Pres Le

To properly pronounce the above title, imagine a Chinese Elvis Presley. Yeah, it's that awful.

The Commercial Appeal lives to promote any event or thing that helps make Memphis a "world class city." It's odd and sad to see in action. They'll do the worst kind of boosterism for anything, almost to the point of pandering.

They were all behind Sid Schlenker and his plans for the Pyramid, not bothering to research his past and accusing doubters of treachery, until he skipped town. Then they looked into him and found all kinds of badness.

So it is with the pandas at the Memphis Zoo. Although in the larger scheme it's a "who cares?" kind of thing, in the eyes of the CA it's the kind of red star (not gold here) that signifies that Memphis has arrived, that we're "world class."

So we get lots of stories like this from today's CA. And we get the C.A. Eye's silly "Pres Le": an inflatable panda bear that they drag around the City and photgraph at various locations. It's like those "kidnapped gnome" adventures, but without any sense of urgency or mystery or fun.

But the CA sure loves it.