Elongated unsolicited diet advice

So, two questions that we seem to ask every year around this (Western calendar) time:

1) How long will it take the Freep to copy-paste its annual list of  "things you should know about paczki"?
2) And how long until the Freep breaks its own prescriptive rule on the singular?

OK, you peeked. The answers are "six paragraphs" and "not long at all." (Hint: If you say "a paczki," it's singular, no matter how many annoying, tired, over-hyphenated modifiers show up between the article and the noun.) Nonetheless, a few changes from previous years:

No elongated yellow fruit this year! Specifically, no "beloved jelly-filled and calorie-laden Polish pastries"; no "nummy waistline-busters." No insistence that "'paczkis' is not a word" (if you can spell it, that's a pretty sure sign that it's a word, whether you like it or not). In that light, an interesting tweak to #3: This year's "paczki are thought of" vs. last year's "the paczki is thought of."

McCartney-preposition-wise, I see the no-singular-paczki rule as a strange hill on which to plant one's flag on. If you're cool with "bedouins" (to stay among languages you can see on signage in Hamtown), you shouldn't have a complaint with "paczkis."

While we're at it: Don't do a comma splice in the hed if you don't have to (and you don't). Please proof the copy before you print it; if that's meant to be a force-hyphen at right there, it didn't take. If we've managed to get through the rest of the edition without Frenchifying "Fat Tuesday," I'm not sure there's a need to start now. And is there a reason for shifting from justified to ragged type in the same story?

The editor's work is never done. I'll take a custard.

Rotund yellow fruit

The Elongated Yellow Fruit* is only the beginning! Stay tuned for the existential threat:

Over two pages, Markay and Suebsaeng explain that Trump would interrogate his former chief of staff Reince Priebus about the black, white and grey creatures.

The questions would arise at such opportune moments as “when Priebus was attempting to brief the president on matters of healthcare initiatives, foreign policy, or Republican legislative agenda”, they wrote.

“Are they mean to people?” Trump reportedly asked Priebus, perhaps thinking of badgers’ very long claws, which they use to dig the burrows that make their home. “Or are they friendly creatures?”

Trump would also demand to see photos of badgers, ask Priebus to give details on how badgers “work”, and wanted to know if they had a “personality” or were boring.

Priebus was also called upon to explain “how the critters function and behave, what kind of food they like, and how aggressive or deadly they could be when presented with perceived existential threats”. 

Sounds like he's asking whether badgers could get Mexico to pay for WALL if they said "caravans!!1!!11!1!!!" often enough. Securitization theory isn't clear on that, but that doesn't mean it's not a good question.

* Thanks to Q. Pheevr, from the northeastern reaches of Our Southern Neighbor. 

2 Dacron women feared missing

It's Scary Foreign Disease Day at the local fishwrap: Coronavirus stories on the first three pages! Shall we see how we did?

OK, the front page is going to be all Dacron Republican-Democrat. How about that feature hole on 2A?

Well, that has some elements of risk communication. That sweet news spot at the top of 3A?

Maybe there's some news in the back somewhere ... wait, there it is!

True, no one picks up the morning paper (which I read as a pdf anyway; it's almost always available in the morning) for the latest developments. Could we have at least a little effort, though, at getting the depth and substance a little farther forward?
mm

What a drag it is getting old

Having pointed out on Tuesday that Iconic Band Iz Iconic, could the local fishwrap -- having moved the story to the front for Friday -- simply report that the Stones are going to play downtown in June? No, guess not.

Perhaps someone could have read the front page and thus saved some space in the 5C gossip column by not including another announcement of the tour:

You could almost be forgiven for wondering why it took the Sterling Heights Halo just a year to become an icon on 2A:

Remember, every time you delete "iconic," an angel tucks a cigarette into the peghead and hits "Satisfaction."

Nil nisi bonum, unless ...

Wow, it must be genuinely low -- "classless," if you must -- to speak ill of the newly diagnosed. Right, Fair 'n' Balanced Network?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed Rush Limbaugh, who was recently was* diagnosed with cancer, as a “racist" on social media late Tuesday, saying he “cheapens” the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

AOC didn’t attend President Trump's State of the Union address, claiming it would have legitimized what she saw as lawless conduct under his administration. But she offered her thoughts on Limbaugh receiving the honor to her 4.2 million Instagram followers with a streaming video.

Well, that was then (as in "the No. 5 story on the Wednesday morning

homepage). This is now (to wit, "the No. 5 story on the Thursday morning homepage"). At least, it would be if Fox hadn't thought better of picking up a Page 6 tale from its Murdoch bedmates at the Post:

State Farm on Wednesday claimed actress Shannen Doherty is just looking for sympathy — and a payout to get her California home repaired — by announcing her terminal stage 4 cancer diagnosis.

Fox's updated story is a bit different:

Shannen Doherty's attorney is dismayed by State Farm Insurance's claim that the actress is using her terminal cancer diagnosis as a way to garner "sympathy" in her lawsuit against the company.

Fox is certainly on familiar ground in American journalism; one of the most pertinent observations about the First Amendment is that it doesn't distinguish marching behind the Nazi flag from burning the American one.** (Not that AOC is in flag-burning territory here; she isn't -- for example -- casting doubt on Limbaugh's diagnosis, though that would be one out of the Limbaugh playbook.) We can't cast Fox and its friends into the pit of not-journalism, but we can avail ourselves of every opportunity to hold them up to public ridicule and contempt. Please do.

* Fox doesn't go in much for editing, so it's nice to see a zombie rule edited into the patient here.
** Schauer, F. (2005). The exceptional First Amendment. In Ignatieff, M. (ed.) (2005). American exceptionalism and human rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Slamming and blasting: The perfect Fox page

Could there be a more perfect illustration of the Fair 'n' Balanced issue agenda? Here it is the morning after the State of the Union address, and the three top stories are all about the awfulness of Nancy Pelosi. (As of afternoon, by the way, it's officially a "tantrum," no quotes.) The No. 5 story is another pearl-clutcher; no matter how scary Nancy Pelosi gets, it's a core element of the Fox agenda that AOC is the real power in the enemy camp. And in the No. 4 position is some clickbait about somebody in another country (Canada) doing something weird (telling a judge he withdrew a bunch of money from the bank and burned it because he didn't want to pay child support). 

The reefers under the stories are almost as much fun. Sure, we have stars and Christian leaders and a panel reacting, but Hannity slams Pelosi, Franklin Graham slams Pelosi,  and some Fox talking heads, along with "slay victim's brother," do the blasting.

To revisit (yet again) the Bernard Cohen line* that McCombs and Shaw made famous: Why should Fox have to tell you what to think when it gets to tell you what to think about?


* Cohen, B. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Elongated iconic double-dip

What better than the Rolling Stones (and their iconic tongue logo) to illustrate the One  Thing to take away about "iconic"? 

If it's iconic, you don't have to say so. If it ain't iconic, no amount of saying so will make it so. Amen.

Conveniently, the local fishwrap rams the point home with a second double-dip "iconic" story in the same section. Apparently unable to find a home in the Monday paper, the Super Bowl advertising story was a frontpage centerpiece on Tuesday:

But it's Fiat Chrysler, so one can't be enough:

We're not in the word-banning business around here, but consider yourselves empowered to delete "iconic" on sight. 

Today in history: That pesky Electoral College

If you've been taking in the occasional current discussion about the merits of the Electoral College as a way of choosing presidents, you might be wondering if it's always looked like such a stroke of constitutional genius in the right-wing press. 

Short answer: No. Here, the New York Daily News's Inquiring Fotographer puts the reader-submitted question to half a dozen people (two elected officials, the DMV commissioner, and three Real People, assuming you count "newspaper reporter" as a Real Person), and they're unanimous: Get rid of it. The governor (shown) thinks the popular vote "would be more truly representative of the people's will"; a senator thinks that modern communication has erased sectional differences and the Electoral College "has lost its usefulness"; a homemaker thinks the Electoral College is "silly."

And the reporter? (The story doesn't say whose, but bear in mind that this is Joseph Medill Patterson's News we're talking about here.) Well, somebody has to point out that "the country just discarded its most important tradition in re-electing Roosevelt. Why not abolish the Electoral College?"