Today’s NY Post cover more over-the-top than average NY Post cover

Joe Pompeo
·Media Reporter

TAB TEES UP SEX-CRAZED SHOT OF SMOKING BRUNETTE BOMBSHELL!

That might be the hyperbolic headline today if the New York Post were to cover its own cover, which depicts a woman portraying a prostitute as she exhales cigarette smoke--a metaphor for stock market turmoil.

"Crazy Stox like a hooker's drawers... UP, DOWN, UP," reads the front page.

Needless to say, the tasteless (or tasty, depending on how you look at it!) tabloid treatment has been raising eyebrows today on Twitter and on blogs. A few of the better reactions are rounded up below.

Capital New York: "Welcome to the saucy 1940s! It's a world where bland jokes about hookers are funny, women wear their hair in styles that look kind of like paralyzed sea anemones and favor the maquillage of Disney's Snow White, and women's underpants are called 'drawers.' It's quaint on the cover of the Post today."

Village Voice: "What, there were no hero cops today? It's sweet that the Post's headline writers have a collective fantasy about living in a Raymond Chandler novel. How long do you think they had this photo sitting around, the way other newspapers do with obituaries? 'Hell, today's as good as any. Throw it on the cover. Tie it in with the markets.' Boom."

Mediaite: "It's not just the blatant 'sexiness' of this cover that I enjoy. While many readers will be drawn to this expecting some kind of sordid news story about ladies of the night, I'm pretty sure just as many readers will look at that image of a slightly anachronistic 'hooker' smoking a cigarette and be confused into thinking the Post has magically transformed into a pulp detective novel."