British Tabloids

That British Tabloids have a reputation for being crass and under-handed is nothing new. What I didn't realize was for how long they've been like that.

The Rupert Murdoch News Corporation telephone hacking and bribing scandals are the latest big examples of dodginess. Headlines have certainly been composed in bad taste, but also sometimes not without their quirky charm. The headline in the Murdoch owned New York Post years ago, 'Headless Body Found in Topless Bar,' certainly ranks up there as a memorable banner, for many, many reasons.

The fun of reading newspapers as much as I do is that I usually find something, somewhere, where I'd least expect it. Take today's NYT story abut the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's orbital flight around the earth, a flight that was a return salvo to the Soviets and their space accomplishments.

I remember the era, I remember the flight, I remember a good deal of the details of the story. But even John Glenn it turns out gets a piece of information he never knew about.

The flight was delayed many times. On-again, off-again; in the Mercury capsule, out of the Mercury capsule. Like a cat, always on the wrong side of the door. The assembled press corps was bored, and likely inebriated often.

So, the veteran Times science reporter,  John Noble Wilford, tells John Glenn that the press grew so restless for something to write about that a British tabloid summarized a local bar's deadly midnight shooting of a waitress by her boyfriend as, "the first successful shot here in weeks."

Rupert's name is not mentioned.

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