Two Cents Too Much

Ratliff has explained that he is a longtime presidential candidate, poet, descendent of Jesus, and friend to pigeons. Clearly, he's an exemplary man on the street.

In Bronstein's footsteps, last Thursday I asked Ratliff to critique a week's worth of SF Weeklys.

Within about an hour of my request, Ratliff had faxed a four-column, single-spaced, typewritten page.

"I thought the stories were too long & dense. I have brain damage, from running for office for 20 years — nice world dictator, martial order prez, guv & mayor — on the no taxes free money & reefer ticket. I was systematically MIND RAYED 24 hrs a day the whole time, one presumes by the govt.," explained Ratliff.

"I raised 50 babies one at a time in my coat & got no disease. Old friend birds fly to my hand. I plead to Hall, Pelosi, etc. & could not get them legalized. (I fax u also.) So it was hard to read the panther story," Ratliff writes, referring to Martin Kuz's magazine feature, "Echoes of the Revolution," about how the struggle between Bay Area law enforcement and the Black Panthers is still going on after 35 years.

"I think you should run more simply written & shorter stories, PLUS raps, poetry & pix from the readership (GOOD poems only, yech) & be more of a newspaper. ... More nudes-be x-rated. More cartoons. Less heavy. After all what can you do? Modified bikes & cars, how low should be the sex age? (IMPEACHED FOR TOO HI SEX AGE LOST SEX YEARS, ALL GOVT!) We want to see pix of the blowup sex dolls! Yerz, Big Owner, (the man who stuck his sword in the universe & owned it.)," Ratliff concluded.

He's left us with marching orders worth contemplating.

Should we publish stories more accessible to the mind-rayed, with pictures of blowup sex dolls?

Or should we follow the example of the unenlightened hotshots at the now-defunct Union, and try to unearth exclusive information, then write it into compelling journalism?

If it's not too much to ask, I'd like you, the reader, to help decide.