Then, the sixteen-year-old’s mom sees the tape, and she sues Rob Lowe. At this writing, nothing involving the incident has been settled, but do you see what I mean? How does Rob Lowe getting a sixteen-year-old and her buddy to get naked and do it to one another on a video camera in a hotel room compare with Lloyd Bentsen’s acceptance speech as far as reader interest goes? No comparison. Rob and the lesbian stuff wins hands down over Lloyd and his recommendations for the economy. But Lloyd was front-page news.
It took six months for the Rob Lowe story to break.
I realize at this point that I have strayed far off the original path I had intended for this, the opening chapter, but I wanted to throw in some stuff about celebrities and sex to get you this far.
My theory is that if somebody goes into a bookstore and starts browsing through a book, whether or not they buy it probably depends on how they enjoy the first few pages. You can’t stand around in a bookstore and read an entire book and then put it back on the shelf, thereby actually stealing the book, unless, of course, it is very short, which is why most writers make their books so long. Tolstoy, for instance, was so concerned about somebody doing that to War and Peace that he wrote one of the longest books in the history of books.
So I’m going for the sensational and the prurient early, figuring the browser might say, “Hey, this is pretty exciting stuff. I’d better buy this book so I don’t miss what else is in it.”
I’m not saying there isn’t going to be any more juicy information here. (I’ll make up some if I have to—remember, I’m a columnist.) But now let us go ahead with the book’s main thesis.
This is going to be about newspapers, because since I was eight I’ve been in love with them, and because people have the damnedest ideas about newspapers and a great deal of fascination with them, as well.
How could you be literate and not be fascinated with newspapers? Every day of most people’s lives, a newspaper sneaks in there at some point. They are delivered right to our homes, just like pizza, only pizza is more expensive. There’s another connection, too: Newspapers and pizza can both give you heartburn.
I love newspapers because they are a constant in my life. No matter what happened to me the night before, I know there will be a newspaper on my lawn the next morning. It’s my little friend.
I get up. I put on the coffee. I go outside and get my little friend. Then, I read it and drink my coffee.
Everybody has a different method of reading their newspaper, I suppose. Mine is another constant in my life. I always read the paper—any paper—the same way: I glance at the front page first. If no war has been declared, no tidal wave is expected to hit my neighborhood, and no announcement that cigarettes really don’t cause cancer, or other such astounding news, I then go directly to the sports section.
I read everything in the sports section that isn’t about hockey, soccer, and hunting. I’ve said for years, if the deer had guns, too, then, and only then, would hunting really be a sport.
I go back to the front page after I finish reading sports. I read very few news stories with foreign datelines because I basically don’t care about what’s going on in South Yemen. I should, but I don’t. I think I’m a fairly normal reader, and the fairly normal reader usually wants to read about what’s going on in his or her hometown. No matter how the jet airplane has shrunk the world, it’s still difficult for somebody in Meridian, Miss., or Minot, N.D., to care what’s doing four or five thousand miles away in some place covered with sand, unless they know somebody there.
I quote a colleague of mine who, during a discussion concerning what emphasis should be put on international stories, said, “I don’t give a damn what happened last night in Outer Mongolia. I just want to know who cut who down at Slick’s Lounge.”
People were always getting cut (southern for “knifed”) at Slick’s in Atlanta. And shot, too. Two guys got into an argument about who was the better wrestler, Vern Gange or Argentina Rocca, and one guy pulled a gun and shot at the other guy. He missed and hit an innocent bystander in the knee, instead.
I happened to know the emergency room doctor that treated the victim.
When he asked the patient what happened, the patient replied, “Man, I was just sittin’ there drinkin’ a Schlitz and some fool shot my ass in the knee.”
If something really interesting or odd happened in a foreign country, I will read that, however.
There was a story about a British Airways jet recently. The windshield in the cockpit blew out at 23,000 feet and it sucked the pilot out. Luckily, another crew member grabbed his feet and held on to him until the copilot could land a half-hour later.
That’s even better than a guy getting knifed in the stomach at Slick’s for saying Richard Petty couldn’t have carried Fireball Roberts’s lug wrench.
I usually get through most of the “A” section in a paper fairly quickly, stopping only to read good political gossip, and the latest on where the killer bees are now located and how long it will take them to get to my house.
Then, I read the editorial pages. I rarely read the unsigned editorials that come under the newspaper masthead. They are usually about something happening in South Yemen.
I enjoy the readers’ letters, however, especially the ones from members of the National Rifle Association who say if we outlaw the sales of AK-47’s, the favorite weapon of drug dealers and drive-by murderers, they may also eventually lose their hunting guns and that they are actually doing the deer a favor by shooting them. If we ever do take away the AK-47’s from drug dealers, I think we ought to give them to the deer.
I also enjoy editorial columns on the op-ed page. I’m always amazed how angry readers get at columnists. If Carl Rowan or William Safire or Richard Reeves writes an opinion, it’s his prerogative. I might say to myself, “Carl Rowan must have drunk some bad buttermilk when he wrote this,” or “What on earth was William Safire trying to say?” But I don’t ever get mad at them and call down to the paper and threaten to cancel my subscription. Disagreeing with a columnist is a lot of fun. A good columnist will stir debate and reaction.
After the editorial page, I read the feature section of the paper which has names like “Lifestyle” and “People” and “Arts and Leisure.” That section usually has the comics, the TV and movie listings, and a lot of stuff women enjoy reading, like Dear Abby and stories about how women will soon take over the entire world and tell all the men to get up and go cook their own breakfasts and “Don’t let me hear any pots or pans rattling.”
News for and about women is big in those sections. “News you can use” is a new catch phrase in the industry, which means running a lot of stories about why you should eat oat bran and how to make your house safe from radon gas.
I do the Jumble every morning. That’s where you unscramble four words in order to figure out the answer to a puzzle.
Okay, in ten seconds, what is this word: “Tigura”?
Time’s up. “Guitar.” It took me an hour one morning to get that. I only glance at the business section because I don’t understand much about business.
Reading my morning paper is, quite often, the highlight of my day. I’m always a little sad when I finish. To put off finishing the paper as long as I can, I even read stories about art exhibits. If I’m really desperate, I’ll even read Scheinwood on bridge. And I don’t know the first thing about bridge. I just don’t want it to be over.
I fell in love with newspapers when I was eight because they took me to every minor league and major league baseball game. They taught me about Duke Snider and Senor Al Lopez, the manager of the Chicago White Sox. I could sit in Moreland, Georgia, and read about Mantle’s three home runs for the Yankees. There were a lot of people in the rural South who didn’t think there really was a New York City. Nobody knew anybody who had actually been there. But I’d been there, in my sports page box score where the Tigers’ Yankee Killer, Frank