Opinion: Bad taste no longer exclusive realm of tabloids

This one was so out of control that I looked at the article on the front page: “White House Wives Caught in Hot Tub With Space Alien” read the headline. The photo was faked by superimposing faces over those of people in the original photo, a man and two women in a hot tub.

The man’s superimposed head was the cartoon image tabloids have of what a space alien would look like. The women’s faces were those of Laura Bush and Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Because the “article” appeared before the 2004 election, the tabloid took no chances and featured both the incumbent first lady and the challenger. I question the lucidity of anyone who would actually buy this stuff.

Tabloids aren’t the only perpetrators of inane cover teasers designed to capture readers. Some magazines have been known to tread on the same bad taste territory as supermarket tabloids. I was inspired to do a bit of research on teaser statements on magazine covers.

A recent issue of a magazine doing a feature on Katie Couric accompanied her cover photo with this: “Katie’s Confessions: fresh, funny talk about changing her look (again), those catty tabloid rumors and her secret passions.”

Now, I ask you, would anyone, except people who may need to get a life, care about any of this? Are you at all interested in Katie’s changing look, much less the rumors the tabloids are spreading about her? If she reveals her secret passions, they would be out there for all to know, secrets no longer.

For those truly deprived of meaningful thoughts to ponder, there is the magazine cover blurb announcing “The Sexiest Woman Alive.” Considering the millions of women currently alive, this award to actress Angelina Jolie is awesome, indeed. What would the evaluation process be like leading to Ms. Jolie’s being named the sexiest woman in the entire world? There are a lot of candidates to choose from.

“How to Tell if You are Addicted to Girls’’ is a powerful hint of things to come for readers of a story in a teenage magazine. Curiosity almost led me to look inside the magazine to find out how to diagnose and treat an addiction to girls. Alas, I’m too old to care.

Assuming one survives girl addiction, a grown-up magazine cover promises information with respect to “When Cheating on Your Wife Becomes an Obsession.” Another magazine cover offers a possible follow-up: “Marriage: the Case for Living Apart.” If I’m not mistaken, married people living apart is called divorce, often the end product of cheating on your wife.

Magazine covers often promote articles about lists of things. For instance, “27 Ways to Get Organized.” That’s a heap of organization. I probably couldn’t handle one way to get organized. I would need a 28th one to systematically catalog the other 27 ways to get organized.

Another magazine cover list that takes a backseat to no tabloid when it comes to crassness: “50 Hottest Bachelors in the U.S.A (Yum, Yum).” I can’t help but wonder about the methodology for selecting the top (yum, yum) bachelors.

Forget that. What formula was used for picking the winners in the following magazine cover blurb: “The 20 Best Sex Ideas in the World”? Readers are free to ponder the formula.

My personal favorite magazine cover is the one bearing the tasteful teaser, “Hollywood’s 15 Biggest Bimbos Exposed.” The writer of this philosophical opus had the dual tasks of defining bimbos and explaining the criteria for selecting the 15 Hollywood bimbos to expose.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.