This was a mildly amusing piece in The Onion yesterday:
NEW YORK—Frustrated fans of the Superman comic book said Monday the continued financial stability and cultural relevance of the series’ Daily Planet newspaper is now the most unrealistic part of its universe and an annoying distraction that has ruined their reading experience.
While they acknowledged that enjoying the adventures of a superhero who can fly, lift a bus over his head, and shoot beams of intense heat from his eyes requires some suspension of disbelief, longtime fans told reporters they simply could not accept a daily metropolitan newspaper still thriving in the media landscape of 2012.
“I can play along with Superman using a steel girder to swat someone into outer space, but I just can’t get past the idea that The Daily Planet still occupies one of the largest skyscrapers in all of Metropolis and is totally impervious to newsroom layoffs or dwindling home subscriptions,” said comics blogger Marc Daigle, adding that it was impossible for him to even look at Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, without immediately thinking he would have been replaced long ago by a freelancer who gets paid nine cents a word and receives no health benefits. “Every time The Daily Planetshows up, I just get taken out of the story completely. I usually flip ahead to Superman freezing a volcano with his breath or something.”…
I say “mildly” because the idea of a health Daily Planet was sufficiently absurd that it was hard to make fun of effectively.
One last excerpt:
“The least they could do is have [Daily Planet editor-in-chief] Perry White be forced into retirement by an MBA 25 years his junior,” Taft continued. “It’d be a start.”
See? Too real, too true, too matter-of-fact to be funny.
Perry! Great Caesar’s Ghost!
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Here’s a realistic storyline they could try…
Clark, Lois and Perry all get canned on account of having so much experience and being highly compensated employees. Jimmy Olsen, who was paid chickenfeed, remains. Other newsroom jobs are sent to India.
But, happy ending? Clark goes to India to get his old job back, and commutes there every day at super-speed.
No, Clark still writes his blog, but now works for an ad/media agency, despite having the newspaperman’s disdain for television and popular culture…..(“Who is Anderson Cooper?” indeed)…
Perhaps even more outrageous is Clark Kent wearing a 3 piece suit and a dressy hat in 2012.
Hey, the new “Spider-man” movie doesn’t have J. Jonah Jameson. The nerve!
Poor ole State newspaper. You really have to feel for these guys. They can’t even get the basics right. This morning I checked the weather report on page 2 of the A section and it showed yesterdays high temperature of 102. That can’t be right, I thought. The other news broadcasts had the high in the low 90s. I looked closer and noticed the out-days forecasts showing Tuesday-Friday instead of Thursday-Sunday. Obviously what they did was somehow included the Monday weather report in todays (Wednesday) paper. Hey, we all make mistakes but for someone not looking closely they might have assumed todays weather would be what was reported for Monday. Not sure we can really trust the paper for much of anything if they can’t even put the right weather report in.
Hey!!! What happened to my well thought out path that Clark will be taking moving forward?