MNZ: The New Yorker March 31, 2008

I will admit upfront that I don't get why the New Yorker is considered such an intellectual rag, other than it doing exactly what you'd expect a pompous intellectual to do. But whenever I come across a recent issue in the free bin, I'll grab it and force myself to read at least three articles. The most intriguing one to me, before reading, was about the newspaper industry's dying throes and how it had to change, using the Huffington Post as an example. It was ridiculous.
Now I am someone who buys the newspaper at least five days out of seven, every week. It's standard practice for me to read it on my lunchbreak and finish at night. My wife reads part of it every time I bring it home, and I have my 9-year-old daughter into reading the comics and kids section, which is exactly how I started reading the paper as a kid, that my 7th grade educated dad brought home and read every day, regardless of his 7th grade education. At his death, he was probably a lot smarter than most people with his education level, and the fact he read the paper daily I'm sure was a big part of that. Once newspapers die out, I'm not sure what will replace it. I don't really see the internet as a replacement, because what it gives you for news is a very different beast than reading a newspaper. Even with google's new shit where you can customize the news page with things you like and local stories won't replace it. The great thing about the newspaper is how shit you never would've invited into your house came into your house. I think when you set the parameters for what your news is, you lose a certain amount of that. Everybody will get the weird news from Chuck Shepherd stories, but nobody will know that oddball local lore shit.
Oh well, fuck it. Newspapers will die, and the New Yorker sucks. I automatically think anybody who feels they must have the .pdf set of every New Yorker ever is a fucking pretentious fool. I bet they all vote for Obama too. My racist landlord was hanging out the other day, and I found it very interesting how he referred to Obama as "that thing" and how "all the coons" were gonna vote for him, yet he also hated him some George Bush and how he's fucked up the country. That's why I never understood how the democrats could've fucked up the 2004 election, because I've ran across a handful of elderly racist people who hate Bush as much as they hate "all the coons", yet Kerry lost. I know there's rigged election conspiracies, and as someone who loves and believes in many retarded conspiracies, let me tell you there was no rigged election. It's like a shitty call in a football game - you shouldn't have let it be that close. And Bush was begging to get blown out.