The reactions of the public to this newspaper can often be–if nothing else–deeply amusing.
Last week, we did a parody of men’s magazines like Maxim for our cover. The cover story was on the Legislature, so we figured: What the hell. We slapped a stock photo of a model on the cover and surrounded her with some tongue-in-cheek teasers.
Well, once the paper hit the streets, the shit hit the fan.
One restaurant owner flat-out refused to have the paper in his restaurant because of the “adult” nature of the cover. Meanwhile, I got a voicemail from one of our older readers, who explained that she likes the Weekly –although she liked it better 10 years ago–and was dismayed we were going in “this direction” with our cover.
A high school teacher sent me a frothing e-mail declaring that she feels like “a dirty pedophile toting your publication around my school,” and that she “feel(s) just wrong holding in my hands a paper advertising ‘Teen Sex.'”
Of course, the teaser about which she was writing concerned a review of Romeo and Juliet, which is read in pretty much every high school in America. And for those of you needing a refresher, it’s safe to say that teen sex plays a major role in the plot.
But I think my favorite e-mail came from someone asking about the cover model (who was showing no cleavage and very little, well, anything). The letter writer said the model looked like a long-lost friend, and wanted the model’s contact information.
I told her that I could not help her. Of course, I could have said the same thing to the aforementioned complainers.
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2007.