Is shrill the new black? Increasingly, I find myself being stopped in mid-sentence, which is not my way. In the 1960s, Mom didn’t like to send me on supermarket errands because I’d read the list but study the labels, take an hour when I could have been in and out in ten minutes, so my patience is an alley (old Chinese proverb; see RFYL: Washington Memorial), and I’d like to think the change I detect in the press is not about me, rather that writers and commentators on both sides of the political fence are angry and bitter and all too often these days it comes out in what they have to say in print, fair game if the outburst is over dinner, or in the shower, while surfing cable TV, but you’d think the editors would tone down The Shrill, rather than encourage it, as M, the punster, would say: failing the Killer App, they embrace the Shriller App.
