On only the 2nd day of testing our “5 Types” classification scheme, the WSJ throws a curve!  And on a Sunday!  The piece “Civic duty drives century-old club” appears at first to be a perfect Type 3 Filler.  It praises the Madison Civics Club, which has no detractors (among non-lunatics at least).  And it IS August, the time of year when opinion writers traditionally offer filler material while they go off on vacation.

But then, on actually reading the piece, we found it strangely more interesting than the usual Type 3 Filler.    It’s got facts, lots of ‘em.  It’s funny in one spot (the women a century ago had to be “brainy” — Nice!), and it reminds us of the long, long arc of progress — women getting the vote was a Struggle.  Could this actually be a “Type 2 The Surprisingly Correct”? We also learn, surprisingly, that The State Journal in 1916 stuck up for women’s sufferage?  Why, that tends to burnish the generally poor reputation of the WSJ’s editorial page, which is, we believe, often a primary motive behind printing a Type 2 Surprisingly Correct.

That’s the problem with classification schemes.  The classes seem clear to the classifiers, but then the real world delivers surprises.  A wolf mates with a domesticated dog, and then… what are the offspring?  We knew this might be a problem.  But on the 2nd day?

In the end, however, we declare this a Type 3 Filler, albeit a better — far better — Type 3 than usual.   What must have happened is that the Madison Civics Club sent a press release to the WSJ, celebrating it’s 100th birthday.  The WSJ reprints it as an Type 3, and because the Civics Club actually has a great and serious story behind it, we get an usually great WSJ Type 3 editorial poof.