Aaron Haspel surveys the current state of blog-ha-ha's, and I make the cut (barely). His summary:
Humor, unlike literary criticism or political rumination, pays extremely well. Actual funny-type humorists are in high demand and make actual money-type money. Sometimes they spend it on whiskey and cigars and grow old and gouty like Barry and P.J. O'Rourke; sometimes they spend it on smack and blow and grow pale and spectre-thin and die, like Lenny Bruce and Doug Kenney. Either way they stop being funny eventually; humor's tough in the first place and impossible to sustain. Blog humorists, on the other hand, don't gather enough from their own efforts to pay the cable bill. The conclusion will be left as an exercise for the reader.
This reader's conclusion: Either I suck, or my cheap-ass readers do! And as everybody knows, my readers are the finest, most caring readers who ever read some reading material, so that settles that.
Posted by Jim Treacher at January 24, 2004 06:41 AM