americanorwell

FILTHIEST HABIT IN AMERICA (Keep reading!) The internet is one big tease. You can’t get anything straightforward, only the come-on that a carnival barker would use, and that includes the CBS and NBC Nightly News. It’s a proven technique to coax readers into a story, but there’s really no reward in an item that starts: “What the star says”, “Bizarre cookbooks”; “Aniston’s ex moving on?” . AOL even has a daily section called “Weird News” with must-know items such as: “Octomom Broke”; “Grandmother 60 take up pole dancing” and “Watch: man attempts robbery with underwear over head”. Of course this is Dwight MacDonald’s grim world of Masscult which he described long ago as a page in Life magazine about the UN facing a page with a horse on roller skates. It’s the real world done as a comic strip. Now, dear reader, to satisfy your morbid curiosity about the headline. It comes from a Lil’ Abner strip of long ago when Dogpatch was horrified that someone in town had the filthiest habit in America. Al Capp played this for a few weeks until he revealed that the culprit wore the filthiest riding habit. It needed dry cleaning, that’s all. Gotcha!