Barbecues, book openings, bimbos and bumblers
Today's tabloids, June 30, 2010.
9:03 am Jun. 30, 2010
Each day, the New York tabloids vie to sell readers at the newsstands on outrageous headlines, dramatic photography, and, occasionally, great reporting. Who is today's winner?
The New York Post: We don't spend a lot of time on the substance of the stories here, but the cover of today's New York Post really makes you wonder. Why bother calling yourself "Anna Chapman" if you're going to speak in a thick Russian accent and make Facebook videos describing your venture firm that is looking for risky investments in Russia—and record the video in Russian? "She came from Russia, with love" reads the lead about the accused Russian spy whose "cover" probably related more to New Yorkers' suspecting Russian entrepreneurs of being gangsters rather than agents of Moscow Center, and then feeling xenophobic and correcting themselves. I mean this lady may as well have kept a smoked fish in her Gucci handbag wrapped in a front page of Pravda for cheap snacking on the go!
The picture is worth a hundred words: the Post has her standing in front of the Statue of Liberty. "THE SPY WHO LOVED US: Russia's NY minx painted the town red." (Nice, that last one!) The Post probably rightly pegs this bumbling spy as a typical Russian girl excited to live big in New York. Obviously, the "modern-day Mata Hari" (as the Post calls her in one of the increasingly strained espionage metaphors that appear at the top of every other paragraph) cared more about wearing "slinky dresses" to "book openings" than making sure she wasn't being tailed by FBI agents, who watched a pantomime of a spy who knows she's rumbled when Chapman went to a cell phone store in Brooklyn, registered a phone under a Russian name at the address "99 Fake Street," then threw the battery out in a sidewalk garbage can on her way back home. Her contacts in all likelihood would have learned more about America's position on Iraq if they read the copy of Time magazine they held in their left hand as a secret signal to her rather than bothering to meet her to collect whatever she learned at "book openings."
Daily News: But on Day 2 of the Incredibly Inept Russian Spies comedy, the tabloids tell us a lot about who they are. From the Post's put-on credulity about the successes of Chapman's social life, we move to the News, which focuses on two other spies: the Murphys of New Jersey. This is the couple that was so ace with their hydrangeas that neighbors in Montclair, where they moved in 2008, couldn't believe they were spies. The News promises a deep account of life as neighbors to the Murphys, the origin and fates of whose two daughters remains unclear (their faces are blurred in the family photograph that appears on today's wood). One couple which asked not to be named lived in an apartment complex near them and became family friends. Why, there were even barbecues! And Cynthia Murphy does not appear to have offered anyone smoked fish from her handbag at any of them. They feel betrayed: While they were slicing up birthday cake at a Hoboken toy store to celebrate a child's birthday, Moscow Center was watching them!
But when it comes down to it, you can only make the apparently boring life of a couple that turns out to be spies so much fun to read about. The excitement comes in the contrast between their public lives and their private plotting. This story won't really get good until all those details start coming out. Then, the court transcripts should be handed over to Chevy Chase or Leslie Neilsen.
Observations: Manhattan or Hoboken? Sexy redheads or sweat-suited family-people? I'm willing to bet most of us get plenty of the latter at home. The spy thing is all just noise: there's nothing more to see here.
Winner: The New York Post.
