I’ve been trying to think of something smart to write about- something that would endear me to even the most literate readers. I have had very little luck. So let’s turn it to what I actually want to discuss… Gail Collins.
After Paul Krugman and possibly Bob Herbert she is my most common ideological bedfellow on the Times’ Op/Ed page.
But Dammit all, she just isn’t the finest of writers. Nor is she for that matter, particularly funny.
Today Gail, God bless her, gives us a case where the former illustrates the latter:
There was a schoolteacher going into the debate audience in Cleveland on Tuesday – this would be the 20th Clinton-Obama confrontation this season – who told the TV cameras that she learned last week that she was getting a ticket “and I haven’t breathed since.” We have not seen this sort of anticipation at a political event since they held one of the Maine caucuses in the same building where “High School Musical” was being performed.
HAHAHA!
Gail, if i may, you’re trying to hard.
This is hacky, and while I know ever since our new friend Billy Kristol showed up on the scene hackery has been all the rage, you are better than that.
You shouldn’t be using some toss away comedic construction like this. It’s an empty zinger. At best, at absolute best, it will provoke a grin. I remember in an early episode of the unmatchable sitcom 30 Rock, Liz Lemon remarks about a Mitt Romney fundraiser, “Wow, I haven’t seen this many rich white people together since the Titanic.” hehe. That’s funny, but it doesn’t have anyone rolling in the aisles. And that’s Tina Fey for godsakes! Writing that joke was just not the act of a good gambler. The payoff was small, and the potential for failure was massive!
But that actually is just a quibble. My real problem arises with the usage of “High School Musical.” I’ve never seen it myself but I do know enough about it to get Collins’ “joke”, as it were. And obviously my familiarity with Disney’s musical television show is greater than anyone could expect to find in the average Times reader, considering that the two companies- Disney and the New York Times- have wildly disparate target demographics. Still, my point is, no one cares about High School Musical. No one. Not even the actors who appear in it. Oh sure they might look happy, what with their pretty faces and toned bodies but if E! True Hollywood Stories have taught us anything, it is that those little munchkins are dead inside: rotted by cocaine and hepatitis to the core.
I’m getting off track…
Stick to what you know, Gail. It’s the old axiom- tried and true. The New York Times Op/Ed page is the proverbial peak of high culture. I imagine that somewhere at this very moment Andrew Rosenthal is sitting down, in a velvet smoking jacket, with a cigar hanging off his lip, sipping Brandy, and listening to Debussey on an antique gramophone. Mentioning such low-culture in this context, Gail, is effete. It is a terrible synthesis of the high and the low, the type of which one cannot grow tired of fast enough.
Of course having said all of this, I am at the end of the day a big fan.
Oh and Gail? If you could, tell Maureen Dowd to go fuck herself.
And if you happen by the offices of The Los Angeles Times next time you’re in LA tell Joel Stein to go fuck himself as well.
