Duck-Related Lead Of The Year

Returning from a 10-day Caribbean cruise, Jerry and Claire Miller got a fine-feathered welcome home that was so startling, it set their hearts aflutter. In medical terms, it was a near case of cardi-quack arrest.

Needless to say, this is from the Bucks County Courier Times.

There’s a duck at the door [Bucks County Courier Times]

Y’know, I’m Beginning To Realize Why This Is An ‘Exclusive’

Remember, this is an Action News exclusive. The other stations aren’t so sure if violence against 90-year-olds is unacceptable. The other stations, also, don’t feel the violence against seniors has reached genocide level:

A 90-year-old great-grandmother says the recent violence against senior citizens is unacceptable. ¶ Rosy asked Action News not to use her last name while her attacker is still out there. She lost relatives to the Holocaust, while she survived the Great Depression. Rosy says as much as she has been through, nothing prepared her for Monday night’s attack.

That’s right: We have a new entry for Overwritten Lead of the Moment!

Seniors Alarmed by Recent Attacks: An Action News Exclusive [6 ABC]

Boy, The ‘Daily News’ Sure Is Full Of A Bunch Of Annoying Letters To The Editor Today

Seriously, this isn’t reaching a Northeast Times levels of ridiculousness, but it might be passing it in annoyance factor. Consider:

NEVER MIND that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose gay marriage. It’s perilously close to becoming the law of the land unless citizens step up and demand our federal lawmakers pass the Marriage Protection Amendment.

Yelling “discrimination” is just one strategy the left has used to defeat this amendment. They also argue that gay marriage is a civil-rights issue like the African-American struggle for equality. Jesse Jackson has denounced that claim, noting that “gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution.”

Without the MPA, there’s nothing to prevent activist judges like those on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which legalized gay marriage a few years ago, from creating not only gay marriage, but legalizing polygamy and even marriages between people and their pets.

Contact your senators and urge them to support the Marriage Protection Amendment when they vote the first week in June.

Or this asshole:

Addiction as a disease? Sounds reasonable. Grabs you right by the sympathies.

Unfortunately, to call addiction a disease is to demean all true illnesses and those who have been afflicted by them. Addiction is a choice. Every time a question is asked, from “Should I get high?” to “Which high?” to “Family or dope?” an answer must be chosen.

And don’t think we’re letting you off the hook, Councilman Jack Kelly, even though you wrote an opinion piece instead of a letter. We’re down with you since you use Myspace, but try and tone it down a little next time:

LAST YEAR, there were a reported 380 murders in Philadelphia. In actuality, the number was closer to 35,000 if you count the cats and dogs needlessly killed at our city pound, the Philadelphia Animal Care and Control Agency.

And if you count all the anthills stepped on, the number is too high to calculate!

Support the Marriage Protection Amendment [DN]
Addiction is not a disease [DN, third letter]
May 9: Councilman Jack Kelly’s Myspace Page Way More Interesting To Look At Than Your Ex-Girlfriend’s
Archives: Overwritten Lead of the Moment

Making Love To Mumia

The overwritten lead of the moment competition just keeps heating up recently. Today, Patty-Pat Kozlowski, occasional Daily News guest columnist, comes up with this lead for a column about Mumia Abu Jamal supporters:

THE BEST SONG to make love to is “I Only Have Eyes For You” by the Flamingos. Add some good red wine, candles not from the Dollar Store and those lyrics: “Are the stars out tonight? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright. I only have eyes for you.”

The best song for a passion-lacking sweat-fest is a tie: “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meatloaf and “Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC. This makeout session usually occurs on a couch or in the back seat of a car, where the question, “Is that the seat belt or you?” can ruin the mood.

Both making love and making out are literally the same thing, in the end you get what you want - you just do it differently.

Same with protesting.

As you all know, there’s nothing classier than dollar store candles to make love to.

Song sung blue: Cops & Mumia cult [Daily News]

Introducing ‘Leadonomics’

A new entry in the “Overwritten Lead of the Moment” contest — which, yes, is essentially over, but still — arrived in my inbox today. (Yes, send these things in, people. I love them.)

It’s from ABC News, and it’s a story about the price of sex, and it comes to us from John Allen Paulos:

The best-selling book “Freakonomics” examines the economics of some ordinary life situations. If these situations involve sex, the analysis might be better termed Sexonomics.

That’s not true. Freakonomics isn’t the study of freaks and money, so why would Sexonomics be the study of sex and money? It’d have to be something different, like Freakyonomics.

Who’s Counting: Sexonomics — Prostitutes’ Incomes [ABC News]
May 4: The ‘Overwritten Lead Of The Moment’ Competition Is Over

The ‘Overwritten Lead Of The Moment’ Competition Is Over

Every once in a while I single out some local (or national) story as the Overwritten Lead of the Moment, which is sort of a nice way of saying “the bad lead of the moment.” (Well, no. Going back through the archives, some of them are more weird or silly than bad. But most of them are bad.)

Now, I’m not one to shy away from a bad lead. Hell, I’ve written a ton of them myself. (I am a little embarassed at this one, though. But it was like the sixth story I ever wrote.) And I love overwritten leads. They turn otherwise perfectly normal stories into unintentionally funny goldmines.

Unfortunately, the contest is now over. We will never see a lead as good as this again, by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen:

First, let me state my credentials: I am a funny guy. This is well known in certain circles, which is why, even back in elementary school, I was sometimes asked by the teacher to “say something funny” — as if the deed could be done on demand. This, anyway, is my standing for stating that Stephen Colbert was not funny at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

I had a long-ish conversation the other day about the whole Stephen Colbert-at-the-White House Correspondents dinner, and my feeling was that he was a liberal comedian hired to make jokes, and he did such at the dinner. I thought it was pretty funny (not gut-busting funny, but not bad) and I thought it was weird that some media outlets didn’t mention it in their recaps of the event (not conspiracy weird, more baffling I guess) and I thought it was a great PR move for him. And I also thought that last sentence might’ve been a run-on.

I don’t really think it was “courageous” per se, but I suppose it had some balls, and the whole “Thank You Stephen Colbert” petition thing is a little weird, yadda yadda yadda.

But now, his speech is directly responsible for this lead, and I must say: Stephen Colbert is an American hero. Thank you, Stephen Colbert.

So not Funny [Washington Post via Wonkette]
Koch paces W. X-C at districts [Daily Pennsylvanian]
Archives: Overwritten Lead of the Moment

PR People Really Do Rule The World

By now you’ve probably heard that Brian J. Doyle, deputy press secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was busted for attempting to contact and have sex with what he thought was a teenage girl online. (Turns out, it was a member of law enforcement. Whoops!)

So, basically, our government hires some disgusting people much, much worse than Dick Cheney. (A commenter on Wonkette noticed that at the time of Doyle’s arrest, he was online “awaiting what he thought was a nude image of a girl who had lymphoma.” Umm, Paper Doll, can you look into this?)

While he’s clearly disgusting, &c., he was the assistant press secretary. He wasn’t even head PR flak. The office of the press secretary doesn’t even get a link on the DHS website. But that didn’t stop the Anderson Cooper 360 blog from writiting this lead, our newest candidate for Overwritten Lead of the Moment (it’s in paragraph two, but we can bend the rules):

Brian Doyle was the deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, a position that puts him on the front lines of helping to protect this nation. If what Polk County, Florida, police allege is true, it would not only be a grievous crime, but an abrogation of trust with the American people.

Who knew PR flak had so much power?

DHS wonk in teen cyber-sex romance [Sploid]
Sexual predators find support systems online [360 Blog]
Punch-Drunk Love [Citypaper]
Breaking: There’s a bigtime perv at DHS [Wonkette]
Department Structure [DHS]

Overwritten Lead Of The Moment, Eagles Edition

You might think with football season months away — and with baseball on tap next week! — that there wouldn’t be much talk about the Eagles aside from solid WR Eric Moulds’ wish to play for the Birds next season.

You fool. You forget, though, that this is Philadelphia. And that this is the Daily News. The latest in the “Overwritten Lead of the Moment” series comes from (surprise) the Daily News! The first paragraph in an editorial about troop withdrawal from Iraq in today’s paper is as follows:

IT IS WELL known that after the Eagles lost Dirk Johnson last season, the team found itself in need of a punter. Let us suggest President Bush.

Yeah, and Dick Cheney can totally play offensive tackle.

Blaming It Forward [DN]
Agent: Moulds wants to play for Eagles [DN]

Overwritten Lead of the Moment, kinda sorta edition

Okay, this really shouldn’t count as an Overwritten Lead of the Moment, if only because the article is about quantum mechanics, relativity, black holes, &c. You really couldn’t avoid writing an overwritten lead. Salon senior writer Laura Miller actually almost avoids doing it!

But, no matter, the Overwritten Lead of the Moment pulls no punches, and as such, the following is our latest entry:

The universe might just be an enormous computer — that’s the final, mind-twisting pirouette at the conclusion of Charles Seife’s new book about information theory and quantum computing, “Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, From Our Brains to Black Holes.” By the time you get to this suggestion, the statement seems pretty plausible, but by then you’ve already traveled through Seife’s crystal-clear explications of thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes and multiple universes.

Ahh, yes, by the end of the book the whole Universe as Giant Computer theory shines through crystal clear. Or you could skip the 300-page tome and just watch The Matrix instead. Either one.

Secrets of the cosmos [Salon]
The Matrix [IMDB]

Breaking: Robert Esche tastes first cappuccino

As part of my goal to be your No. 1 source for shallow, snarky shit, I’d like to take a moment to look at an article by Inquirer reporter Tim Panaccio, whose last name may have inspired his intro for yesterday’s story about Flyers goalie Robert Esche starting in goal for the United States. Yes, it’s another Overwritten Lead of the Moment:

TURIN, Italy - Last week, Robert Esche sat in a cafe off via Filidelphia, just outside the Palasport Olimpico ice rink, sipping on his very first cappuccino.

“This is really good stuff,” the Flyers goalie marveled. The topic of the day was not the coffee, but playing in the Olympics.

If the Americans rally and win an improbable gold medal, you know he’s getting an endorsement deal with Starbucks. Esche, that is. Maybe Panaccio, too.

Flyers’ Esche to start for U.S. hockey team [Inky]