My loyal readers know that I am a list maker. I always have been. You needn’t look any farther than Under the Giant Muh or Band Names, Titles, and Poo References for a couple of gut-grabbingly funny lists.
In the 1980s I dated a woman named Kathy who was a reporter for the newspaper where I was a photographer. She and I were young and overly irreverent, and at least somewhat cynical about the work we did. I can’t speak directly for her, but I know that I felt I was a left-handed, liberal, left-wing atheist in the midst of a good-old-boy paradigm. Actually, I more than felt it; that’s the way it was.
Kathy was a bit of a list-maker herself, and began to assemble some lists we both found quite funny. The one in question became know as our newspaper’s unofficial motto list, and each motto was more insulting than the last. I think maybe she wrote them on the calendar on her desk. At one point she made a copy of it for me, so here it is…
- We promote confusion
- For the love of the common people
- Doing the impossible for the ungrateful
- Vllata sphera kura skubacz
- Boredom is our business
- The quantity goes out before the quality goes in
- Our illiterate readership can’t be wrong
- Misquoting tomorrow’s news today
- Because we had nothing better to do
- Big deal
- Restroom to all the dogs in the trip-county area
- Because we can all use a laugh
- If it’s news, it’s news to us
- We wash our hands of the whole stinking mess
- News really is our middle name
- All the pottage that’s fit to print
- We are a 1300-pound gorilla
- Ethics be damned
- Six time league softball champions
- Dedicated to doing it the easy way
- All the news that doesn’t give anyone a fit to print
- Because you can fool some of the people all of the time
- Because a cut-rate city deserves a cut-rate newspaper
- The number one advertising and advertising medium in the tri-county area
- There are worse things than being crazy
- A fit and fearless force, rising on the wings of victory
- Quality… don’t count on it
- Serving area bird cages for over 50 years
- Riches to rags
- It’s not hell, but you can see it from here
- Hurrah for the green and yellow
- So sue us
- Spare, pithy, lean, concise
- Because hog’s breath is better than no breath at all
- Keeping America free
- As effective as aspirin, but gentler to the stomach
- There is no finer print
I hope Kathy laughs out loud when she sees this.
SO PROUD. I am so proud of this list! Thank you for sharing it. I had forgotten many of these. I will re-read this list at least 200,000 more times, perhaps daily. … On a related note, at the next newspaper I worked for, I dimly recall we had a much shorter list, which included my personal fave, “We Don’t Like You, Either.”
Thanks, Wil.
“This was Stu’s idea, not mine.”