Here it is more than a week later and I still haven't a clue as to what the lead story was about, maybe somebody reading this will remember the headline and the story and can fill me in, but the headline kind of gave me a flashback both to a headline I've written about previously and to a discussion many years ago with my old friend (and current Facebook amiga) Joanne.
The tabloid headline, which took up about 80 percent of the front page, was: "Dixie Heads" (all capitals, if I recollect correctly).
As I mentioned, I had no idea what the story was about, and figured maybe I'd see something on the Internet later that would make me go "aha" but that was not to be. However, my immediate reaction to the headline was that the headline writer was making a play on the word "Dickheads," which is the word my dear friend Joanne all those many years ago used to refer to men who asked her for her phone number and then never called.
If that were the case -- that is, if that indeed is what the headline was playing off of, it would be like a bookend to the headline "How the City Got Shafted" which I wrote about previously, and which signaled a change in editorial direction that allowed blatant euphemisms for outlawed words to be used in a tabloid head. Of course "dick" has more acceptable usages than "shafted," I mean Richard Nixon was often called Tricky Dick, and going way back a detective or a guard was called a dick, as in "The Bank Dick" (god bless you WC Fields), but there's no confusing the dick in a dickhead with a penis, if, indeed, that was the gutter in which the headline writer's mind resided.
So that's two flashbacks for the price of one headline, not bad, eh?
Then another headline this week triggered a flashback. This one was on ESPN.com. The flashback was to a headline that I refused to let a colleague write when I was filling in during a brief stint as the backup night sports editor at the doomed Daily News Tonight, or maybe it was the regular Daily News sports section, I forget. But the headline was about a sporting event, again, I don't even remember what kind of sporting event, maybe a boxing match or a baseball game, but it referred to the event as being similar to "World War 3."
"You can't write that," I said.
"Why not?" my temporary underling but most time equal said.
"World War 3 is serious business," I said, or words to that effect. "Millions of people could get killed. This is just a sporting event."
"It's hyperbole," my colleague said.
"It's history," said, hitting the delete button. At least I wish I'd said that. But I overruled him anyway.
So the flashback came a few days ago when I clicked on ESPN to see how the New York sports teams were doing, and the lead video on the home page was about how the Golden State Warriors were in the process of winning a playoff game, or maybe any game for that matter, in San Antonio for the first time in many moons (I don't think ESPN used the word moon).
The headline said "Forget the Alamo."
Whoa, Nellie. For any kid who grew up buying into the myth of Davey Crockett and his coonskin cap, a headline like that is anathema. Oh the sacrilege! How can anybody charged with writing headlines compare a basketball game to an epic event in American history. It would be like saying someone on a diet was fighting the Battle of the Bulge. Wait a second. I've done that. More than once. Nevertheless.
At any rate, when I saw "Forget the Alamo," I had my flashback moment and moved on. But I'm sure I'll remember the Alamo long after I've forgotten the score of the game the headline referenced. In fact, I think the Spurs rallied to win the game anyway. No doubt inspired by someone in the second row holding up an iPad displaying the offensive headline.
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