Post Parade

November 10, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

The front page of the New York Post is frequently a moral struggle.  Well, not much of a struggle.  The newspaper stands some obvious sinner in the pillory for Post readers to pelt with rotten vegetables.  The parade includes the criminal thug, the celebrity or sports star, the politician (foreign leaders make especially good targets provided they’re someone Post readers might have heard of), and others.

But some days, the Post goes for the puerile pun, as though the headline-writing room had been staffed with boys from a middle-school playground. 

And when the stars are properly aligned, you get both.

Then there’s the Daily News version.  Remember the moral outrage at MoveOn.org for using “Gen. Betray Us” epithet? From Wikipedia:

Fellow Max Boot* accused Moveon.org of “desperate attempts to besmirch one of the most admired soldiers in the entire American armed forces” and argued that the ad will “backfire.”

That was five years ago, and now the Daily News (hardly a left-wing rag) uses the same shameful name pun on page one.  Some backfire.

(Previous Post posts are here, here, and here.)
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* If you were trying to think up names for a right wing hawk, could you come up with anything better than “Max Boot”?