Too much for Derrida’s
Is there a problem if the headline on a story is too good? Maybe yes, maybe no, says Stanley Fish:
The problem of a readership that may be excluded from the wit and wisdom the headline writers dispense becomes more acute when the knowledge required is literary and even academic. Another recent [New York] Post story (April 7) concerns a Staten Island pastor who stole $850,000 from his church and spent it on plastic surgery and botox treatments. (The Post just loves stories about wayward ministers, rabbis and priests.) The front page headline was “Friar Tuck.”
Since I have no doubt all of my readers would have picked up on this little jest with ease, the inevitable conclusion here is that Fish, a deconstruction worker with a blog at The New York Times, thinks this level of wordplay is over the heads of those ill-bred Post readers.
jen »
21 April 2009 · 9:08 pm
I like this post very much. I think about this quite a bit as I do a fair amount of freelancing. I like literary and academic references – I guess that’s what you call them – for lack of a better word. With the advent of google-galore, I use them more than I did 15 or 20 years ago. I don’t think I write for the 8th or 12th grade audience anymore. I figure if someone stumbles on something they don’t get, they can just google it.
fillyjonk »
22 April 2009 · 7:04 am
Wait…what? He’s saying that clever headlines are unfair because people who didn’t have/didn’t take advantage of literary or educational opportunities may be closed out of enjoying them? So we should all be subjected to something rather like the VOA’s “Special English Broadcast”
where….everything…is….very….short…words…and….delivered….
very….slowly…
Feh. This is where I start becoming one of those dreaded “elitists.”
Kirk »
22 April 2009 · 7:56 am
Chaz, your headlines are one of the reasons I started reading Dustbury, however long ago that was now. Including a nice literary, historical or cultural reference in a headline is fun, and it adds interest. For the nitwits (and there are many) who don’t get it, what’s the harm? And for the rest of us, it’s a little bonus in our daily reading.