At 07:59 PM 9/7/2005, you wrote:
>Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq

I have been an Onion-reader and devotee of the New York Press since
my last year working in New York, 2000-01. Whoever writes for The
Onion has a gift for taking the potentially repulsive and redirecting
the subjects toward mockery not of terrible situations but of the
"sideshow" aspects, the people who either made the mess possible or
are cleaning up on it. This was Lenny Bruce's gift--not mocking a
terrible event such as the Kennedy assassination but ragging on guys
like Vaughn Meader who'd made a pile of money of Kennedy. There's a
sad irony there, but there wasn't in 1963.

Only a few weeks after 9/11, The Onion featured a story in which God
(yeah, that One) appeared at Ground Zero for a news conference. The
gist was: "I have told you people a million times: stop killing each
other and stop using my name as the excuse. What part of that don't
you understand? Stop the killing! ALL of it! NOW!" And God turns
his back and is shaking because he's crying.

Given the havoc in New York in those first days and weeks after the
Trade Center went down, The Onion's gesture went from funny to
intensely emotional. A lot of us would burst into tears for no
discernible reason. No one in the city in those days could feel much
more than gratitude for surviving or a deep sense of loss. The story
worked right to those emotions and the well of tears we carried. It
also, I suppose, prefigured the monstrosity that has surrounded us now.

I pretty much stopped reading the Village Voice--really the great
original--years ago. It gave me my first publication, an article
that appeared on January 1, 1970, about my time working for the NY
Welfare Department. The writing standard was pretty high back then
so I guess I must've impressed the late (d. 1998) Ross Wetzsteon, the
editor. Wetzsteon contacted me and said a terrible thing had
happened. The article was 12 typed pages. They'd lost the first
two. Just lost them. He read me the first words on page 3 and I was
able to reconstruct word for word what I'd written on the lost
pages. It even ended in the same place. For this I was paid
$50. We needed it. Our car had just been totalled, my wife had no
job yet, and we were living on a $65 a week stipend. It actually
wasn't impossible back then.

Oh...the NY Press. Better written now than the Village Voice,
nastier, more punkish and suited to 61-year-old juvenile
delinquents. They employ a cartoonist named Neil Swaab whose main
preoccupation is a strip called "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles." Mr.
Wiggles is a sex-obsessed (ANY kind of sex will do) teddy bear who is
the stuffed toy possession (in your dreams) of a Downtown punk
guy. Mr. Wiggles is a complete sicko who might be one of the
funniest characters you'll never see in the Sunday funnies. I
predict that Mayor Bloomberg will not read him to kids over the radio
if there is ever a newspaper strike. Swaab has a website. That's
all I will say after I've said too much already:-).

Ken