Dave Barry

c/o The Washington Post

1150 15th St. NW

Washington, DC 20071

Mr. Barry:

It is the opinion of several associates of mine and myself that your weekly "humor" column has become weak and flabby in the nature of its facetious remarks, rather than the mighty colossus of steely wit and noble tastelessness it once was. We trace this development back to the start of your habit of incorporating news items submitted by "alert readers." Normally, a sprinkling of the truly absurd and absurdly true would be welcome in a humor column. But, in our opinion, your column has come to depend on these submissions not as an occasional diversion, but as a crutch, enabling you to avoid having to write any real humor. A mere repetition of a few lines culled from the AP wire and a sarcastic two-sentence comment doth not a column make, Mr. Barry.

What makes this situation especially frustrating is that we have all seen your potential demonstrated so brilliantly. I, for one, own almost all your books, and continually return to "Dave Barry's Greatest Hits" and "Bad Habits" as a source of guidance and inspiration in writing my own (school newspaper) humor column. Classics such as Adventure Dog, the wine-tasting ceremony, and "Can New York save itself?" serve as beacons in an all-too-humorless world. In addition, your book Dave Barry Slept Here has, in a kind of perverse irony, become a virtual textbook for those of us who are sick of the regular U.S. history textbook, which is appallingly lacking in the wit and rhetorical sweep of your work. Why, just Tuesday, when my history teacher mentioned the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, half of the class suppressed fits of knowing laughter.

These artifacts of your former skill, however, are exactly what make your current state of humoric lethargy so disappointing. We know you still have at least a few more good columns in you, wherein you can cast off the crutch of the reader report and create some truly inspiring humor. An example from the more recent past would be the column which ended with the idea of dropping IRS agents on France. We all agree that this column was markedly superior to the dross that has chronologically surrounded it. Accordingly, we offer a challenge: write four columns in a row where the only source utilized is your own fecund imagination. If you can meet this challenge, not only will we remove the designation "weak and flabby" from your column, millions of Americans will have more merriment in their lives. The choice is yours.

Please respond in acceptance or demurral with all speed.

Sincerely,

Andrew L. Malone

Cosigners:

[As noted, there were about forty of these.]

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