this leave me cold:
Set aside the Seinfeld-driven stereotypes about seniors when talking presidential politics with South Carolina's retirees.
Setting aside any questions of how wise* it is to begin a story by proclaiming your addiction to stereotypes, sorry: I wouldn't recognize a "Seinfeld-driven stereotype" if it cut me off in traffic. Never saw the show, never plan to. Likewise "The Sopranos," though I still would have challenged this one:
LODI, N.J. -- "The Sopranos" may not be swimming with the fishes after all.
Dear friends at The (Hackensack, N.J.) Record: Doesn't it make more sense as the original "sleeps with the fishes"? Because if you're "swimming with the fishes," you're, like, Prince Namor of the Deep or something? And he's holding up pretty well?
And, yeah, I'd be one of the people making life miserable for this visitor to the angryjournalist.com site:
Working as a 22-year-old journalist at a newspaper where the median age is 45 and having to deal with old people who don’t have a clue. Even worse when you work in features and cover entertainment and all these people can write about are bands that were cool and innovative 15 years ago but mean nothing today.
Yep. Not only do I not have a clue, my idea of "cool and innovative" is, like, Lester and Earl with Monroe and the BGBs, and that's so 1946.
So what sort of reference gets a smile around here? This one, from the Times's edpage:
Fight fiercely, Harvard
And that's the trouble with your pop-culture reference. Please me, leave the younguns confused. Please them, leave me baffled. Or you could just -- oh, stick to the news or something.
Except on the opinion pages. On those, go ahead and impress us with your prowess. Do.
* Not very.
Set aside the Seinfeld-driven stereotypes about seniors when talking presidential politics with South Carolina's retirees.
Setting aside any questions of how wise* it is to begin a story by proclaiming your addiction to stereotypes, sorry: I wouldn't recognize a "Seinfeld-driven stereotype" if it cut me off in traffic. Never saw the show, never plan to. Likewise "The Sopranos," though I still would have challenged this one:
LODI, N.J. -- "The Sopranos" may not be swimming with the fishes after all.
Dear friends at The (Hackensack, N.J.) Record: Doesn't it make more sense as the original "sleeps with the fishes"? Because if you're "swimming with the fishes," you're, like, Prince Namor of the Deep or something? And he's holding up pretty well?
And, yeah, I'd be one of the people making life miserable for this visitor to the angryjournalist.com site:
Working as a 22-year-old journalist at a newspaper where the median age is 45 and having to deal with old people who don’t have a clue. Even worse when you work in features and cover entertainment and all these people can write about are bands that were cool and innovative 15 years ago but mean nothing today.
Yep. Not only do I not have a clue, my idea of "cool and innovative" is, like, Lester and Earl with Monroe and the BGBs, and that's so 1946.
So what sort of reference gets a smile around here? This one, from the Times's edpage:
Fight fiercely, Harvard
And that's the trouble with your pop-culture reference. Please me, leave the younguns confused. Please them, leave me baffled. Or you could just -- oh, stick to the news or something.
Except on the opinion pages. On those, go ahead and impress us with your prowess. Do.
* Not very.
posted by fev at 1:36 PM
2 Comments:
Don't you think you're being a bit harsh on the 22-year-old genius? He just wants to do stuff the way his wealth of experience tells him it should be done. Those ancient superiors of 45 years should sit down and ask him to explain the world to them. He'd have to talk real slow so they could keep up.
Yeah, and I suppose it's refreshing that he said it was the median, so he might not have meant that _everybody_ over 45 was ready for the embalmer. But given the innate hinctiness of median splits, he could have been condemning all the way down to 35 or so.
Post a Comment
<< Home