This new Cold War sure is ... hot!
Today's tabloids, Nov. 12, 2010.
10:30 am Nov. 12, 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: Anna Chapman returns to the tabloid wood today in an entry that's only shocking because it is not some kind of photomontage of her face on a Bond girl, but an actual photo. The Russian spy was sent packing to Moscow after her cover was blown, it now turns out, by the head of American operations for Directorate S, a Russian spy outfit. But these days, instead of hard labor, if you're a hot spy and your network gets blown you get sent directly to … the cover of Russian Maxim! But against this backdrop of the sexy homecoming redhead handing bouquets to cosmonauts and posing in lingerie for Russian tabloids, the John LeCarré side of all of this plays out:
A highly placed Kremlin official told Kommersant that [the Russian spy turned mole known only as "Colonel Shcherbakov's] death warrant had been signed.
"We know who he is and where he is," he said.
"Don't doubt that a Mercader has already been sent after him," he said -- referring to Ramon Mercader, a Russian assassin who tracked down Leon Trotsky in Mexico and killed him with an ax in 1940.
"Every day he will fear retribution," the Kremlin official said of Shcherbakov. "The fate of such a person is unenviable.
"He will carry this with him all his life and will fear retribution every day."
The picture is … unbelievable. And the headline, "ANNA'S RAT," kind of unbeatable.
Daily News: It's somehow fitting that the News' bid for sexiness is not a Russian spy in skin-tight leather but a group of strippers at a strip joint. Because several strip joints are among the 6,300 businesses in the city that receive a tax break for improving their real estate. Juan Gonzalez is very angry about this! Of course the vast majority of these tax breaks do not go to strip joints. And the strip joints are getting a break of what looks like an average of $10,000 a year. Hardly backbreaking. We love Bettina Damiani of Good Jobs NY; she does God's work. But one can only imagine that she cringed a bit at having to take the opportunity to speak in this piece. What she said, "Subsidizing strip clubs shows how far afield the program has gone from its original intent," is fair enough as far as it goes; it's not a reason to put a grainy photo of the inside of a strip club, scrupulously checked for any real R-rated material, on your front page. "WHAT BOOBS!" reads the cover line, in a bid for danger. Then the joke is explained to its breaking point: "Dumbbell city officials give tax breaks to strip joints—and you pay the bill." Well, no we don't, not really.
Does the story that gets a strip across the bottom, about a watchman at the George Washington Bridge who was watching television and missed a suicide attempt taking place on his watch, save the page? "OH, MY GUARD" reads the headline. Answer: no.
Observations: Well much as we would like to decry the Anna Chapman cover on the Post, it's salted peanuts really. And an organic opportunity to blow up a boudoir photograph for the cover. Sometimes you want your tabloids really—tabloidy. A story that sells itself on sex and turns out to be about tax breaks versus one that sells itself on sex and turns out to be a KGB thriller: no contest.
Winner: The New York Post.
