Example an editorial, then, for the Weekly Affiliated: a highbrow, low page-count rag light on advertisers of late and becoming increasingly desperate, only recently having been labeled by its myriad competitors and even those in the suffering if soon illegalized secular media as the quote Weakly Affiliated, unquote, a nickname that like all of them becomes less funny the more it’s invoked — an extraordinarily maligned and litigated writeup, an edit of which despite everything goes on to make syndicate (causing an entire chain to be silenced for a week, then shut down, its editors imprisoned, its morning edition torched with its stands), opening with a memorable phrase characterizing the tragedy as “Tongue-N-Cheeks,” then going on to note that “though He’s eaten of the forbidden fruit […] it’s not like He’s still enjoying its taste.” countered only a day later with an oped claiming, “If we have no pity, then we have converted all for nothing. Just as it takes more than a God to make a religion, it takes more than a religion to make a mensch.” Unofficial reports wander freely, and leaky…a drippy, slippery out of bounds: the chains and gags of wire, of summary frontpage, hovering above the fold, bolded and columnarly exalted…it’s impossible not to miss the management, to reconcile it with rumor: murder slash suicide pact gone wrong, shots fired, Metropolitan Gestapo headed up by the newly installed Des Moinesher Rebbe wading into the reportedly frayed hallway from out of nowhere (though he’s the son-inlaw of the Light of Kansas — traditions already generating, ambitions becoming dynasties becoming power) — arriving to find the assembled dead from gas, from smoke inhalation, a fire…Mormon kindernapping, ransom paid, hostage never returned, ransom never refunded, hostage involved in a tragic quote accident unquote, a quote unquote unfortunate incident, substances abused, and women, too, white slavery or Resistance supremacy was it, involved medical experimentation, on newborns, the unborn, Animalia, with regard to equine ejaculatory response, decapitation, castration, tongue severance, hotel falling in on itself, swallowed whole by the earth, flying ambulances of fire whisking away the Marys who immediately after in quotes themselves, “decide” to leave the employ of Garden, Inc. without settlement or severance further, granting no interviews save what’s reported in a statement so official as to be regarded as prophecy, as if dictated — but not read — moons before Av ever began…His mind is His slavery, His life, who He is, a slave, that’s who He was born to be. He needs a woman? Forget it. He needs a life! or so a woman who wasn’t there or even named Delilah recounts in rehearsal for The 18th Hour, we’re at 1492 on your AM dial, the host with the most with the radio face, a former plumber with the best, cleanest pipes in Passaic appearing in person like a down on his luck ventriloquist or his dummy and despite the suit (which just has to be worth hundreds), he holds her while she weeps away the show, then the theme music fades up, the On Air lights off themselves and the static comes in like the clouds, weathering patience…
