Friday, September 11, 2009

9/11/09 - Adventures in headline ridiculosity


I remember being pretty blown away when I found out that the writers of stories in magazines did not craft their own headlines. It was one of those things that made the world make just a little bit more sense, because I had the vague sense that frequently the tonality of a story's headline didn't match its content. On the ridiculous end of the spectrum, Newsweek's headline for a very interesting, nuanced, and intelligently written examination of childrens' grappling with questions of race and otherness is none other than this gem:

IS YOUR BABY RACIST?

Really? Because even if someone sees that cover and thinks to himself/herself: "Gee, I'd never thought about it before, but maybe my baby is **gulp**...racist?" or even "Huh, my baby seems to cry and babble in a manner that seems disturbingly unfriendly to Latinos...perhaps the lil guy is a future attendee of Bob Jones U.?", they're not getting the answer from the article. The "is your baby racist" question is really only answerable by your baby, and chances are he/she ain't talking.

The article in question:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989

3 comments:

Unknown said...

you funny

Andrew said...

Thought you would enjoy this bit of photo fakery from Newsweek as well:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/essay-9/

Toggle back and forth between the original and the cropped version of Cheney.

Croz said...

Amazing. Absolutely no way that kindly man eating with his family would shoot anyone in the face.