Alex Beam on the Greatest Unpublished Stories validates my decision to once again renew my subscription to that bastion of the Boston Washington Literary Establishment, The Atlantic Monthly. (I subscribe to four rags — the Atlantic, the New Yorker, VeloNews, and the Independent Rowing News).
This description from an unpublished piece on a Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon had me laughing outloud, alone at my desk at 6 am:
"Nobody causes muscular dystrophy, and almost nobody gets it. The day before the show, [Jerry] did a promo with a fat lady from Channel 8 in Honolulu and concluded it by yelling, "Watch the show and getta hunka nooky." Every Muscular Dystrophy telethon ends with Jerry’s singing "You’ll Never Walk Alone," a peculiar choice of songs to address to crippled people."
And this Thomas Farragher parody of the Boston Globe’s copydesk having its way with the Gettysburg Address:
" Fourscore and seven years ago (can’t we just make it 87 years ago?) our fathers (WHO ARE THEY?? Any mothers???) brought forth on this continent (North America?? Northern Hemisphere??) a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men (people, men and women, what???) are created equal. (Why don’t we just say they founded the United States and leave it at that? Pacing’s better.)"
