Thursday, June 02, 2005
June 2 issue: "Bush on Deep Throat"
RedEye must have been desperate to fill space or provide a little variety or spare its readers the labor of reading four whole columns (horrors!) of serif text...I'm sure those factors explain a lot of RedEye's problems. They put this quote from President Bush in the bottom-right corner of PAGE THREE, which in any major newspaper should be the no-bullshit hard-news page:
"For those of us who grew up—got out of college in the late '60s—the Watergate story was a relevant story. And a lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been. And the mystery was solved yesterday. It's a brand-new story."
Display quotes should illuminate the news. This quote makes the news dumb. And "look how goofy our President is" humor only works on pathetically easy audiences. The kind of people who didn't notice when Saturday Night Live gradually stopped being funny in the late '90s. Maybe RedEye's targeted readers are just that easily amused.
"For those of us who grew up—got out of college in the late '60s—the Watergate story was a relevant story. And a lot of us have always wondered who Deep Throat might have been. And the mystery was solved yesterday. It's a brand-new story."
Display quotes should illuminate the news. This quote makes the news dumb. And "look how goofy our President is" humor only works on pathetically easy audiences. The kind of people who didn't notice when Saturday Night Live gradually stopped being funny in the late '90s. Maybe RedEye's targeted readers are just that easily amused.
