Die-hard newspaper fan

OPINION

I don’t often get to read overseas newspapers — not real ones. I know it is possible to subscribe online to a range of papers such as the New York Times or the UK Guardian but I am old-fashioned and prefer the smell of ink and the struggle with pages as I try to turn them.

Recently, on a table in a dentist’s waiting room of all places, I chanced upon a copy of the Los Angeles Times.

From what I can gather it is the most prominent newspaper in that most confusing of major world cities, Los Angeles.

It wasn’t the headlines that grabbed me, nor the apparent absence of anything to do with Hollywood. They are apparently very big on sport in Southern California and one reporter had written a probing and witty piece about the city’s favourite team, the LA Dodgers, and their failed bid to make it to the World Series, baseball’s pinnacle.

But apart from baseball, there was a considerable amount of newspaper space given over to social issues, especially those of the poor and disadvantaged.

Some would say that’s an oxymoron, but apparently in LA they are considered two distinct groups.

I know I have written before about the growth of the tattoo industry, paralleled only, it appears, by the growth of the tattoo removal industry.

There was an entire article in the LA Times devoted to former bikie club members and those from other gangs who have decided to have their tattoos removed.

Don’t they know that every good middle-class boy and girl in Australia is just dying for more ink?

Talk about how the other half lives.

Reading the LA Times was like reading something about an alternate universe or a chapter from a subversive science-fiction novel.

Los Angeles, swimming in all its commercial magnificence has, according to one writer, exceeded most of Aldous Huxley’s predictions in his 1932 book Brave New World.

Now apart from Donald Trump’s impeachment, or whatever it is supposed to be, the most important issue in the US apparently is a chicken shortage that has led to customers fighting at chook-themed takeaway restaurants.

I may just have to go online and subscribe...

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