I honestly can't tell how serious he is

Willie Brown, at the tail-end of a sort-of catch-all, random-observations column, provides tips for eating out in high-crime Oakland:

By the way, there's a new dining tip for people going out in Oakland.

Be sure to order soup.

That way when the robbery starts, you can slip off your jewelry and drop it into soup so the robbers won't see it.

I genuinely can't tell how much hyperbole is involved there (I assume there's at least a little).

And, yes, I admit it, I originally landed there because the headline had to do with the Sarahcuda; but at least in my obsession there is some hope: it was the part that didn't have anything to do with Palin that actually turned out to interest me.