Modern ‘Seinfeld’ Fans Can’t Believe That Newspaper Sticks Were A Real Thing and Not Just A Joke
Given Seinfeld’s thriving second life on streaming and its popularity among a generation with no memories of the 1990s, it should come as no surprise that the slightly surreal world of history’s greatest sitcom is now completely foreign to new fans. I mean, how is Gen Z supposed to understand that Rudy Giuliani was once a respected public figure?
Unlike the show itself, so many of the references on Seinfeld have since aged out of the zeitgeist to the point that, for a young person watching the show in 2024, Seinfeld might as well take place in an alternate universe. Entire classic plot lines no longer make sense to someone raised in the internet era, such as Kramer’s Moviefone scheme, the Kenny Rogers Roasters sign story and the entire episode “The Merv Griffin Show.” And it’s easy for such youngsters to assume that Larry David and his writers simply made up all the old-timey references and commonplace practices featured in the series the same way Frank Costanza conceived of “Festivus” and willed it into existence — although even that was technically real before if became the official holiday of secular Seinfeld fans.
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One Seinfeld fan on Twitter recently went viral for pointing out that a line from the classic Season Three episode “The Library” would play as run-of-the-mill ridiculousness from Cosmo Kramer to modern audiences — if it weren’t followed by a shot showing that, back during a time when print media still existed, people really, actually, hilariously read newspapers attached to giant sticks in their local libraries. Bunch of cheapskates.
Newspaper sticks, or newspaper hangers, used to be a commonplace contraption that protected the cheap pulp paper of local and national periodicals from getting creased or crumpled while preventing inserts or attachments from sliding out of the stack and getting lost. While the dawn of online media rendered such devices obsolete, there is, ironically, a website devoted to the history and preservation of the newspaper stick in modern times called Newspaperstick.eu where newspaper history buffs can purchase their own hangers and Seinfeld fans can confirm that Kramer wasn’t being crazy when he condemned library-browsing penny-pinchers back in 1991.
Supposedly, according to the comments under @capybaroness’ tweet, some people who still subscribe to physical newspapers continue to use newspaper sticks for their reading habits, though you’re unlikely to find one at your local library — unlike library cops, which totally were and are a real thing and weren’t just a Seinfeld invention to get Philip Baker Hall to play a hardened detective on the show. Who doesn’t have instant coffee?
