The Potted Plant Needs An Editor

Thom Marshall's latest column is about the towing of cars during the Kmart parking lot fiasco. Compared to most of his work, it's not a bad column.

Aside from the penultimate paragraph:

Now, I would like to mention something in Bradford's defense. A couple of years ago when cops were criticized because so many confrontations with mentally ill people proved fatal, Bradford responded by starting a training program and ordering some nonlethal devices to use instead of bullets.

This is a strange paragraph to include, as it really has nothing to do with the rest of the column. I suppose if the Chron had any editors, they might have killed that paragraph.

For that matter, they might have killed the conclusion:

Maybe we should see how he responds to this crisis, and to the investigations of it, before we have him towed off the job.

There seems to be an institutional idiocy at the Chron that requires columnists to subject us to these sorts of pithy, punny sentences. They are painful to read, yet show up frequently in every section of the terrible newspaper.

[Posted at 23:18 CST on 08/29/02] [Link]