Paul Farhi on pop culture: Dying not a bad career move

Chris Farley, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays -- just a few

Washington Post staff writer Paul Farhi was online Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 1 p.m. ET to talk about the latest news and topical issues in the pop culture world of TV, radio, movies and trends.

Today's Topics: Further proof that dying isn't a bad career move: Chris Farley is shilling for DirecTV, Michael Jackson has a new movie out, and Billy Mays just will not go away. Can't they just let the dead rest?

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Paul Farhi: Greetings, all, and thanks for stopping by...So, DirecTV has been taking some heat in the blahgosphere for its beyond-the-grave use of Chris Farley in one of its new TV spots (the clip is from the Farley-David Spade movie "Tommy Boy" and has been altered by DirecTV so that Spade "breaks the fourth wall" and promotes the company). We've also got the recently dead Michael Jackson in his very own documentary movie ("This Is It"), and the equally dead Billy Mays still shilling, still shouting in sundry infomercials. Tacky? Brilliant? Exploitive?

You can weigh in with your own opinion, but I'll go for a little of all three. But only a little. Tacky: Well, sure; you can't help watch these things and think, "Hey, these guys are dead! That's kinda creepy." Brilliant: Well, not exactly, but it's not dumb, either. Farley, Jackson and Mays were all saleable personalities in life, so it's no stretch to assume they'll still sell after they stop breathing. Exploitive: Well, here it gets really complicated. All performers "exploit" themselves, if you want to call it that, and there's no reason to assume that they'd disapprove of a little more posthumous "exploitation," especially since all of these depictions are quite in keeping with the image and personality of all three dead guys. Besides, for some people (and maybe all the people who went to see "This Is It"), this isn't exploitation at all, but a "tribute" or "an homage" (or whatever Sony Pictures' publicity department is calling it now).

I wonder if any of the people feigning shock or heaping contempt on this sort of thing were similarly shocked by the many, many after-the-fact airings of Farley's work (including multiple telecasts of "Tommy Boy" itself). I sincerely doubt that anyone raised an eyebrow when iTunes practically melted down selling MJ tunes in the weeks after his death. As for Mays--exactly what integrity did he have in life that could be trashed in death?

I'll tell you what's tacky and evil (though possibly commercially brilliant): Fred Astaire posthumously dancing with a vacuum cleaner! It WAS out of character with the man's image. And it wasn't something that you could see Astaire himself approving from up there in the Great Ballroom in the Sky (his daughter apparently okayed that ad in behalf of his estate).

So, my bottom line: Don't trash the memory. But everything else is pretty much fair game.

And one more thing (following up on last week): To date, "This Is It" has generated $103.9 million at the box office worldwide. Not bad. In fact, darn good. But just for the record: Not close to the hype, either.

Let's go to the phones...

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Harrisburg, Pa.: Has the Chris Farley ad been pulled? I haven't seen it lately, and instead have been seeing the WW Kim Basinger ad. If it has been pulled, I'm glad -- shame on the company-that-won't-be-named for thinking it was an awesome idea, and shame on Spade (who built his career on Farley's and made the rounds after his death about how it affected him so much) for taking the easy paycheck. Can't wait to see Phil Hartman and John Belushi out touting next.

Paul Farhi: I thought it was still on the air. I could have sworn I saw it on the World Series. And, yes, the not-very-good Kim Basinger ad from "Wayne's World" is in heavy rotation now. I had trouble remembering that scene, and it took me a couple of airings to realize that it was Kim Basinger. On the other hand, the digital trickery (close-up of Kim from many years ago) is phenomenal.

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washingtonpost.com: DirecTV Chris Farley Ads (YouTube)

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MJ's movie: Here's my take on the Michael Jackson movie: for his die-hard fans, they are grateful and excited to see him up close and on the big screen (and are glad to know that MJ's estate -- and his kids -- will benefit financially). For his detractors and cynics generally, they will say that Sony, et al. are shilling a dead man (a pedophile!) for the benefit of their own pockets. The die-hard fans and the detractors/cynics will NEVER meet in the middle, so this debate is pointless.

Paul Farhi: Well, there's a pretty wide middle ground: People who found Jackson creepy and exceptionally odd but thought he was a brilliant performer. I would fall into that camp.

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washingtonpost.com: Dirt Devil Room Mate & Visine (YouTube)

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Columbia, S.C.: So Walter Whitman is hawking Levi's. (the voice used in the ads, originally thought to have been Whitman's has been discredited.) What's next? Carl Sandburg selling Coca-Cola? Allen Ginsburg talking about bananas, smack and methamphetamines while construction workers are shown drinking Folger's coffee?

I know a long time ago that Ralph Waldo Emerson's quotes were voiced over Reebok commercials, and Nike used the Beatles' "Revolution 1" to sell its then-new line of Air tennis shoes. This sort of advertising from the grave always happens, but I do draw a line at some tactics.

Poetry overlayed on an ad image does a disservice to the poem. So I don't watch those commercials, for fear that I will think of Whitman's work with relaxed fit jeans in mind.

I guess there's nothing criminal in the use of artwork. But I do wish ad agencies could write independent jingles and create work of their own rather than buy rights to someone else's work, or exploit works in the public domain.

Somewhere in there is a question.

Paul Farhi: But, but, but...a) who knew that was Whitman?; b) the use of his poem in that ad exposes more people to Whitman's work than every freshman English class ever; and c) the poetry PLUS the imagery creates a very cool and interesting atmosphere. I don't know if I'll buy a pair of Levi's because of those commercials, but they are fascinating to watch.

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Southern Maryland: Paul, it still astounds me that I had never even heard of Billy Mays until his death made headlines. How pathetic is that? And how pathetic is it that I confused him at first with Billy Martin and Willie Mays?

Paul Farhi: I'm trying to fathom what Billy Martin and Willie Mays might have had in common. How about: Willie was the Say Hey Kid and Billy was the SAY HEY Guy? Okay, we can do better.

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Reston, Va.: Just one word for you Paul...

Duck!

Crazy WaPo writers...

tsk, tsk.

Paul Farhi: I cannot condone workplace violence. I must say officially that this was an unfortunate explosion of anger and failure of self control. But, man. I was there. And it was really exciting!

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Washington, D.C.: Just got my yearly Sirius renewal in the mail. Even though the government negotiated no price increases for 3 years after the merger, they are now passing on a $1.97 per month "music royalty fee."

So I looked at lowering my rates by going with an "a la carte" plan that only starts at $6.97 that the government negotiated into the merger deal. Trouble is, you have to have a brand new, expensive radio to handle that option.

My question is: Was the government really that stupid during merger negotiations or were they just doing all this "negotiation" for show?

Paul Farhi: My questions are: 1) What's a "music royalty fee"? 2)Why is it being imposed now? and 3) Is this some kind of sneaky way to raise prices, given the three-year price-hike moratorium?

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Fairfax, Va.: I knew it was Whitman...thank you Sister Grace for drilling that into my head.

Paul Farhi: I only suspected. I knew it had to be one of those cats--Whitman, Emerson, or possibly Weird Al Yankovic.

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Boston, Mass.: Agreed re the tackiness of the Fred Astaire ad. Also in this category are the tacky Dr. Seuss movies that came out after Theodore Geisel's death. I can't believe he would have approved Jim Carrey playing a leering Cat in the Hat!

washingtonpost.com: Dirt Devil Room Mate & Visine (YouTube)

Paul Farhi: Have to agree there. I guess the basic principle should be, stay true to the author/performer's character and intent if you're going to exhume their work so soon after they leave this life...

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Baltimore, Md.: Whitman and Levis: I thought the first ad they did, which used Whitman's "O Pioneers" was visually fascinating and, oh geez, I really am a history geek, correlated well with the product. Levi Strauss started making pants (originally out of canvas, I think) to meet the needs of the California gold rush prospectors of 1849. (Like someone once said, the man who gets rich in a gold rush is the man who sells the shovels.)

Paul Farhi: I think the use of poetry in that context also "elevated" the product--it gave it extra class.

And speaking of class and Levi Strauss, this just in: Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist, has died at 100.

(Okay, that's sorta related).

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washingtonpost.com: Claude Levi-Strauss, French anthropologist, dies at 100 (Post, Nov. 3)

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Annandale, Va.: Re: dead shills, I would love to see a booze ad with Jack Kerouac. "Enjoy responsibly!"

Paul Farhi: More literary cool, eh? Though do we really want to subliminally link "On the Road" with drinking? I think not.

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After Death Schilling: My gut reaction to some of them is "gross," but to others "so what?" When I thought about it I realized the longer someone has been dead the less I care. So I guess I shouldn't care about any of it unless it's an attempt to market something the person would obviously be against.

Paul Farhi: This is a good point: Time softens objections. I'm sure people would have been upset by a "Lincoln's Birthday Sale" a couple of weeks after Lincoln's assassination, but a hundred years later, we're flocking to Marlo's.

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Washington, D.C. : Without typing a word that won't be published anyway, all I can say re the newsroom brouhaha is that the term a reporter used for an editor was incendiary. If I used it in a meeting at my company, I would probably be out of a job.

Paul Farhi: I was talking about this with the lovely Mrs. Station Break, who is a teacher. This is not a word that would sit well for three seconds at any school she's worked at. But workplace standards vary, obviously. We don't throw words like that around often (okay, never), but if we did, I would not expect it to lead to a punchout. We've all heard that word and others like it. In this case, it did (because there was a long, complicated precedent leading up to the fist swinging)...

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Duck!: Did I miss something?

Paul Farhi: Yes. But fear not. Google has all the details.

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Re: Ironic Shills: James Dean for Volvos ("They're boxy, but they're safe")

Buddy Holly for Delta (or Qantas?)

George Burns for Nicotine Gum

Dean Martin for Alcoholics Anonymous

I could go on and on...

Paul Farhi: Oh, this is too easy....

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McLean, Va.: Re Lincoln's Birthday: so, how soon is too soon? When will we see ads for the MLK Day mattress sale?

Paul Farhi: Actually, MLK's estate has exploited MLK's image plenty, including the "I Have a Dream" speech, which appeared in a controversial ad some years ago for Alcatel, a FRENCH company. Nothing new there.

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Re: Dr. Suess: Jim Carrey played the Grinch. Mike Myers played the Cat in the Hat. Come on now, get your sketch-show alums sorted out!

Paul Farhi: Ah. Thank you. That movie was a bomb. It's easy to forget.

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Burbank, Calif.: I think that the obvious taste factor has to come into play. No one would want to see Sharon Tate in a cosmetics ad, let's say.

Paul Farhi: Yeah, that's going too far. Way too far. But context is everything. I believe Charles Manson has appeared in an ad, though it was for some kind of anti-violence cause.

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Alexandria, Va.: What is your opinion of the "Let's pick Daddy's bones"-style of musical duets that never happened, such as Nat and Natalie Cole or Hank Williams Sr. and Jr.?

Paul Farhi: It doesn't offend me, but it doesn't impress me, either. It's a gimmick. I think it's run its course, anyway, or really did after Nat-Natalie.

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Painful Post-Death Promo: Janis Joplin song in Mercedes Benz ad

Paul Farhi: Very, VERY bad, yes....Which reminds me: I did a story some years ago about all the ads that mis-used pop songs. They'd play the familiar chorus of the song, but missed the whole POINT of the song, which was something other than whatever the advertiser was selling. The Mercedes ad at least seemed to be ironic; it "knew" Joplin wasn't really praising Mercedes in that song (it shouldn't be there, anyway). At least, I want to believe Mercedes knew that. The alternative is too appalling to contemplate.

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Albany, N.Y.: None of the three examples you cite are particularly exploitative. Mays was a pitchman who made those commercials; it's no more exploitative to show those than to show, say, the episodes of "The West Wing" that John Spencer made before he died. Ditto Jackson; this is a movie that he cooperated in making and intended to release at this time (to coincide with his tour); the fact that he died gives it some extra poignancy but it doesn't change the basic message. Ditto Farley too; the whole point of the DirecTV campaign is to insert pitches into familiar scenes, so why not use this one? And Farley didn't die last month, either.

All of American culture is apparently fair game for commercialization. It seems to me that if you know enough about Walt Whitman or James Dean to recognize them in ads, you know enough to distinguish between their virtues and the virtues of the product and you won't get sucked in. (How many Beatles fans bought Nike shoes because of that ad?)

Although that might make for a fun Station Break game: Suggest the most egregious mismatch of a celebrity or artist with a commercial product. ("Hi, this is Ted Williams for Creamsicle!")

Paul Farhi: Haha! Ingenious contest idea, which I think has unofficially begun. Let's make it official: Name the worst mismatch of celeb (alive or dead) and product. Winner gets the usual prize....

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Arlington, Va.: What Billy Martin and Willy Mays have in common: um, baseball in NY?

Paul Farhi: Yes, but it was Willie Mays AND Billy Mays. Not sure Billy Mays could hit the long ball...

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Takoma Park, Md.: So what was the worst written article in the last forty years of the Style section, Paul, given that we apparently now know the second worst?

Paul Farhi: Wasn't that a brilliant formulation? Calling something "the worst [blank] ever" is lazy and is obvious hyperbole. But calling it "the second worst" forces your listener(s) to ask the question you did, and instantly sparks the debate.

For the record: The story being referred to as "the worst ever" in Style history was one that was never published. It was a profile of Paul Robeson. I've never seen bootleg copies of it, but sure would like to now.

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Alexandria, Va.: Incidentally, although "The Cat in the Hat" was played by Mike Myers, the role was originally supposed to have gone to Tim Allen, but then there was a scheduling conflict. Do you think it would have made any difference?

Paul Farhi: Yes. It would have made the movie lousier. But only a little.

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Baltimore, Md. : Kerouac and James Dean in ads: In fact, a few years back when the Gap went into overdrive trying to sell khakis, they cleared the rights to photos of Kerouac, Dean and other 50s icons wearing those pants. Didn't seem to help the retailer get its cool back, though.

Paul Farhi: Ah, yes. True. I vaguely remember that. And I'm sure 10 million kids in malls everywhere looked at those ads and said, "Were those guys in 'Grease'?"

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Silver Spring, Md.: My favorite misused song is how many different firms use Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life." The Onion even did an article on it, "Song About Heroin Addiction Used to Advertise Bank".

Paul Farhi: That's pretty typical of the genre. I recall that some laxative used the refrain from "City of New Orleans" ("Goood mornin', America, how are you...") in its ad. I could never hear that song the same way again...

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Maybe this doesn't make sense: but I feel better if the person in the ad lived a long life. A life cut short and I feel like we're using their unfortunate circumstances. I know, it doesn't make sense, but it's a gut reaction.

Paul Farhi: Yes. If the ad simply reminds you of early death, it's not a very good ad (or, well, who knows, maybe there's some psychological research that suggests you remember the advertiser better with death imagery, which makes it a very GOOD ad from the advertiser's perspective).

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Possibly the Chat Answer of the Year!: Ana Marie Cox: I'm just impressed that Tucker has the stamina to listen to NPR every day. I AGREE with them and I can't quite do it. It's so... precious. Someday a radio programmer will realize there's an audience for progressive, thoughtful analysis that is not delivered with a tote bag of self-regard.

Paul Farhi: I'm a big NPR listener, as you may know from these chats. And I, too, get irritated by this quality. I won't name names, but I sometimes find myself yelling at the radio while driving.

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Reston, Va.: I just feel bad that now all of you are going to be spending hours with your friendly HR Reps, trying to fix the problems in the newsroom, going to Respect in the Workplace seminars. Good times.

Paul Farhi: So far, so good. No H.R. SWAT team has surrounded the Style section yet!

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Washington, D.C.: Who is Paul Robeson?

washingtonpost.com: Paul Robeson (Wikipedia)

Paul Farhi: There ye go.

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Falls Church, Va.: John Lennon and James Brady here for the NRA...

Paul Farhi: That's extremely tacky and over the line, of course. But couldn't you see an ad twisted in that direction. I.e., "We're all concerned about gun-related violence. At the NRA, we support training and responsible behavior by gun owners. So that the worst doesn't ever happen again."

Not bad, eh? (Okay, pretty bad...)

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Takoma Park, Md.: Paul Farhi: Wasn't that a brilliant formulation? Calling something "the worst [blank] ever" is lazy and is obvious hyperbole. But calling it "the second worst" forces your listener(s) to ask the question you did, and instantly sparks the debate.

-- Kind of like Bill Murray calling Chevy Chase a "medium talent" before hitting him backstage at SNL. And they let Billy keep his job!

Paul Farhi: I think they let him keep his job because Murray was "a far above average" talent, and because, in those days, they could blame everything on the drugs.

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Takoma Park, Md.: Can I nominate "Who is Paul Robeson?" for the second worst post in the history of this chat?

Paul Farhi: Haha! Perfect!

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Celeb endorsement: Wesley Snipes endorsing Turbo Tax. (He can also connect to the ongoing Mays saga as he played Willie Mays Hayes in the classic Major League 1 film)

Paul Farhi: Great threadweaving! You've pulled together several elements of this chat. You win a second-place prize.

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Post fisticuffs: What's lost in all of this was what a trite story Hesse wrote. I only read the first few graphs and put it down thinking: who the heck suggested then approved this? Even for Style it was bad. Would have been fine in Sunday Source (may that thankfully rest in eternal peace and out of my newspaper!)

Paul Farhi: Oh, c'mon. The story in question wasn't bad, and certainly wasn't nearly bad enough to excuse/explain the resulting blow up.

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Westerly R.I.: It's shilling, not schilling.

And dead celebs creep me out.

Paul Farhi: What if pitching great Kurt Schilling died and then came back in an ad? Wouldn't that be Schilling shilling? And what if was shilling for Schilling's spices?

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Greater Green Bay, Wisc.: David Hasselhoff for Burger King?

Paul Farhi: Okay. I'll bite: Huh?

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Alexandria, Va.: Would Lyndon Johnson have endorsed his being mooned at a Medal of Honor ceremony by Tom Hanks in "Forrest Gump"? I do think some of these mash-ups that are done post-mortem never would have been attempted during the subjects' lifetime.

Paul Farhi: Well, he was president, and presidents get to be made fun of, whether they like it or not, and whether they're alive or dead.

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Re: John Lennon: Well, say what you will about Yoko Ono, I have absolute confidence that the NRA or anything like it will never get the rights to John while she's still around -- she's a strong advocate for tighter gun control.

When I lived in Cleveland, she put up the billboard with Mark Chapmans's glasses spattered with Lennon's blood. Despite being up for quite a while, it was still powerful and disturbing every time I saw it.

Paul Farhi: Wow. That WOULD be quite a powerful image. Never thought I'd say this, but bravo to Yoko.

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McLean, Va.: Over-the-line celeb/product match-up: I don't know whether you remember the comedic actress Sandy Duncan, whose heydey on TV was in the 1970s, but during that period of her celebrity status she lost an eye to cancer. Soon thereafter, "The National Lampoon Radio Show" ran a faux-ad with her as the endorser for GAF Viewmaster (the 3-D picture device).

Paul Farhi: Yikes. Pretty harsh. A National Lampoon specialty, of course.

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NPR: I want to keep loving it and listening, but my GAWD, I agree on the preciousness sometimes. The Robert Krulwich pieces make me want to hurl. I cannot listen, and turn off the radio for those. How about assuming we can take our science news straight, without cutesy sound effects and a kindergarten delivery? Truly, it is awful, and I don't know how to make NPR stop. Making me listen to Radio Lab for a whole show would be like waterboarding.

Paul Farhi: Krulwich is a god over there at NPR, but I'm totally on the fence about him. He oftentimes can make complicated subjects understandable with his ultra-cutesy style. Sometimes, however, he's just ultra-cutesy.

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Clovis, N.M.: Am I a bad person? I kinda miss the old days when two men could settle an argument with a punch or two -- as long as no one was hurt seriously. I think it especially cool that the WaPo editor was like 70 or something.

In the old days writers were always drunk and always ticked-off, weren't they? I say a rare, but honorable instance of fisticuffs might do our culture some good.

Assuming you wouldn't be hauled into court and no lasting harm done, who would you like to smack?

I say Keith Olbermann! Or, maybe Hannity? They both could take a punch, I'm sure.

Paul Farhi: I think the drunk-and-pissed-off thing is one of those romantic fictions we like to tell ourselves to help us imagine that we're not just cubicle drones. There MAY have been more crazy characters in the newsrooms of old, but we all think there were because we've seen too many movies and TV shows in which there are crazy journalist characters. Hard to separate fiction from fact here.

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D.C.: "The story in question wasn't bad...."

Ruh-roh!

Did you READ that "story"? It was as described by Mr. Allen.

And the Pulitzer prize for "Scooby Doo" goes to the Washington Post.

Paul Farhi: The story that Mr. A. was referring to was never published.

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Style Blow-up: Paul, have you read Weingarten's take on it? After the boilerplate "I do not endorse violence," he proceeds to endorse violence in the name of defending good writing -- essentially he's saying that this kind of passion is good and appropriate for a newspaper (if only the Style section...)

Your thoughts?

washingtonpost.com: Gene Weingarten's Chatological Humor (washingtonpost.com, Nov. 3 updated)

Paul Farhi: Yes, I read that. I like the spirit of it. And, as I said, it was an exciting moment in our newsroom on Friday. And, dang, if I haven't wanted to throw down before. But let's get past our own romantization(sp?) of this episode. You want people taking shots at each other? Really? How often? And who do you want swinging at whom? Men at men only, and only other men who are of similar size? Women at men? And you want the hit-ee swinging back at the hitter? And just fists? Not something else? This gets outta control very, very quickly...

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Another National Lampoon ad:: They ran a parody "public service announcement" with the recently deceased John Wayne saying, "After I had my lung removed, I cut my smoking in half!"

Paul Farhi: D'oh! Those NL guys did NOT mess around...

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Bowie, Md.: "a totebag of self-regard": hilarious! Someone should show this to Dick Meyer and Eileen McConnell at NPR and ask whether this is what they're going for.

Paul Farhi: We'll be having NPR prez/ceo Vivian Schiller (hey, there's that name again!) on the chat soon. We can all ask her.

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San Francisco, Calif.: I think what makes the Farley commercial so distasteful is David Spade's participation. Spade is a creepy guy to begin with, but you feel like HE is the one exploiting and cashing in on his BFF's image -- and greater talent.

Paul Farhi: I won't comment directly. But I will say it's hard to believe Spade has had as long a career as he's had. I bet he's surprised, too.

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Baltimore, Md.: Old time newsrooms: A friend of mine returned to the Baltimore Sun staff in the late 90s after 20 years away from daily newspapers and he said it was a weird experience. When I asked why, he said, "It was quiet, there was no smoking, there were a lot of women and no one had a bottle in his desk."

Paul Farhi: Oh, the old bottle-in-the-desk thing. In several decades of working in newsrooms, I've never seen anyone keep a bottle in his/her desk who didn't do so as a joke (i.e., as a way to say, 'Hey, look at me, I'm such a character! I keep a bottle in my desk!'). Going back even further, I suspect the nostalgia for this is waay exaggerated.

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Billy Mays, Willy Mays: Oxy 5, Giants 3.

Paul Farhi: The Giants don't win the pennant! The Giants don't, etc....

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Bad Taste Junction, Va.: Worst ad idea -- Sylvia Plath for Oven Cleaner. Seriously though, I jokingly said that someone ought to license a gun "just like the one Papa Hemingway used." And, honest to God, a few years later, the Franklin Mint had an elephant gun authorized by the Hemingway family (although they didn't use my idea of "just like the one Papa used."

(MLK Holiday Sale pitch..."I have a dream...a dream where prices are so low!")

Paul Farhi: Excellent bad taste, with a chaser of intellectual overtones. Nicely (and by "nicely," I mean "terribly") done, Va.

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NPR: Now that someone has brought up NPR, I have an observation to make. It seems to me (does it seem so to anyone else? Or am I crazy?) that NPR is getting to be a bit more personality-driven than before. By that, I mean that the hosts (naming no names, and I get them all mixed up anyway) are now showing more personality than they did in years past. And by personality, I mean much looser interviews, generally more hijinks, and much laughter. I'm having trouble articulating this -- do you know what I mean?

I'm not sure I like it, either.

Paul Farhi: I don't know for sure, but the amount of laughter seems to have gone up, and quite gratingly. I'm a big fan of laughter in general, but something drives me batty when people (hosts, guests, whomever) laugh uproariously at stuff that isn't even remotely funny. It just seems so...inappropriate?

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Capitol Hill, D.C.: I think some of the posthumous stuff can be a good thing, with Elvis Presley being the prime example. Priscilla Presley apparently single-handedly resurrected both Elvis's estate value and his memory by turning Graceland into a shrine. While all of his life is represented, Graceland helped people to remember the "young Elvis" as opposed to the bloated Vegas performer he had become.

Paul Farhi: Yeah, it's all in how it's handled, I guess. But I wonder if some people see Fred Astaire now and say, "Hey, it's that vacuum cleaner guy!"

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Savannah, Ga.: In the NYT article on Levi-Strauss, they noted he was 100, then said "the cause of death was not known." Could it possibly be because the man was 100?!?!

Paul Farhi: Remember when people used to say so-and-so died "of old age"? It's not technically correct, of course, but I always found that so comforting.

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NW D.C.: Re: WashPost brawl

Nothing like this ever happened at the Daily Planet -- a great metropolitan newspaper.

Paul Farhi: Are you kidding me? Or did you miss DC Comics #19, 25, 32-39, 47, 53-55, 68, 70-75, and the Anniversary No. 100 Issue? There was all kinds of mayhem in that office, starting with that weasel Jimmy Olson.

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NPR laughter: Yes! So much laughter! Andrea Seabrook was the worst with this, back when she was hosting Weekend All Things Considered. I'm a print journalist, and I laugh at people's marginally funny jokes so they'll like me and tell me more...but that doesn't work on radio.

Paul Farhi: Perhaps there are more of us secret laughter-haters out there. It feels wrong, but I can't help it!

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NPR again: Yeah, and they seem more "fluffy" in their choice of stories. They have certainly gone downhill since they had their funding either cut or threatened to be cut by the Republicans because they were seen as liberal.

Paul Farhi: Well, I dunno about that. NPR's funding was generally trending upward until the recession hit. If they are "fluffier"--and I'm not saying they are--I'm not sure it has anything to do with their funding.

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Paul Farhi: Thanks for the chat, folks, but it's that time again. I've got to get back to the mean streets of the Style section (don't worry, I know how to handle myself). But we can rumble again next week, when there'll be more where this came from. In the meantime, as always, regards to all! --Paul.

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