Gonzo Journalism

After years of inking powerhouse columns –including such fan-favorites as "Leapin' lizards, these crawlers are creepy," "Getting away from the kids is well worth it," and "Scrapbooking a sentimental experience" – Managing Editor Barbara Lombardo allowed her college-aged progeny to pick up her pen and have a go at her weekly prattle on The Saratogian's Lifestyle pages.

And if there’s one thing to be gleaned from what ranks as David Lombardo’s third appearance in a daily publication, it’s that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. Much like his mother, the young Lombardo feels the need to fill the paper with a long dragging piece lacking the depth and insight one would expect from someone who’s attending school at one of the state’s top public colleges.

There is, however, a reason to give the column a read, as it appears young Lombardo has yet to learn the valuable lesson of tempering one's language, especially while writing to a broad audience, some of whom might not be able to associate with the raving lunacy that often transpires inside the standard dorm on most weekends at SUNY Geneseo. It’s not that Lombardo admits to the carousing that most college freshmen are prone to. Rather, he puts an image in the readers’ head, which in the world of print media is sometimes worse than even a flat out admission of partaking in such activity.

Upon reading that Lombardo doesn’t “cannon ball beers” in the family kitchen, “sniff lines of coke” in his parent’s bedroom or “wrestle strippers” in their living room, it’s not a far assumption that the young boy has at the very least been exposed to this type of thing. Although it should be noted that there is a prevelent thinking among some liberal circles that this exposure is good for someone in their later adolescence. Regardless, thrusting such words out among a very conservative readership isn’t a very good start for someone who seems to have a passing interest in mainstream journalism, unless of course, the aformentioned neophyte has kin going by the name of Raul Duke.

But the young Lombardo made a concious choice to ilicit these powerful images of bacchanalian sloth in a column that was intensely innocuous at best; at worse a column tantamount to his mother's typical boring drivel. Word of advice: save talk about exotic dancers, drug use and wanton alcohol abuse for a column that holds an ounce of gravity among readers.

And lord knows what relationship exsists between sniffing coke off a drunken whore’s leg in a kiddy pool filled with Vaseline and picking up dirty cloths around Casa Lombardo.