The Onion explores another good reason to fret about the death of print newspapers: They're part of the habitat of the crazy old loon.
Do commercials ever approach art?
The other day a friend and I were arguing about whether TV ads ever have their own internal artistry, separate from the art of the sale.
The loyal son of an adman, I acknowledged it happens rarely, but claimed that it does happen, and cited the old 15-second Lifesavers video poem (the first of the two contained in the following video):
And then Nike came out with this ad, yesterday.
Readers, do you have any other examples for my friend Paul?
Chicago: Can we be elegant, simple and dumb all at the same time?
Fancy New York developer named Ian Schrager buys the Ambassador East hotel in Chicago, and sez he's gonna restore the hotel's legendary Pump Room restaurant.
So far so good. Then the guy opens his yap, calls Chicago a "very elegant city."
We don't think of ourselves as elegant, but if he insists, we'll get out the cigarette holders.
Then he goes on.
"I think [Chicago] has probably the most beautiful architecture in all of America, and I just love the people, the simplicity, the basic honesty."
I think I know how the great Chicago columnist Mike Royko felt when novelist Nelson Algren referred to his writing as "visceral."
"He thinks I'm dumb," Royko concluded.
The general lesson here is, don't go into somebody else's city—or their house or their company, for that matter—and start making lots of authoritative editorial comments, even in praise.
Say you dig the joint, and leave it at that.