Can the Economy Possibly Get Any Worse … The Writing About It?Hi there, my bad-news-weary readers. Not to worry! This column is safe! Feel free to read right down to the end, because I promise that unlike every other reporter in America, at no time will I suggest the economy is PLUNGING OFF A CLIFF LIKE A LIMO CARRYING JIM CRAMER DRIVEN BY A MORTGAGE-BACKED SECURITIES INVESTOR TURNED CHAUFFEUR WHO JUMPS OUT AT THE VERY LAST MINUTE, CACKLING MANIACALLY. You see, I, for one, understand that enough is enough. Some of us are getting a little tired of stories about just how terribly terrible things are. I mean, I am looking at a couple-of-days-old New York Times featuring a huge front-page photo of a tent city. A Hooverville, see? Symbol of the Great Depression? And you have to go and actually read the article (how annoying!) to learn that those tents have been around for 18 months . Yes, they were erected when the Dow was about 300,000, or whatever it was in '07. But did we see them on Page One back when everyone still thought AIG is just how you pronounce "egg" if you're from the South? No. The Times waited until THE ECONOMY WAS BEING CONSUMED BY A FIRE THAT GIVES OFF NO LIGHT, ITS FLESH FALLING OFF IN ACRID STRIPS before it ran this picture. If we were blind to the bubble a few years back, now it feels as if the bubble has popped and stuck to our glasses. We can't see anything else — or, more precisely, the news media can't. And so we try to watch the news or surf the Net, but everyone is scraping the bottom of the barrel (the one around the naked guy) to find yet another awful angle to suggest, in even more alarming terms, that THIS ECONOMIC MESS STANK LIKE COW DUNG IN A SWAMP OF VOMIT THAT WAS LEFT OUT IN THE SUN AND COATED WITH FLIES EVEN BEFORE A DUMP TRUCK CAME ALONG FILLED WITH FRESHLY BOILED BRUSSELS SPROUTS. The other morning, NPR was going on and on about, "Is the American dream dead?" Oh, yeah — 400 years in the making but squashed like a grape by Tim Geithner.
Nine. Can we just keep a LITTLE perspective? It's not that I don't want to face reality. I realize times are kind of tough. But then the TV anchor goes, "Up next: a look at THE TRAIN WRECK OF MANGLED BODY PARTS AND PUNCTURED EYEBALLS OOZING PUS WE CALL OUR ECONOMY." And five minutes later, "How will THE ECONOMY-CUM-DECAYING WHALE WITH ITS FESTERING GUTS HANGING OUT affect you?" There must be other stories going on. There must be at least one American who still has a job, if only the guy who comes up with a new, worse way to describe the economy every day. Unless, of course, even he's about to be laid off and replaced by a freelancer. I wonder where I send my résumé? Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at Advertising Age. She is the founder of FreeRangeKids.com and the author of the upcoming book "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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