Selling porn stars and 'public concubinage,' Matt Damon and parking rage
Today's tabloids, March 4, 2011.
10:19 am Mar. 4, 2011
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?
Daily News: Inside today's paper is an Andrew Cuomo package that leads with a big feature on yesterday's back-and-forth between the governor's office and the state's Catholic Conference, a body of bishops that meets around this time each year in Albany. Traditionally, there's a meeting with the governor, a ceremonious affair which has only in recent memory been skipped once, by Eliot Spitzer, because it happened in the thick of the hooker scandal that destroyed his office. But Cuomo's office has told the Conference he'll be in Syracuse and Rochester, continuing his budget tour, and won't be able to come back to Albany to meet with the bishops.
There's some dot-connecting that'd be useful here: None of the statements from Cuomo's office or from the bishops looks like a "HOLY WAR," as the front page of the paper calls it today. But it's not as though Cuomo's office didn't know this would be taken as a snub. And the News is right to locate the origin of the dispute in the stories that followed a top Vatican adviser's admonition of Cuomo for his "public concubinage" with Sandra Lee.
But somehow as front-page matter this story falls between stools. The bishops have had nice, big, rollicking fights with governors before; no Catholic (presumably a big chunk of the audience for the piece) will realize the granular political importance of this rather tame exchange of remarks between Cuomo flack Josh Vlasto and the Conference spokesman who said, "I am sure the governor is very busy, so we will take him at his word." The dek, though, is nicely written tabloidese: "Cuomo snubs bishops after Vatican slap at live-in gal pal." Slappy!
Is each day of minor incremental news from Charlie Sheen to be packaged as a story? What precisely is his "latest fiasco"—the fact that he has attracted 1 million Twitter followers? His vow to prove that his ex-wife, Brooke Mueller, also uses drugs? Or the fact that Capri Anderson, the sex-performer who was with Sheen in his Plaza hotel room when he had his epic freakout, has seized the moment to speak to the News with parenting advice for Sheen? ("His kids should be with their mother, without a doubt.") "CHARLIE'S ANGEL DOES N.Y." reads the not-too-subtle reference to a stock porn-title convention; she's not ID'd by name, but she's looking pretty good in this … bustier? Her earrings look like giant dreamcatchers!
The New York Post: So here is a car-parking story worthy of the front page! You may remember yesterday the News fronted a gotcha tale of an obscure commissioner putting his police placard on his dashboard to score an illegal parking spot in front of N.Y.U. law. The Post today, in almost exactly the same spot on the front, screams "CAR PARK RAGE: Gal beaten into coma over spot." Apparently a woman was standing in a vacant curbside spot, holding it for her boyfriend who was bringing the car around, and this guy in a van pulled up, told her he wanted the spot, and beat her so severely that she is presently in a coma.
The Oscars are over—so why the sudden interest in post-Oscar movie releases? It looks to me like another version of sticking sports on the cover. You get some faces and names people know on the front that way, at least. But reviews of the latest Pixar flick "starring" Johnny Depp, and another of Matt Damon in a still from his latest, seem pretty damn cheap. Especially considering the display copy, which just reads "MOVIE REVIEWS" in yellow on a red snipe separating stills from the two films. Not even a pan, or a rave? Usually at least that is needed to put a move review on the cover: DAMON'S STINKER! LIZARD 'TALE' DRY AS DUST!There's also a strip across the top advertising coverage of the 24-hour extension on the collective bargaining agreement talks between N.F.L. players and owners.
Observations: Well it's not easy today. As much as I think the Cuomo piece is just obliging political theater that is so well-worn at this point that its importance is all sort of abstract, it's a piece of news more broadly important than the parking-space crime. On the other hand, the Post has the evil-crime outrage factor that works so well for tabloid fronts. But whatever minor edge the Post gets on the news it loses in the match-up between Capri Anderson and "MOVIE REVIEWS!"
Winner: Daily News.
