Nat's revenge

Since my teen years, when his column "Sweet Land of Liberty" was still widely syndicated, First Amendment and jazz scholar Nat Hentoff has been my personal Jiminy Cricket, my secular conscience always reminding me that I must read the text of the United States Constitution rather than think it follows my sometime fickle inclinations. As the newspaper industry has undergone massive contractions over the last decade, the unthinkable occurred and The Village Voice laid him off. Nonetheless, he keeps writing for the Cato Institute and continues to stir up outrage over the practical suspension of the rule of law in these United States.

I've been reading newspapers as long as I've been reading, and insisted we subscribe to The Denver Post here at the Curmudgeon household. However, Mrs. Curmudgeon has been questioning the value gained for the expense, and I was shocked to learn the monthly difference between a print subscription and a digital subscription (which includes a subscription to The Washington Post and Time magazine) is about $17. In about 10 months after switching to digital, we'll have saved enough to pay for the used iPad we're now using to read the news"paper."

Just as we were making the switch, Nat Hentoff published "How Much Digital Reading Stays inside You?," in which he cited some recent research to tout the superiority of print reading over digital forms of delivery. I can't argue with him: even though I own a Kindle, I write out all my exegetical notes for sermon preparation with a pencil and read hard copies of all my commentaries. Even though I already owned a digital collection of John Calvin's complete works, I bought a printed set when I found it on sale. I know full well that we were meant to read words printed on paper, and Nat Hentoff reminded me that I had once again betrayed the cause.

Or at least I tried to. Mrs. Curmudgeon and I have called Honduras, where The Denver Post's call center is located, countless times. We've been assured our subscription has been switched over to digital-only and we will not be charged for the print edition. Nonetheless, every morning it's there at the end of my driveway, a reminder of all that is true and good in this fallen world, a solidified phantasm of the more genteel ways under which I came of age. Nat Hentoff would be pleased: I just can't get rid of the actual, physical newspaper.

And so in tribute to Nat, I read the printed comics section first. But then I turn on the iPad, because I have to admit I prefer The Washington Post app's countless supply of comic strips, even though I know I will never be able to light my grill with it, wadded up or not.