Sublime

The columns that I wrote for Life made people laugh. But they had a serious purpose, which was to say: “Something crazy is going on here—some erosion in the quality of life, or some threat to life itself, and yet everyone assumes it’s normal.” Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it’s still outlandish.

“It seems obvious that many charges made by reckless or impulsive public officials cannot and should not be ignored,” Hoyt wrote, “but it seems to me that news stories and headlines can be presented in such a manner that the reading public will be able to measure the real worth or value and the true meaning of the stories.”