In the 1998 election for state attorney general, Dennis Vacco was trying every tactic to challenge
his narrow loss, including a claim that opponent Eliot Spitzer got 100,000 ineligible foreigners
to vote for him. So, in the tabloid tradition:
The next morning, TV and radio stations had picked up the line. And four years later, Time magazine still remembered this headline as having "immortalized" the event. Cool.
Meanwhile, Charles Schumer defeated Sen. Al D'Amato in
a hotly contested Senate race:
On a story about the former girlfriend of a deceased millionaire who
left his whole fortune to his cocker spaniel, with all of it going
to animal-rights groups upon the death of the dog (whom I referred to in a
photo caption, perhaps unfairly, as the "rich bitch"). The girlfriend, who
gets nothing after the dog dies, is suing for half the loot. The headline:
On a story about how Paula Jones would be sitting right across from
President Clinton to put pressure on the beleaguered president while
he gave his deposition in her lawsuit -- I liked how the subhead worked
with the main head on this one:
Weather stories are tough because there's nothing to say about yesterday's weather
that people don't already know from personal experience, and all the once-clever headlines
(Gimme Swelter or Baked Apple, as in the Big Apple) have already
been written eight or ten times. But, I had a couple of original ideas this
record-breaking summer:
We ran a story about teen heartthrob of the moment Leonardo DiCaprio, and how
he takes his friends to New York hot spots to cruise for girls. Understand
that the group of buddies has a nickname, which we couldn't print; the story
described it only as "his posse -- which takes its unprintable nickname from
a vulgar term for women." Of course, the headline couldn't mention the name
of the "posse" either. I could only write the following and leave it up to the
reader to get the hint:
On a gossip item about how actress Sharon Stone stormed out of a date because
the guy started quizzing her about her former boyfriends:
On a story about John Bobbitt, who wanted to get back together with the wife
who famously mutilated him:
On a story about all the suggestive words -- including SEX, BRA, and not only JEW but even JOO -- that the state of New York has prohibited
on license plates:
There are some headlines that, thanks to the local demographics, work nicely
in a New York tabloid even though they wouldn't work anywhere else.
For example, on a story about how the mayor, who will take credit for just
about anything, proudly announced that the price of matzoh and gefilte fish
atypically went down last Passover:
And finally, there was one headline I wrote that was too racy for even the
Post to publish. The story was that, according to a study, older men who
had more sex turned out to live longer and have better heart conditions.
The headline that the boss said he wished he could print:
