Seattle Times: Painfully Unfunny

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Possibly, yes.

Because if that tree is later harvested for the newsprint on which the Seattle Times is printed, you will hear a sound. This sound: GROOOOOAAAN.

Here at Seattlest, we don't want to bash the local media. Sure, we've done it before, but we like to give the pros the benefit of the doubt...after all, they are usually overworked, underpaid, and held in check by archaic editorial policies.

So, despite a daily torrent of pollution from our morning paper, we've been restraining ourselves.

But no longer. Today, we were pushed over the edge.

Dear Seattle Times editors: can there be any conceivable reason for tormenting your readers with "jokes" like these, both of which appear in today's edition?

From TV writer Pamela Sitt:

While you were crying over the breakup of Nicole Richie and DJ AM, Danni Boatwright was having the Best Week Ever!

(Pop quiz: Who's skinnier? Danni after 39 days on the island, or Nicole Richie after eating breakfast?)

What an original reference! We've never noticed it before, but Nicole Ritchie is skinny!

Or this, from Dwight Perry, in "Sideline Chatter," a daily column:

Vince Carter has donated $2.5 million for construction of a new gymnasium at his alma mater, Mainland High School in Deland, Fla., on the stipulation that the gym be named for him and, his mother insists, that a life-sized statue of him be erected out front.

No truth to the rumor that Vince will be portrayed in bronze patting himself on the back.

Pop quiz: What's longer? The set-up for this joke, or five minutes with this guy?

These aren't isolated incidents--a few rickety floats in an otherwise inspired parade of hilarity. Both of these are regular columns, and their labored, dreadful jokes regularly make us irregular.

Then there was the "humor" piece in last month's Times, part of the "Northwest Lite" series, imagining that Wallace and Gromit were hired by the city to hunt rabbits at Lower Woodland Park. Ho-ho!

It was fake news, in the style of The Onion, except that The Onion is hilarious, and this abomination (registration required) is not. Does "Northwest Lite" refer to the article, or to the mental capacity of the intended reader?

There are many funny people in Seattle. Maybe the Times should hire them, instead of subjecting their readers to such dramatically awful attempts at humor.

Maybe not even to write. Just to edit. They might do it as a public service. No one having even a passing familiarity with humor could, in good conscience, permit this stuff to see the light of day.