Okay, perhaps Les’ students do know what a newspaper is, they’ve just never heard of the Westview Gazette. Some communities will have a main newspaper, with local and national news, weather, ads, and so forth; they might also have a smaller, more-locally focused paper that’s a sort of “goings-on around town” thing. They’ll have articles like “8 Signs You Should Replace Your Lawn Sprinkler” and “New Fish-Themed Restaurant Hopes to ‘Hook’ Diners.” That could be what we’re talking about here, but leave it to Batiuk to absolutely refuse to be clear.
As for the joke…well, I can’t find one.
Update: Well, I was wrong–the Westview Gazette is the town’s main paper. And it has been for some time. So, my attempt to excuse those darn kids’ ignorance was equally ignorant!
The fact that he’s trying to milk this tired old gag for multiple days tells you all you need to know about the “work” he put into this especially feeble premise. Maybe next week he can do six days on payphones.
I have the same reaction when someone asks me to raise my hand if I read Funky Winkerbean.
I proudly raise my hand. Because there is not a person on Earth aware of Funky Winkerbean that doesn’t also know that it’s entire audience is reading sarcastically.
Amelia’s embarrassed because her and Emily are the only two students whose family hasn’t died of cancer.
Hahahaha! That comment is pure gold.
In the real world, they’d be talking about how their parents subscribe to the Plain Dealer like everyone else. Here, it’s more Old Man Yells At Cloud Storage.
I assume by “get a newspaper” TomBa means “have a print edition delivered to you house”. If he’s not unaware of their existence, I can guess that this is his “get off my lawn”-type objection to them.
This shout read ”if he’s not unaware of the existence of digita editions”
“How many people in this room actually know anything about langauge arts?”
Zero hands up.
And that includes Les
Off topic but looking at the strip reminds me that the whole “Butter Brinkel being tried in the court of pubic opinion” Arc ended with a talking Monkey holding a prop ray gun. I have to say I still find the connection between the talking Ape and ‘being tried in the court of public opinion” somewhat elusive. I’d call it a Dadaist exercise in confounding standard narrative but I don’t think the author intended that.
The juxtaposition of the Brinkel strip with the Laff-A-Day high school antics in today’s strip got me wondering which type of FW strip is worse. This, it turns out, is an almost insoluble dilemma along the lines of dividing by zero.
In the end, I suppose the latter are worse if only in that they might be read by the elderly and serve to further alienate them from the kids today. Whereas no one could possibly give a shit or be inspired to feel anything other than bafflement at the former.
It took awhile, but I finally figured out what bugs me about today’s punchline.
I’m not sure if those two girls are twins, sisters, best friends, clones, or what. But we all knew girls like them in high school: the inseperable duo who shared classes, activities, clothes and one brain.
Those girls would NEVER give different answers to the same question.
And if they did, one would quickly get into compliance. (These pairs usually have an alpha and a beta.) Their friendship is based on solidarity. And they tend to be the only friend each other has. They wouldn’t dare be seen not agreeing. Especially over such a tiny social dilemma.
And once again, THESE KIDS ARE ON THE GODDAM SCHOOL PAPER. If they’re in this room having this conversation, getting the newspaper wouldn’t embarrass them any further!
I think its funny that it was supposed to be a documentary about the yellow press ruining the life of Hollywood’s Biggest Star and instead was about Hollywood’s Biggest Star sacrificing his career to cover up a murder committed by a talking, drunken, murderape.
Sorry…literally the only thing less interesting than “Zanzibar Kills” is “Here’s what newspapers are”