Philadelphia, Your Metro May Contain One Less Elliott Kalan
How does one best get fired from the Metro? If the strange tale of humor columnist Elliott Kalan (pictured) is anything to go by, all you have to do is have the temerity to jokingly suggest that newspapers are irrelevant. Last week, Kalan’s column — which runs in the Philly and NYC editions of the paper — was a musing on the withering state of newspapers. In the column, Kalan (who is also a producer on The Daily Show) wrote:
As this very copy of Metro shows, the only way to get most people to read a newspaper is to literally force it into their hands.
Cute, right? Metro brass didn’t think so. From on high, Kalan was fired immediately for what we assume were crimes of impudence, being not Swedish, and that whole thing about every joke being at least half true. But wait, not so fast. Realizing perhaps, among other things, the definition of satire, Kalan and the Metro are now slated to talk things out, and he may wind up back in the paper’s pages after all. “At this point, I’m not sure exactly what stage we’re at,” said Kalan when we caught up with him this morning. “I’m scheduled to meet with the editor-in-chief to talk about the situation, but I don’t know Metro’s point-of-view yet [...]All I know is things may not be permanent yet.”
Well, good luck with all that, Elliott. But don’t you find this whole thing rather strange?
“I’m surprised that they took what I said seriously, less because it was obviously satire, and more because the other stuff I said in the column was so ludicrous,” he says. “I include telepathy in a list of inventions and mention people being eaten by dinosaurs. I think that should be an automatic tip-off that what I’m saying is more silly than hurtful.”
You’d think so.
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