This “reader-response criticism” of the daily press just arrived in an
e-mail message, and it’s too good not to share:
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the
country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the
country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the
country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people
who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They
do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read
by people who wouldn’t mind running the country – if they could find the time — and if they didn’t
have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people
whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very
much.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too
sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the
train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the
country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while
intoxicated.
9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country
but need the baseball scores.
10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who
aren’t sure there is a country … or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they
stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist
dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy provided, of course,
that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
I don’t know where this wit and wisdom
originated, but let’s have more of it.
