COMM 209: Ho ho ho

Sometimes a headline just catches your eye. That's the way it was with this one, in The Los Angeles Times. It even had a seasonal theme, just perfect for Christmas morning.

Santa in a G-string gets a DUI

Doesn't that just make you want to read the story? Here's the lede, under a joint byline that went to LA Times staffers Richard Winton and Andrew Blankstein:

A famous Hollywood location had a seasonally appropriate visitor Sunday night. But when the man got out of his car in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, it was clear this was anything but a standard visit from Santa Claus.

The driver -- 6-foot-4 and 280 pounds -- was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving, in this case a misdemeanor, police said. In addition to a red Santa hat, he wore a blond wig, red lace camisole, purple G-string, black leg warmers and black shoes.

"We are pretty sure this is not the Santa Claus," Deputy Chief Ken Garner said.

After giving the standard details -- name, age, blood alcohol count, charges, etc. -- Winton and Blankstein let the cop have the last word. And what a fine last word it was, especially for a metro page story in LA:

"There was no Mel Gibson treatment for him," Garner said, referring to the help the actor received from Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after his drunk driving arrest last year. "He had to sober up and find his own reindeer."

Basic newswriting students take note how the story is organized around the quotes: (1) There's a lede playing up what a surprise it was to realize the guy with the Santa cap was a drag queen; (2) the best quote; (3) the basic facts of the case, which would be called a nut graf in a longer story; and (4) a pretty good little quote with a twist at at the end. That twist at the end is sometimes known as a kicker, and it's something you want in all but the most serious feature stories.

We'll use this format a lot. It's a variation on the inverted pyramid you may have learned in high school journalism -- basic facts up top, less important stuff lower down in the story -- and will use every day as long as you write news. It just has a little attention-getter in the lede.

Slate.com, the ezine that's part of the Microsoft-NBC-Newsweek-Washington Post media conglomorate, carries a daily feature called "Today's Papers" that summarizes and links to the top stories in the LA Times, the Post and the New York Times (you should get in the habit of reading it, by the way). Here's Slate's treatment of the LA Times' little gift from Santa:

Here comes Santa Claus. Over in the NYT's op-ed page, John Anthony McGuckin, a professor of religious history, briefly goes through the history of how the "super-saint" St. Nicholas went on to become the "Magic Santa." As the morphing began to take place, the new Santa dropped many of the symbolic characteristics of the old St. Nicholas and "the origin of Christmas almsgiving: gifts for the poor, not just gifts for our friends" began to be lost. "I like St. Nicholas," McGuckin writes. "You can keep chubby Santa." Particularly if he's the type of Santa that was arrested last night in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The LAT reports that a 6-foot-4, 280-pound, g-string-wearing Santa was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving on Sunday night.

[Link omitted.] The Santa piece, by the way, was at the end of the Slate feature. What would you call that?

A kicker, you guessed, right? Last graf. Little twist at the end of today's news, which was suitably high-minded and serious. Why of course it's a kicker.

Let's reverse the process. The New York Times' op-ed piece on St. Nicholas was actually high-minded, serious and interesting. McGuckin, who teaches at Union Theological Seminary, said our Santa Claus comes from an 1823 poem by Clement Clarke Moore titled “A Visit From St. Nicholas.” And our mental image of Santa -- wearing a red fur coat rather than a G-string -- comes from 19th-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast but also a series of Coca Cola ads from the 1930.

The original St. Nicholas, it turns out, was deeply commited to social justice -- something the modern corporate Santa lost rather quickly. Says McGuckin:

The new Santa ... acquired a host of Nordic elves to replace the small dark-skinned boy called Black Peter, who in Christian tradition so loved St. Nicholas that he traveled with him everywhere. But, some might say, wasn’t it better to lose this racially stereotyped relic? Actually, no, considering the real St. Nicholas first came into contact with Peter when he raided the slave market in his hometown and railed against the trade. The story tells us that when the slavers refused to take him seriously, he used the church’s funds to redeem Peter and gave the boy a job in the church.

Similarly, the story of St. Nicholas' giving presents to poor children comes out of opposition to child slavery. McGuckin says:

And what of the throwing of the bags of gold down the chimney, where they landed in the stockings and little shoes that had been hung up to dry by the fireplace? Charming though it sounds, it reflected the deplorable custom, still prevalent in late Roman society when the Byzantine church was struggling to establish the supremacy of its values, of selling surplus daughters into bondage. This was a euphemism for sexual slavery — a trade that still blights our world.

As the tale goes, Nicholas had heard that a father in the town planned to sell his three daughters because his debts had been called in by pitiless creditors. As he did for Black Peter, Nicholas raided his church funds to secure the redemption of the girls. He dropped the gold down the chimney to save face for the impoverished father.

McGuckin ends his op-ed piece with a kicker:

This tale was the origin of a whole subsequent series of efforts among the Christians who celebrated Nicholas to make some effort to redeem the lot of the poor — especially children, who always were, and still are, the world’s front-line victims. Such was the origin of Christmas almsgiving: gifts for the poor, not just gifts for our friends.

I like St. Nicholas. You can keep chubby Santa.

Which, if you think about it, proves a kicker can be serious and high-minded, too.