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Headlines

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Tabloid headlines don’t get much better than this one, from the Mirror, which apparently has an owner who is fit to run a newspaper.

“Gosh, Gladys, did you know that the guy who refused to pay a prostitute $800 graduated from the local Christian college?” I’m probably the only one who thinks this is funny, but you have to read our city’s rag regularly to understand the depths to which they’ll go to find any local connection to a national story. I’m waiting for the day when someone who grew up in town goes on a nationwide killing spree – that should make the front page.

Have you seen any good headlines lately?

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    Schlemizel

    Local TV news has been on this game for years. The worst example was the Tsunami in December of 04. One of the local stations actually did a piece talking to a local guy whos cousin from California was mildly inconvenienced while on vacation in Thailand. Of course they hyped it at the top of the show as how the disaster affected a local mans family!!

  2. 2.

    rea

    Good evening. Here is the News for parrots. No parrots were involved in an accident on the M1 today, when a lorry carrying high octane fuel was in collision with a hollard … that is a bollard and not a parrot. A spokesman for parrots said he was glad no parrots were involved. The Minister of Technology (photo of minister with parrot on his shoulder) today met the three Russian leaders (cut to photograph of Brahnev, Podgomy and Kosygin all in a group and each with a parrot on his shoulder) to discuss a £4 million airliner deal … (cut back to narrator) None of them went in the cage, or swung on the little wooden trapeze, or ate any of the nice millet seed yam, yam. That’s the end of the news.

  3. 3.

    Matthew B.

    Is last August recent enough to qualify? Because U.K. tabloid Sunday Sport‘s “Gordon Ramsay Sex Dwarf Eaten by Badger” is pretty hard to top.

  5. 5.

    Cathyx

    We do it all the time on a national level. There were 3 americans on board of the plane that went down.

  6. 6.

    WarrenS

    My favorite headline by far was in the Times Of India about 20 years ago. It read, “Hijacker Of Russian Plane Blows Himself.”

    Sometimes ya just gotta end a sentence with a preposition.

  7. 7.

    Middlewest

    It’s strange how if you reverse the genders of the first headline, it would say “rapist” instead of “nymphomaniac”.

  8. 8.

    Xboxershorts

    The Hillside Strangler had Rochester area connections.

    And yup, the D&C milked that for attention too.

  10. 10.

    ant

    erick over at redstate has a post up about the Grenell dust up. It’s kinda weird.

    I guess social conservatives don’t have any problem at all with dude being gay. whoda thunk?

    Turns out, Grenell was (not) fired cause he is a jerk. And cause he deleted 700 twitters. or something.

    No one even knows who Bryan Fischer is, and if somebody does, Bryan Fischer doesn’t speak for social conservatives. and social conservatives don’t care about the gays. or something.

    bizarre

  15. 15.

    RedKitten

    but you have to read our city’s rag regularly to understand the depths to which they’ll go to find any local connection to a national story.

    Our whole damn country is like that. If there is anything happening anywhere in the world that has any sort of connection to Canada, no matter how tenuous, our media gets all squee’ey about it.

    But, in your local rag’s defense, I know from doing media releases that a lot of audiences don’t give a shit about something if it’s not happening locally. So trumpeting the local connection is often the only way to get people to pay any damned attention to what you’re writing.

  17. 17.

    dmsilev

    Attention Chicagoans: This week is your last chance to take an upskirt photo of a 30 foot tall Marilyn Monroe statue. Don’t let the opportunity go by!

    (Link )

  18. 18.

    Boudica

    @amk: I believe Middlewest’s point was that the first man was held in the woman’s apartment and not allowed to leave unless he had sex with her (and even then, she wouldn’t let him leave, he had to scream for help from the balcony). Reverse the sexes in that scenario and tell me the man wouldn’t be arrested for rape.

  21. 21.

    Randy P

    The Mirror thing led me down a chain of “links to other stories” until I got to this one about a cheetah-Labrador friendship at Busch Gardens. Prepare for cuteness overload!

  22. 22.

    Comrade Mary

    I was in Rochester a couple of weeks ago. I had no idea it was such a hive of scum and villainy.

  24. 24.

    Walker

    @Boudica:

    Exactly. Why rape of men is less common, the victims find that people take it less seriously precisely because of these attitudes.

  25. 25.

    John of Indiana

    Only 8 times? Why, I remember… (dated a woman who was into “Sex Majik”)

    Seriously, though, why wasn’t she charged with rape and criminal confinement? If *I* did that there’d be a lynch mob at the jail.

  27. 27.

    bemused

    Levi Johnson and girlfriend will name their baby daughter Breeze Beretta. Yes, Beretta, the gun. Someone should have asked if Breeze is for their favorite chewing gum.

  29. 29.

    gaz

    @Walker: For quite some time, in the belltown neighborhood of seattle (a somewhat upscale area) there was a roving band of guys that would attack and rape men regularly. I don’t recall if they were ever caught or not. It’s been awhile since I heard about it.

  32. 32.

    danielx

    I have to admit that as attention grabbing headlines go, that ranks well up there.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @Middlewest:

    G and I just watched Errol Morris’ documentary Tabloid and I kept thinking the same thing throughout the entire movie. If a man had abducted his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, held her hostage in a remote cottage, repeatedly had sex with her, and was finally arrested when his ex managed to make contact with her friends and escape, it wouldn’t be treated as a cute, funny story. People would be able to call it what it was, which was kidnapping and rape.

    But, no, as a society we can’t even hint that sometimes men are coerced or forced into unwanted sex. I’m not sure why that is, though I can think of a few possible reasons.

  34. 34.

    mike in dc

    Well, first there’s the perception that men, on balance/average, are physically stronger than women, so the thought of a man being overpowered or threatened by a woman seems incongruous to many people(even though they can imagine a smallish male rapist wielding a knife or gun to secure compliance). Second, there’s the perception that a man can’t perform sexually unless he’s aroused–ergo, he must have “consented” at some level, in order for anything to have happened(never mind that some assaults involve women forcibly penetrating the man). Third, there’s simply the cultural perception that men are always ready for sex, that they are the aggressors/predators in any situation, and that women would never resort to extreme measures to engage in sexual activity with a man(nor would they have to, to complete the perception).

  36. 36.

    Nylund

    @RedKitten:

    Our whole damn country is like that. If there is anything happening anywhere in the world that has any sort of connection to Canada, no matter how tenuous, our media gets all squee’ey about it.

    I really noticed that when I lived in Canada. I always assumed it was related to the Canadian content laws. A certain percentage of TV/Music, etc. has to be Canadian, so if you want to talk about that biggest Hollywood blockbuster, you’ll find a Canadian that was involved in one way or another and interview them for a few minutes before getting to the real story.

    PS, if it wasn’t for Neil Young, Classic Rock radio stations in Canada would really suck. Luckily, through Young, they can play enough Young, Buffalo Springfield, Crazyhorse, CSNY, etc. to fulfill their Canadian Content obligations without driving you crazy by constantly replaying the Guess Who, Rush, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

    (The Band and Leonard Cohen help as well).

  38. 38.

    Steeplejack

    @Steve Crickmore:

    I have a friend who is involved with the Newseum in Washington, and one of their hot-button search items is that issue of the Post. Apparently you cannot find one anywhere.

    The closest they have come is an eccentric hoarder type who has a tremendous collection of Americana and press memorabilia stuffed in his house–and claims to have that issue of the Post–but he won’t let anyone see it. He just keeps leading them on.

  39. 39.

    schrodinger's cat

    Local news can be like that, there are some small towns in Maine, where this phenomena was much worse than what you described. When there are so few people nothing hardly happens.
    So apart from the weather there is not much to report, so local news covered things like a fire alarm going off at a local Holiday Inn, someone calling the police about the howling of some neighbors dogs, opening of new Talbots store and so on. Well I guess it is better than reporting murders and shootings all the time.

  40. 40.

    schrodinger's cat

    @amk: Do you know what happens on the 9th day after the funeral? MIL is big on all kinds of minor and major religious rituals, which I have never heard of.

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