Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 10, 1990 TAG: 9003102370
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ben beagle
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I want you to know that in doing so, I am breaking with a newspaper-columnist tradition that probably began the day after the printing press was invented.
I am going to explain my reasons because I don't want to put up with a bunch of sniveling, hysterical telephone calls and letters asking where my spring column is.
Let me tell you something about columnists who write about spring.
They don't do it for their readers.
They do it because they are a lazy, selfish people who think the world is waiting for their really sharp prose.
They go to a party and somebody mentions Andy Rooney, and they say: "Yes. I intend to write a really telling column about that."
Yet all of these big deals write about spring because they can't think of anything else to write about.
Long before Andy Rooney they sat in front of blank pieces of parchment, chewed on their quill pens and fiddled with their wigs.
They sat in front of typewriters - which they called "mills" - and smoked themselves half crazy and maybe reached into a desk drawer for a little belt of the grape.
They sit in front of one of these green television screens in a smoke-free office and go nuts on caffeine.
Most columnists today do not smoke, and few toy with hard drink on the job, but some of them have retained a liking for certain expletives.
So, they say at last: "Well (expletive deleted). Let's get this (expletive deleted) show on the (expletive deleted) road and write about (expletive deleted) spring."
Then, what you get as a reader is a tone poem about spring, in which the writer misidentifies several varieties of flowers and animals while purpling up the air with his/her prose. Or you get one of these really funny pieces about how to get ready for spring, in which a columnist, if he is married, always depicts his wife as an attractive moron who is nuts about azaleas.
(Right here, I would like to say the above does not apply to those serious columnists who view practically everything with alarm, seem to understand fully what Social Security "notch babies" are, and give names like "In Our Own Time" to their columns.
(These guys have it made. There are plenty of things to view with alarm.)
So, there you have the whole sordid background on spring columns.
Come on, Luther. You don't really believe I wrote about not writing a spring column just because I didn't have anything else to write about.
by CNB