I don’t mean to bash the Times-Pic. Really, I don’t. But when they lob an easy one in the air, somebody oughta take a swing.
Case in point: on the front page of today’s Picayune there’s a story about a report issued Friday morning by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is major stuff, people. You know how David Rakoff’s essays can make you laugh out loud? Well, this is the opposite of that. This is holy-crap stuff–holy-crap stuff, I might add, of significant importance to New Orleanians.
Now flip over a few pages for the editorials. There are three: one on judge Martha Sassone (okay, sure, that’s local); one on NASA’s Inspector General (okay, maybe, since there is a NASA facility in the area, although the editorial has nothing to do with that); and finally, this:
The White House’s annual State Egg Display ought to be above controversy: The Easter tradition, sponsored by the American Egg Board, is an occasion for state pride as well as product promotion.
But this year, a scandal has hatched. Each egg is supposed to be decorated by an artist from the state it represents. The Wyoming egg, however, turns out to be the work of a college student from Illinois.
The blow to state pride is bad enough, but the egg in question does nothing to further the cause of egg artistry. It features a clumsily rendered egg on skis. Maybe that’s because the creator wasn’t chosen for artistic ability but for family connections. His mother works for the American Egg Board.
I’m sorry, what was that? An egg-decorating contest? With a teeny-tiny scandal attached to it? In WYOMING?
Why would anyone at the Picayune write/care about that crap? And perhaps more importantly, what kind of obscure, offbeat, ovo-centric news feeds do the editors subscribe to that would alert them to such a story? I mean, it’s not even a story in the first place. That shit doesn’t rate a press release, and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be picked up, even on the slowest news day.
My theory is that the Picayune is secretly run by a cabal of egg industry lobbyists. That, or they’re all just a bunch of fucktards.
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