Lunch-pail hilarity

Plain Dealer Style Editor Kim Crow's breaking news: pantyhose don't look modern.

Even if you ignore their stodgy status, there's the discomfort factor. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more irritating than the crotch of your hose creeping down to midthigh as you sashay through the office.

Crow's got the self-effacing savvy of comedic pro, Phyllis Diller, who explains why she often made fun of her looks on stage:

That's a good way to make friends with an audience, to let them know that you are not up there to show off, you're there to entertain.

The style maven, the comedian, roasting her pride over that eternal flame of humble passion known as art. This is not self-therapy on the audience's dime. This is an artist with an agenda à la Ani DiFranco:

I understand the use of humor in performance. You’ve got to get people laughing so their throats open up wide enough to be able to swallow something bigger.

The artist lures us with a promise of something bigger than other possible claims on our time. Anybody, especially a newbie to the public stage, can be tempted to squander her listener's time. This is something you really don't want to do.

Impetuous Paul Hackett, running against a 'lunch-pail-liberal congressman named Sharrod Brown' for the US Senate from Ohio got this assessment from Joe Klein:

In the end, Hackett seemed something new under the sun: a blogger candidate — all attitude, all opinions, very little information.

Ouch. Congratulations bloggers! You know you've entered the big time when the critics have you typecast. But the lunch-pail candidates (or bloggers) have no swagger rights either unless they aspire to be libraries, of which there are quite a few already. In order to deliver 'something bigger,' a writer, a politician, an entertainer has something to win over: an audience's precious time.

In writing as in performing, when I'm true to the call, my first audience is my own mind. Before anybody is even listening, I satisfy her discerning smile. Before anybody is even reading, I track her subtle yawn or burst of pride. I try to get her thinking, maybe laughing, and I never waste her time.