The Press: Humor by Wire

Giggles on the Associated Press service are about as scarce as deadpan reporting in the National Lampoon. The venerable news agency will try to change that beginning this week by syndicating "The Phoenix Nest," which ran for 14 years in Saturday Review before Norman Cousins left the magazine. Martin Levin, who edits the column, thinks that the heartland is ready for some topical humor because "the little old lady from Dubuque is now in touch with Germaine Greer—if only with a ten-foot pole." In the first column, Lawyer Peter Friedman tells how his circle benefits from the presence of insect parts in food: "Instead of complaining, we're collecting the fragments and painstakingly assembling them into whole insects." New Yorker Writer Garrison Keillor parodies speed-reading courses and concludes: "You are now able to read at the amazing rate of 8,000 words per minute, which means that you should have finished reading this already." Which would be a blessed gift for those who have to read a lot of Associated Press prose, serious or otherwise.