Sunday Post, page M01: “Watch ‘Em and Weep: Let the Credits and the Tears Roll. Aren’t Movies—Sniff—Grand?”

Why do we cry at the movies?

Maybe it is the movie or the psychological baggage we schlepped in with us. Or is it empathy, or you-are-so-busted guilt? Maybe genetics or cultural conditioning. Or were we simply bursting to spill that night because the boss refused to give us a week off for Christmas?

This much we do know: All of us do it in varying degrees of blubbitude. Some of us are waterfalls, soaking fellow moviegoers with our public displays of empathy (PDE). Others are Saharas for whom tears are about as rare as oases. Most of us fit somewhere in between.

Blubbitude? PDE? I couldn’t make up such hackery if I tried for weeks.

The only reason soppy milquetoast garbage like this gets published at all is that there’s a tradition of filling up pages upon pages of newsprint on Sundays. The sooner that tradition goes the way of the dodo, the better for society as a whole.