So the Great Debate has come and gone, and as I could have told you earlier that day, it was flagged by many members of the media as a crazy fest between two candidates grabbing for power via personal attacks as much as policy. Crazy Fest? That would have been how the Chicago Tribune travel section hawked via their headline when I put them even further up the charts via my 25-column-inch piece on the Hudson Hot Air Affair, and drew the ire of the locals a bit because it was portrayed that way so many times, at the start because of the way they billed it themselves.
Anyway, I’m going to let you in on one of the hidden ways the media works on deadline, based on those work-your-asses-off small dailies I slaved for at the start of my career. You wrote the sample headline and lead for the County Board meeting the night before they actually met, assuming you already knew how the key item’s vote would take place the next morning. And I doubt that the overworked reporter would have spoken to a large number of people to frame their advance prose, just take a guess from background seen in committee. So you would go to the gathering, which was typically a bunch of old available-in-the-morning-retired geezers, (and not Geezer Butler from Sabbath), voting on something like a bunch of new kids equipment at the local park. Yawn, and predictable, and not finished soon because of the obligatory break for lunch. So at that point, and maybe before, the local scribe would hustle on down to the office to finish and revise what had actually now been verified — and you’ve got 15 minutes to wrap up your story, with an editor occasionally standing behind you to push you even (recklessly?) faster. And let the copy editor fix the typos on the fly. County Boards even more than other local government forms are notoriously boring.
But what if they did something not foreseen like vetoing the two-laned slide for the kiddies? Only one lane needed, filibustered The Conservative Masters Of The Coin. Oh my God, and I thought my lead as was about the going against party lines, and the mayor’s twins going on the first ride down the slide in front of the cameras. Cripes, no photo opp, and how can I fix my story at beyond light speed? The Printer Master awaits!!
That’s what I first thought of about the headlines after Cage Match 1 the other night. It was basically the same headline I’ve seen since the invention of the typewriter, I surmised. But maybe more too this … After all Trump is as inflamatory as Attila the Hun, but the Democrats prize themselves on greater civility and tolerance. But aren’t those the things we weighed when dropping the Atom Bomb? Although it seems Trump was the epitome of the anger and the calls for greater debate decorum — keep the babbling overruns to 30 seconds and not 45.
God, until the County Board chimes in with something actually important, maybe we’re stuck with a cat fight over who gets to be First Lady.