I read the news today

To quote a line from the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album, “I read the news today, oh boy.”

Thursday, December 11, 2008

With the airwaves filled with stories about the arrest of the governor of Illinois, I purchased a copy of the New York Daily News today in the hopes of finding more local news.

Here’s what I got for my fifty cents:

Page 1 told me that the Yankees will pay CC Sabathea $161,000,000.00 to pitch a baseball starting next year. That should throw the economy a curve.

Page 2 informed me that Queens Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio was indicted for allegedly selling his Albany clout for $1,000,000.00. I didn’t know clout was worth so much in Albany.

On page 4 I read the disturbing story of a 16 year old Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics student who was stabbed and slashed by the owner of a 2005 BMW because the student placed his bookbag on the hood of the parked car. The student was in critical condition after “he died and came back to life.” To make matters worse, is there any doubt this will end up as an episode of Law and Order?

Page 5 had a story of a female secretary who lost her $75,000.00 a year job at Versace, allegedly because she refused to repeat, verbatim, answering machine messages, which her male boss received from his male lovers. Of all the stories, this was the least surprising.

Also on page 5 were the following two stories: (1) A husband and wife were charged with stealing more than $200,000.00 from Columbia University by way of phony neurological studies. What the hell are they teaching these days? And (2) two female students from Delaware and New Jersey, who, while attending Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology, allegedly sold cocaine to undercover police officers on at least 8 different occasions. Well, they do say cocaine is the drug of fashion.

On page 6 there was a story of a passenger who slashed a female bus driver in Queens and stole her ring. Could you ever imagine this happening to Ralph Kramden?

The story on page 8 was the one that made me stop reading the news and skip directly to the comic pages. It seems that recently elected Manhattan Surrogate Nora Anderson, age 56, was arrested for accepting illegal campaign contributions from an 81 year old male lawyer. Under our system of “innocent until proven guilty,” it is possible this woman can take the bench on January 1, 2009, long before the case against her is brought to conclusion. Is this crazy, or what?

Unfortunately, the comic pages brought little relief to this insanity. The Blondie strip showed the mailman telling Dagwood there were rumors that his neighbors were giving the mailman money for Christmas. When questioned by Dagwood, the mailman admitted he, himself, started the rumors. Seems everyone has their hand out during the holiday season - wanting a tip just for doing their job.

But the saddest comic strip of the day was called Jump Start. It showed a young boy named Tommi telling another young boy that what he wanted for Christmas was for this young boy to stop stealing his toy and flushing it down the toilet.

A Merry Christmas, indeed.