Get Me Rewrite | Sojourners

Get Me Rewrite

"Get Me Rewrite..."

There are three main problems with publishing a monthly magazine. The first two I forget, but the third is...lead time. The things you write about may change after the issue is printed. Daily newspapers can change stuff in hours, but if a magazine is wrong, it's wrong for a whole month. So if there's time, we rewrite at the last possible minute.

Two months ago this column was on David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. Funny stuff. But three days before deadline the FBI moved in and ... it's not funny anymore. Gotta rewrite the whole thing (you think I really wanted to do something on the Royal Family?).

In the next issue I did a satirical piece on Somali war-creep Muhammed Farah "Why Can't We All Just Get Along" Aideed. Funny stuff. But then the United Nations acts like a bad cop movie and ... you guessed it, not funny anymore. Because of the military actions, which are little more than officially sanctioned thuggery, the U.N. has lost the moral high ground. So any commentary on the issue must be tempered with...wait a minute! This is starting to sound like an op-ed piece (as opposed to the usual doofus Ed piece). Anyway, we couldn't print what I first composed, so ... rewrite!

And last month I made fun of Clinton's apparent Supreme Court choice: Another white guy in a suit. A week before deadline...NOT! Back to the keyboard.

Maybe the world is just too unpredictable for a monthly magazine. Oh well. I've already forgotten what I rewrote for this issue. I just know it took up exactly this much space.

And Now the News...

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Sojourners Magazine August 1993
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