Smug Little Bastards

Now ex-Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist James Lileks has had many classic tomes, but this one is, for my money, one of his all-time best:

Yes! A happy note: the TV just showed the Cocoa Puffs commercial I’ve been looking for. I always had a soft spot for that hyperactive sugar-junkie, even though the cereal rarely made its appearance in our house. (Sugar Frosted Flakes were fine, but Cocoa Puffs was just too obviously bad.) We all know his problem; the presence, indeed the mere contemplation of the existence of Cocoa Puffs sends him bouncing off the walls. As cereal mascots go, he’s rather one-dimensional; he lacks the rat-pack cool of the Sugar Bear, the bumbling distracted peter-principled incompetence of Captain Crunch (whose personality was retooled for the whole “Crunchetize Me” campaign, alas) or the mischievous nature of Lucky. (“Those kids are after me Looky Cherms! I’ll build an Aegis gun capable of firing a thousand rounds per second and turn them into gust of jam!”) For the Trix rabbit I eventually felt nothing but contempt. (With contempt left over from the cruel children who kept him from his Grail: smug little bastards. Look, you little monsters: the fact that Trix are for kids does not exclude the possibility that other species may have them as well. There’s no Nuremburg Cereal Laws.) No, the Cocoa Puff bird was simple, but always on message, and the pleasure came from watching him become unhinged in twenty seconds.

That's the image keeps coming to mind when I think of sending a talent with a 'Net following like Lileks to cover sewer commission planning meetings: "cruel, smug little bastards" at the Strib whose rigid ideological extremism and resultant penchant for silencing any who disagree with them, particularly as wittily as Lileks, finally cause them to "become unhinged in twenty seconds".

Of course, that very 'Net following makes it impossible for the Strib to silence Lileks, even if it wouldn't afford him a blizzard of alternative offers. All it'll do is further crash their already anemic circulation and pound another large, left-tilting nail in their own business coffin. It's a little like blowing a hole in the hull of your boat because you don't like the color it was painted.

So yeah, Stribbers, by all means, celebrate - you've got Lileks right where he wants you.

UPDATE: Check out the last section of this Iowahawk parody. The difference between the Claxon-Ledger and the Strib is only a matter of degree - if that.