First of all, I'd like to give whatever is the opposite of a shout-out to Geoffrey's computer, which just decided to freeze up and eat the masterful (and LONG) blog entry I was composing. One day Bertha is going to screw up on me one too many times and I'm going to toss her over the balcony and into the pond outside our apartment. And it will feel good. And then I will be on the lam so Geoffrey won't be able to find me when he comes home and sees what I did.

Anyway, I will try to re-create what I had written. Um, OK. World Bank-IMF protests. Didn't interfere with my day much, though apparently Freedom Plaza, a park right outside my building where I often go to get some air when I have a break from work, was the big hotspot Friday morning. Couple hundred protesters (beating drums! Oooh! Dangerous!) were arrested there, I hear. There was some trouble there, apparently, because when I went there late yesterday afternoon, all the footlights ringing the park were kicked out. Go protesters! Kick out a park's footlights! That'll show those greedy IMF bastards! Um, yeah. The police were definitely out in force and rather heavy-handed, I thought. Which is something for me to say because I almost always side with police and think that most officers are brave, giving people who care about what they do and are fair-minded. But I saw some TV reports and still photos yesterday that were rather upsetting. One clip was of a TV cameraman getting very roughly pushed down by a cop wielding a baton. Several journalists were arrested for doing their jobs. For doing their jobs, which, let me remind everyone, is protected by a thing we like to call the First Amendment. It's one thing to pop a protester who's throwing rocks at you, but after one protester does that, it doesn't seem quite justified to do the same thing to another one 5 minutes later who's just standing in front of you saying "Down with corporate greed" or whatever. It doesn't feel much like America, land of free speech, free press, and right to assembly, when the scene looks more like a North Korean crackdown. Anyway, word on the street is today is supposed to "get ugly," so we'll see what kind of adventures I have. Hopefully none that land me in jail just because I'm walking by a protest.

I had my own little IMF-World Bank-inspired protest yesterday at work. I was assigned to do the front page, and it was decided at our daily newsroom meeting that our main art for the first edition would be a photo from the protests. Someone mentioned that one of the more colorful aspects of the protests was a naked woman whom police had to cover with a sheet to arrest. Tee hee, we all say. The big boss, the editor (who I should say here, for the sake of clarification and perhaps complete explanation of what I am about to tell, previously worked at USA Today), quips maybe the AP will move art of that, but it'd probably be a bit sleazy for us to run. Unless she's shown in the sheet, in which case it would be only partly sleazy, which is what we should go for. Tee hee, we all say. So, two hours later, after the editor has gone home, I'm looking through the wire for good protest photos, and find there's lots of great stuff. Your standard police and protesters clashing shots, lots of good stuff. So the photo editor and my boss and I gather to try to pick The One that will go out front.

My boss (not the USA Today guy) has a proof of the inside page carrying the full story of the protests, and there's a small photo on it of a handful of women dressed only in bras and panties protesting outside a Gap store. My boss looks at the photo I favor (a cop grabbing a very pissed-off looking protester by the shirt, a vandalized Citibank branch in the background) and the one the photo editor favors (a bunch of cops beating the snot out of a protester and knocking down a TV crew in the process). And he looks at the scantily-clad women pic, and says "This is the one I think Dave (our editor) would want us to pick."

ME: "Whaaaaaat?"
MY BOSS: "Did you all [gesturing to about 5 of us, as all the copy editors now were also gathered round] not hear Dave say we should go 'partly sleazy' with this?"
ME: "He was kidding! He had to have been kidding! Um, right?"
MY BOSS (who has worked at Stripes way longer than I have, obviously): "Don't think so."
ME: "So you think he was telling us we should always choose our photos on the basis of how sleazy they are, without regard to what tells the story best or is the best composed photo?" [for everyone had agreed this scantily-clad pic did not depict the real story, which was protesters clashing with police, and that it was busy and not very well composed, at least compared to the others]
MY BOSS: "Yes." And he explained how our audience is mostly young-men soldiers and Dave thinks they'll buy more papers if we have "sleaze" out front.
ME: "Well that's completely offensive. That's just ridiculous."
MY BOSS: "I agree. But that's what I hear our boss telling us."

And thus I was outvoted, basically. Some of my co-workers (some of them women) also thought this was OK. Yeah man! Sex sells. Some co-workers, including the photo editor, who was definitely trying to help me out, were also pissed off and none too happy that apparently we work for the National Enquirer. I liken it more to Maxim.

I tell you: I considered quitting on the spot, and I've never really truly thought that before. But I thought of the tough job market, and I thought of my depleted savings account, and I thought about rent being due in a few days. And so I threw up my hands and put the goddamn photo on the page. And I am not proud of it. And I am not proud to be connected with this paper, at least not today.

I'm not mad at my immediate boss. He gathered everyone around to talk about it, and he definitely listened to everyone's concerns. He tried to talk to me about it later, and I told him truthfully that I was not mad at him, but I wasn't happy about the situation and I disagree wholeheartedly with the philosophy behind it. He said he understood and would talk to the editor about it. I'm sure he will talk to Dave about it, but I don't think anything will change. I am deeply disturbed that there are people I work with -- one of whom is somehow in charge -- who don't see any problem with the fact that we intentionally bypassed some very good photos to use one we knew had only one merit: Tits and asses, my friends. Tits and asses.