Here is a direct quote from Boy Columnist (Keeling) in the Lexington Herald-Leader of July 20: By the way, as someone who loves to play golf (although the backward spelling of the word more accurately describes my game), let me say that I do not begrudge Boy Governor one moment of the mid-week hours he has spent on the links lately. I just wish I was fortunate enough to have a job that demanded as little of my time as his apparently does.
Well now! Especially since the subject of his columns has been the same for months now, it would seem that two columns a week should not be too taxing. After all, Brammer, Cheves, and Alessi do the research, and Boy Columnist can check the TV for further facts from Stottlemyer and Peel. He can also listen to Al Smith’s Comment on Kentucky every Friday or Sunday on KET to further be elucidated, unless, of course, his “flog” takes up too much time for that.
Admittedly, BC also has a commitment to the L-H editorial board, known as the Giddy Gang, made up of eight people; therefore, he is at least one-eighth responsible for what that entails, not that anyone probably knows, since even the head honchos get in on the act once in a while with a screed about something or other usually having to do with things or people such as the Great Satan, otherwise known as Karl Rove, or something more important, like the new license plates or the fact that downtown is being ignored by the general public. Sometimes the editorials make sense, like the one about the plates not being needed at this time; sometimes the offerings are too off the wall to be taken seriously, such as when the editorialists in 2001 extolled the closing of the second-most important street in town – Vine, or, more recently, cannibalizing the water company, a private enterprise just as is the newspaper. Go figure.
In any case, Boy Columnist and the GG should be aware of any possible trauma that could be occasioned by overwork, especially with reference to BC, who, besides his editorial-writing, has to deliver those two columns on the same subject every week. Since the subject is the same, BC must figure a new way to approach it each time, and that could mean a mind-bending effort trending even toward physical impairment, especially since things are slow in the summer anyway. It would be mean-spirited to suggest that BC can’t think of anything else to write about, so it’s easier to just assume that he’s been assigned to write about the same thing twice a week by the powers-that-be and let it go at that.
Added to the problem could be possible mental strain brought on, as BC described it in a recent rant, by the exhaust fumes from his lawnmower. It may well be that the L-H should spring for the fee required to have BC’s lawn mowed by a third party, the better to save his strength, with the added factor that failing to do so might put the paper at risk from a BC lawsuit premised upon mental damage and physical fatigue due to the fact that he is both too underpaid to afford grass-cutting relief and too overworked in having to write about the same thing twice a week in columns while sometimes having to write editorially about it yet again, at least on one day out of eight. One might suggest that columns could be at least sketched in BC’s mind while he’s either mowing or flogging, but there’s that awful exhaust on the one hand and the total mental and physical concentration required for a score even as bad as 100 on the other.
Since everyone is writing a book baring all these days, BC perhaps should consider a tell-all book about the Giddy Gang…or maybe the Giggly Gaggle…whatever. In the diversity-sensitive, multiculturally humane, politically correct society of today, especially as espoused by the very hallowed Herald-Leader itself, he could be the penultimate whistle-blower, accusing the paper of traumatizing an overworked, lawnmower-damaged (to the paper’s certain knowledge) employee to such an extent that he has become permanently flog-impaired. What a deal!
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment