The Political Whore

Gabe up at the front desk here at alt-central pointed this out to me this morning:

CNN.com is now selling T-shirts with its most tabloid-esque headlines on them.

Just when you think that the news biz has hit rock bottom. Of course, there will be no corporate pressure on headline-writing copy editors to come up with snappier, more tabloid headlines so that they can be monetized into T-shirts. None whatsoever.

But CNN is offering T’s for only the goofy, funny or sensational headlines, with a little T-shirt icon next to those heads (”911 dispatcher falls asleep during call,” “Mom-to-be charged with another DUI”) whereas the great meaty headlines I would want on my T-shirts aren’t featured (”Barbara Walters: I had affair with U.S. senator,” “Immigrant worker: No $$$ left for Mexico,” and the ever-popular, “Official: Two bombs at Iraqi wedding kill 35.”)

Here’s one example of the fun, witty T’s you can get:

I’m personally waiting for the “Bush: ‘Mistakes were made’” shirt.

Already, this affront to real journalism has met with criticism and spoofing, like this from the Ryan Block blog:

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