Comic Stripped
Good question. With great fanfare the Tribune had just asked its readers to vote for their favorite strips. “It does seem odd that you ran the comics survey and dropped Winnie before the results were in,” noted SGNye Chi. “And what about that comics survey?” wondered DavidG3276. “Why did you make this change beforehand?”
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This was the infamous Mister Boffo cancellation, hastily reversed by E-mail mutiny. “My nomination for the first strip to be cut is Winnie Winkle,” raged MHYLLAND then. “What the hell are you thinking keeping this outdated joke of a soap opera wannabe strip? When was the last time people dressed with turtle necks and leisure suits? BRING BACK BOFFO.”
The Tribune is braced for more tumult and abuse. In the coming fiscal year, which begins next week, the paper shrinks and some comics and other features will disappear. No one wants to throw this cargo overboard, but after a year that’s fetched the highest revenues in the Tribune’s history, it’s part of Charles Brumback’s desperate attempt to keep the paper afloat.
But Perspective had a better grip on the big picture. Yesterday the credo that we get out of life what we put into it and that our children will have it even better than we did was what identified the middle class. Today it’s the sullen conviction that we’re getting screwed. And since just about everybody once held the former and now feels the latter, the middle class remains all-inclusive. Its new bill of rights would be everybody’s.
When Amtrak decided to halt virtually all passenger rail service between Chicago and Milwaukee the Sun-Times applauded, recognizing “the need to get the federal budget in order and the deficit down to reasonable levels.”
When time is running short, desperate measures are required. The other day we called Little, Brown and Company on behalf of–well, a friend, and asked when the new edition of Bartlett’s Quotations would be published. The latest edition appeared just this year, and the fanfare reminded this anguished man of letters that he’s not yet represented.
