Concerned readers have asked (OK, it was my wife) if Sun-Times columnists whose old-school headshots still appear in the redesigned paper constitute some sort of vulnerable B list. Sneed. Zay Smith. Carol Marin. Lynn Sweet. Others.
Not to worry. I’m told it’s simply that some of the talent really did not want their full-body portraits used, even though they let themselves be photographed that way. Sneed may have made her feelings public last Sunday, when she allowed a reader to comment in her column, “I applaud your refusal to be photographed looking skyward. The photos of your colleagues remind me of people waiting to see if pigeons are about to dump on them.”
The pose — I call it the “For God’s sake somebody throw down a rope and get me out of here” look — is striking but it’s goofy, and long after it stops being striking it’ll go on being goofy. Then what?