Dear Jenny :
I was married for 21 years and got divorced in January 2011. I’m having a tough time dating and hope you can give me some help.
– Norm from Wheaton
Jenny says: Oh man, Norm. I feel ya. I know exactly what you are going through. I was married for seven years and then jumped into a relationship for another five. When I was finally free, I was scared. I didn’t know how to date. I would meet someone and stay with them for five to seven years just so I didn’t have to go on any dates.
Now I’m proud to say I’ve turned into a date-aholic. So you asked the right person, my friend.
Or, some might say, you’ve asked exactly the wrong person. But it gets better.
The first thing you need to do is hang out where single people are. If you are young, it’s the clubs.
Um, read closer, Jenny. He was married for 21 years. So not young. Also: Lives in Wheaton. So, no clubs.
This is the kind of value we place on journalism these days:
Each minor celebrity receiving a $1,000 check from the Sun-Times has agreed to donate the money to charity. McCarthy has given hers to Generation Rescue, which bills itself on its website as “Jenny McCarthy’s autism organization.” Generation Rescue is engaged in the important scientific work of raising questions about whether childhood vaccinations cause autism, which they don’t.
Regardless of whether they donate those checks to charity, it’s still money the Sun-Times is out, and when they first announced their lineup of “celebrity” columnists there were 30 of them. In other words, $30,000, or the cost of a beginning reporter’s salary for a year. Or a shitload of freelance investigation money.
As a comparison, when I worked for a Sun-Times property as a columnist back in the day, I made $150 a column AT MOST. That number dropped steadily over the years. I can’t complain too much, really. I wasn’t a celebrity, after all. Maybe if I’d gotten a dye job and tried to kill a bunch of people, I could have commanded a higher price.
Tell me again about how traditional journalism’s decline is all the fault of kids who don’t read the news enough and only care about their iPods.
A.
I’ve never understood the cult that looks to stars for advice/information on all matters of topics.
Sure they are good at their field and can use their pulic exposure to highlight causes and needs. But that doesn’t make them experts at other topics.
Sun-Times paid me ten cents a word for book reviews in the early 1970s. When I moved to Gnashvegas and tried for a similar arrangement with the local rag I was informed that I should work for free “just for the prestige of having my name in the newspaper.” No, thanks. On the other hand, I’m not a celebrity.
taint no dear abby.
Never ceases to amaze me how Stupid has become the New Cool in this country…especially if it involves celebrities.