Foot print

Posted by: spacecog

OK, I was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. In a previous post, I mocked "Scoops" Miner for cutting-and-pasting huge chunks of a column from someone’s emails. Clearly I wasn’t thinking. Given Miner’s terribleness as a writer, virtually anything he quotes from someone else is guaranteed to be more interesting than his own dour, muddled prose. Take the lead section of week’s column, which is actually quite amusing, mainly because there’s so little Miner in it. The subject? A column (by the wife of the Sun Times publisher) that outs a former Sun-Times editor as a shoe fetishist. The big long quotes from her column? Funny. A quote from Miner nemesis Neal Steinberg? Funny. The defensive denials from the ex-editor? Unintentionally funny. Only Miner’s own attempts at levity – at least I think that’s what they are -- fall flat. I won’t quote them, lest I sully my own writing in the process.

ELSEWHERE IN MINER: He manages to turn the Trib’s recent non-gangster photo flubs into an excuse to pontificate about a teensy weensy journalistic conflict of interest. In the next segment, he celebrates the Chicago Defender’s recent, ah, revitalization: "[T]he stories are no longer riddled with typos, and there’s a spirit of innovation in the air." Whoo!

ON BEYOND MINER: On page 20, an interview with Tom Frank. I would rather drill a hole down the length of my penis than read an interview with Tom Frank.