So, we’re canceling our daily subscription but keeping the Sunday paper (for now). As another Facebook friend who did the same thing put it, “I did the wimpy thing and went down to Sunday only.” Top reasons:

1. While it’s really great to feel like part of the local community by knowing what’s going on, etc., I probably spend 15 minutes per day “learning” things that really have no value to me (MP’s comment about social capital acknowledged but not, at the end of the day, enough to overcome my general feeling that I’m wasting time).
2. It really does irk me that some guy is driving around the neighborhood at 10 MPH delivering these things. And while maybe that guy will eventually lose a job if enough of us keep unsubscribing (as we seem to be), it’s not like I’m not encouraging new (and probably better-paying) jobs by doing more productive things with my time and money saved, including getting my news from other sources. (Not to mention the number of my plants this guy has beheaded over the years).
3. Plastic. Lots and lots of Boston Globe plastic.
4. Consumerism. Reading more ads — including the Globe’s own articles and product reviews — is not the way I want to spend my time, nor my money, nor the way I’d like to support local media.

On a more positive note, we continue to support WBUR as members, and I hope that as more of us defect from newspapers that public media will benefit. Why? Because I will donate money to WBUR; I won’t to the Globe. Sorry, that’s just the difference between a nonprofit and a for-profit. I’ll be getting my comics from the Houston Chronicle’s Roll-Your-Own (the only important one it lacks is Arlo & Janis).

btw I don’t do morning coffee. I listen to the news until something makes me so angry that I jolt myself out of bed.

That’s yet another reason to cancel our subscription to the Globe: the horrible environmental impact of the delivery guys driving around town. Add that to the amount of time I waste every morning reading the paper (which is the same stuff I’d be reading online, plus all the other crap I really needn’t be reading, like the op-eds), not to mention the actual cost of subscribing.

There’s only one and a half reasons to keep subscribing:

One: I can’t think of any other way to support many of the comic strips I love so much, especially the less popular ones like Arlo & Janis.

Half: I really hate contributing to the continuing decline of the daily newspaper, even if the Globe continues to waste too much of its resources on unnecessary coverage. (The nation and world will march on if the Globe drops its national and international desks).

Suggestions???

***

On the night of Barack Obama’s primary victory in South Carolina, thousands of us who gathered at the victory rally spontaneously erupted in the chant, “Race doesn’t matter!” This wasn’t a profession of faith so much as a willing suspension of disbelief: South Carolina’s January primary also marked the place and time when race did start to matter in the Presidential campaign.

Race matters, as the conflation of “white” with “American” illustrates. But in critiquing that attitude, Barry Blitt’s cover illustration for this week’s New Yorker commits the same error of judgment that a white man who uses the N-word among black friends would commit if he spoke in the same way among strangers. It’s the kind of faux passé that the privileged have the luxury of committing, and therefore the responsibility not to.

Privilege underlies the even deeper problem of the cover, which is the way it bounces its satire off a deep contempt for Michael Moore’s “stupid white men.” Moore, at least, could profess to be of the group he mocks; not so for the New Yorker. Thus the magazine does Obama few favors, instead cementing the perception that his campaign is fueled by limousine liberalism. But it also does itself a serious disfavor, demonstrating not just disdain for but also ignorance of these other Americans. Pauline Kael didn’t know anyone who voted for Nixon; I doubt the staff of the New Yorker know anyone who thinks Obama is Muslim. Obama calls for understanding over condemnation, and I hope his supporters – especially the privileged ones – will consider what kinds of attitudinal sacrifices such a politics would entail.

Another op-ed in today’s Globe took newspapers to task for trying to compete in the blogosphere: “Speeding up the metabolic rate of news consumption, and giving it the glib gloss of the blogosphere, will do nothing to solve [newspapers'] essential crisis. If anything, it will diminish the intellectual patience and empathy upon which honest brokers of news depend.” Steve Almond writes as if this were something new for newspapers. But today’s column by Jacoby demonstrates how kneejerk, regurgitated ideas have become standard fare on the op-ed pages.

Jacoby shows that ample turnaround time is not sufficient to ensure relevant reporting and deep analysis. The real problem is his prurient interest in the flash and noise of politics rather than the real substance. It’s maddening enough when Trudeau and Tinsley run gags that are both hackneyed and out-of-date. But as Jon Stewart would point out, the Globe, and its paid columnists, should do better than aim to match the aspirations of comedians.

I voted for it (like there was a choice), but Red and Rover is gone, and good riddance. Inauthentic fan letters notwithstanding, the strip is nothing more than a marketing ploy, fine-tuned to hit two notes (baby boomers and their children) in cynically calibrated harmony.

The strip is set in the 1950s, featuring tin can phones, afternoons watching “Leave it to Beaver,” and nary a Negro in sight. Yes, this is America idyll, back when boys were boys, girls were named Mary Lou, and people who owned cats were obviously queer. Do we really need to feed Baby Boomers more pre-adolescent fantasies that, yes, they grew up in a utopia and went on to become the Best Generation Ever?

But let’s put aside content for a moment here and talk about the comics business itself. Brian Basset is already author of yet another demographic smart bomb, “Adam,” a paean to caffeinated X’er parenting in the culturally-inert exurbs that runs daily in the Globe. So if for no other reason than fairness to other comic artists trying to catch a break, let’s not let this marginally competent comic artist take up two slots when he’s hardly demonstrated his worthiness as the author of one.

Prediction: Binkley will be balding, married to Lizzie “the Lizzard” Blanchard, and has a daughter.
Reality: In fact, Binkley became a eunuch Tibetan monk after a disaterous first kiss.

Prediction: “Dolly Parton” and “Rambo” will be popular names for daughters and dogs, respectively.
Reality: Dolly who?

Prediction: Bruce Springsteen would be President.
Reality: Could that be worse that what did happen?

I wonder if Breathed himself could have guessed that in 2007 he’d be putting out a beautiful, if somewhat retro-quaint, Sunday-only strip.

* The strip itself ran in the papers before its republication in book form. Details, details.

As Pearls Before Swine was pointing out last week, most comic strips exist in a Nether-Nether Land where Billy never gets old and Charlie Brown never kicks the football (even if Sparky kicks the bucket). This creates a bizarre situation whenever they attempt to bring up issues like growing up, like every back-to-school season. It seems like Paige has been freaking out about becoming a high school freshman… for 18 years.

(Forgive the geeky title)

Update: fascinating, Wikipedia actually addresses this topic…

I don’t think any other mainstream comic strip artist goes after his peers (if you can call them that) like Sebastian Pastis. Then again, satirizing Family Circus is like shooting babies in a barrel. Still, there’s something ballsy about doing it while sharing the same page, if not the same syndicate. Earlier in the year Get Fuzzy appropriated his strip for a week of goofing off, but that was more a peer-to-peer ribbing.

Anyway, this panel seems like comic voodoo: