This week's edition of Chairman Mao's Shopper & Gazette—excuse me, The Stranger—finds the paper's writers and editors in a particularly lurid mood, specifically in light of the feature (if a single page of content can really be called a "feature") by one THOMAS FRANCIS. Close readers of the paper—if any still exist—know that Mr. Francis relocated to this city from Chicago so that he could work for The Stranger, under the apparent delusion that this would further Mr. Francis's career in journalism. It is now fairly clear how things are going to go for Mr. Francis. His "feature" this week is a profile of a public-access-television personality named, no doubt facetiously, "Mike Hunt." The paper's editors will surely squawk otherwise, but I have a strong suspicion that the only reason Mr. Hunt has been deemed of interest is because The Stranger—never afraid to do laps in the swamps of juvenilia—giggled like schoolgirls at Mr. Hunt's rather poor choice of moniker. "Did you read about Mike Hunt in The Stranger this week?"; "What do you think of Mike Hunt?"; "This profile of Mike Hunt is interesting"—the idea that readers might be prompted to converse thusly, in such an offensive manner, no doubt sent the paper's writers and editors, some of whom are admitted drug users, into gales of laughter, with the end result being twofold: (1) news of a more topical/necessary nature has been kicked aside in favor of this profile; and (2) another promising journalist has sacrificed his talent and professional integrity to the puerile whims of a certain homosexual higher-up. Such is the way The Stranger works: Insipid gags are treated as news, with intelligent journalists (not to mention intelligent readers) left as little more than collateral damage. For shame.