Newspaper offers a treat for every taste
I am a subscriber to the Beaumont Enterprise. Yes I pay for it, albeit a discounted rate.
It is delivered to my home, so I am both an employee and a customer.
As a customer, I read most, but not all of the paper. As an employee, I read more than I probably otherwise would. And, I don’t read every single comic that appears in our paper.
Quite frankly, I simply don’t enjoy some of them. Others make my day.
Dilbert has been a favorite since we first started publishing it about a decade ago. Among the reader calls about our recent changes to the Money & Markets page, several involved concern about the disappearance of Dilbert from the front page of the business section. Those readers were relieved when I told them it hadn’t disappeared, but merely relocated.
And, I love the Dinette Set because, as in the case of many of our readers, those people remind me a bit of some relatives I’ve had to deal with through the years.
I choose to read some of the comics and skip others because I am familiar with their content and type of humor. Just as some people like slapstick humor, some like physical comedy and others only want to hear political chuckles, some people (like me) enjoy some comics but not others.
Bizarro, one of The Enterprise’s edgier comics, is one I can take or leave.
When I have time, I read it along with everything else. When I don’t, it’s generally one I would skip. In either case, I know it’s probably the place, or at least one of the top two or three places, on our comic page where the humor might not be in a style I would appreciate.
A reader, this week, complained about a recent Bizarro comic panel (Friday, Nov. 30) that contained the line “flip him the bird.”
The reader was offended that children might have read the comic and therefore parents might have had to explain its meaning to their children. Guess that reader missed the “sucks” reference in last week’s “Zits” comic (see earlier blog entry.)
I’ve been a kid. I’ve had kids. I don’t think kids would ask. I think they’d either get it, or not get it and move on. I think if they asked parents to explain it to them it would be because there was a better than 50 percent chance they completely understood it and were just wanted to watch their parents sweat.
For the record, cause there’s no way for you to go back and look this up, the joke was about three-toed sloths taunting two-toed sloths. Put that together with the punch line and you can figure out the one talent at which the three-toed sloths excelled. It’s worth a chuckle, but it’s certainly not laugh-out-loud funny.
The comics page can’t be all about entertaining children any more than it can be all about entertaining adults.
This isn’t required reading and there’s no pop quiz afterwards, so, if you prefer to stay away from slightly edgy topics – skip Bizarro and stick with Hi and Lois.
It is delivered to my home, so I am both an employee and a customer.
As a customer, I read most, but not all of the paper. As an employee, I read more than I probably otherwise would. And, I don’t read every single comic that appears in our paper.
Quite frankly, I simply don’t enjoy some of them. Others make my day.
Dilbert has been a favorite since we first started publishing it about a decade ago. Among the reader calls about our recent changes to the Money & Markets page, several involved concern about the disappearance of Dilbert from the front page of the business section. Those readers were relieved when I told them it hadn’t disappeared, but merely relocated.
And, I love the Dinette Set because, as in the case of many of our readers, those people remind me a bit of some relatives I’ve had to deal with through the years.
I choose to read some of the comics and skip others because I am familiar with their content and type of humor. Just as some people like slapstick humor, some like physical comedy and others only want to hear political chuckles, some people (like me) enjoy some comics but not others.
Bizarro, one of The Enterprise’s edgier comics, is one I can take or leave.
When I have time, I read it along with everything else. When I don’t, it’s generally one I would skip. In either case, I know it’s probably the place, or at least one of the top two or three places, on our comic page where the humor might not be in a style I would appreciate.
A reader, this week, complained about a recent Bizarro comic panel (Friday, Nov. 30) that contained the line “flip him the bird.”
The reader was offended that children might have read the comic and therefore parents might have had to explain its meaning to their children. Guess that reader missed the “sucks” reference in last week’s “Zits” comic (see earlier blog entry.)
I’ve been a kid. I’ve had kids. I don’t think kids would ask. I think they’d either get it, or not get it and move on. I think if they asked parents to explain it to them it would be because there was a better than 50 percent chance they completely understood it and were just wanted to watch their parents sweat.
For the record, cause there’s no way for you to go back and look this up, the joke was about three-toed sloths taunting two-toed sloths. Put that together with the punch line and you can figure out the one talent at which the three-toed sloths excelled. It’s worth a chuckle, but it’s certainly not laugh-out-loud funny.
The comics page can’t be all about entertaining children any more than it can be all about entertaining adults.
This isn’t required reading and there’s no pop quiz afterwards, so, if you prefer to stay away from slightly edgy topics – skip Bizarro and stick with Hi and Lois.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 3:42 PM
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