My name is Matt Tiffany, and I approve this article because I believe newspaper columnists shouldn’t be afraid to live their lives with the threat of death hanging over their heads or poorly written hate mail bogging down their in-boxes. As a columnist, I believe I should be able to say whatever I want to say, but if you despise my story and want to kill me, I didn’t write it; Karl Rove did.
Now, a history lesson. Toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst fought bitterly for the upper hand in circulation among the immensely bored middle and upper classes that were looking for ways to fill their days until television was invented. To draw readers in, both publishers employed sensationalist tactics that came to be known as “yellow journalism.” Here’s an example of a headline series that probably should have existed in 1909:
President Taft devours entire cow for supper Corpulence-in-Chief tops 500 pounds; could die from
toxoplasmosis
Today, yellow journalism has a new meaning. If a columnist writes something mildly disparaging about certain individuals, fanboys are going to come out in droves, spewing insidious drivel littered with misspellings. For example, one of my fellow Oregon Daily Emerald employees – the lovely and infinitely sweet Karyn Campbell – wrote a piece two weeks ago about how she’s going to dance to whatever type of music she wants when she goes out. The thing is, she said that Clay Aiken was
“stalkerish.”
The “yellow” in our new definition of yellow journalism is the fear generated by the psychotic Clay Aiken fans who made death threats and accused Karyn of “hating on” Clay, which, when you think about it and look “hate on” up in a dictionary, is impossible. Another fan said that Clay’s name was used solely to generate more “hits” on Internet search engines. Now, that’s just insulting! There is no way that a columnist would do that BritneySpearsnaked just to generate some Web frenzy. Gah! It makes me so mad I can barely type! I just want to take those fucqiekl cke
Still, the death threats got me thinking: a) ridicule celebrities and die; b) deride another group that doesn’t have a horde of militant followers; or c) write nice things. (I just want to take this time to be perfectly clear to you Aikenheads: I like Clay. I think he has an exquisite voice and is a good role model for children. He is definitely the most talented American to have never been named American Idol. Don’t kill me.)
Grudgingly, I choose “b.” The key here is finding someone or something that nobody likes. K-Fed? Been there, done that (and to be honest, I kind of feel bad for the guy.) Lindsay Lohan? Nah, some Mouseketeer probably saw “Herbie Fully Loaded” 20 times and refuses to believe that Lohan called Paris Hilton the c-word. Hippies? That’s Tyler Graf territory.
Hmm, looks like I’m going to have to go with suicidal animals on this one. You know what I mean: the deer that stands stone still in the middle of the highway; the squirrel that blitzes in front of your bicycle, narrowly missing the front tire; the Republican at the Saturday Market; the rabbit that darted onto the road a goodly way in front of my car and, sensing that I was slowing down to let it pass, turned toward me and raced directly at my two-ton vehicle of death. Now, I know we all hate on these animals despite their chemical imbalances. We don’t understand that just because their lives aren’t worth living doesn’t mean that we have free reign in despising them. And, unfortunately, I just realized that’s where PEDA comes in. PEDA, or Pinheads Endorsing Depressed Animals, will undoubtedly write me hate mail saying how much they hate me. They’re one of those whacko groups I hate so much I feel like qin9:c in the ie|opk dk9*}~.
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