Hi, I'm Andy Rooney

A few stray items:

* The lack of controversy over the Commercial Appeal's comics page still puzzles me. Doonesbury and For Better or For Worse get press for their politics and gay-friendliness, respectively. But any number of other cartoons have other problems that rarely draw attention.

For example, how many comics never feature a black character? You'd be surprised. Fourteen by my count. And more have a token black character introduced many years ago, and never joined by others in the strips. In light of that, the fuss that sometimes arises over Boondocks seems silly.

There's also the Johnny Hart strips, BC and Wizard of Id, which regularly proselytise for Christianity. I'm not taking a position on that, only noting it.

* Ever notice how much John Rosemond, of the CA's Affirmative Parenting resembles WREC's Mike Fleming? Spooky.

* Whoever is doing the ads for Clear Channel radio needs to remember that listeners aren't just ad targets, but also listeners. The constant bombardment of "advertise on Clear Channel" and cross-promotional ads is wearing.

By the way, if someone listening to Clear Channel needs "info detox" you don't send them to News Radio WREC; that's like sending a drunk to a bar for detox. Chumps. Oh, and whoever did the ads for their big franchise shows--Rush, Dr. Laura, Paul Harvey--seems to have a very mean streak. Those loopy ads used to have a real nasty side hidden in them, suggesting Dr. Laura / Paul Harvey sex relations and making fun of Rush's weight. Then there was the ad warning about possible nuclear attack, and the anthrax ad...you get the idea. Who do they think their target audience is and is the ad person responsible hostile to them?

* Why are newspaper websites so poorly designed? You can go to most corporate websites and find clean, simple, easy to access layout. You go to the CA, Memphis Flyer or WREC sites and find cramped, cluttered design so heavy on flashy visuals and graphics, polls and other boxes, that my browser regularly chokes on them. It gets frustrating, to be sure. They seem to assume that everyone has the latest, most powerful computers with all the flashy plugins and the latest versions, and a big fat T-3 line like they do. GET A CLUE FOLKS!

Until next time,
Your Working Boy