A MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Thursday's news that Pluto had been banished from planethood presented us at The Telegraph with one of those moments I live for: the chance to lower the tone of public discourse through coarse, puerile antics.

The headline that we put on the story was clever enough -- "Eight is enough" -- and other papers had used it as well. But where we could have made a distinct, forgettable mark upon journalism would have been the secondary headline. We could have reached for the stars and grabbed ... Uranus. Imagine a secondary headline that said "Don't worry; status of Uranus unaffected" or "Scientists to probe Uranus next." Oh, that would be sooooo wrong, but the thought of sending a managing editor or an executive editor into a catatonic state is almost irresistable.

Local TV news missed the boat even worse than we did, given the forced on-air chit-chat that dual anchors are encouraged to wallow in. Imagine this banter:

MALE ANCHOR: And so Pluto is no longer a planet. That means that the planet farthest from the Sun is (starts speaking with faux curiosity) ... oh is it Neptune or -- what's the name of that other planet?

FEMALE ANCHOR: Uranus.

MALE ANCHOR: BAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Such a chance won't come again anytime soon.