From today’s cnn.com home page. When your first bullet point for an article is “forecasters warn hurricane may bring ‘certain death‘”, perhaps you should rethink the horrible pun in the headline.
Hurricane yIKEs!
September 12th, 2008 by Conor Lastowka · 33 Comments
Tags: RiffTrax
33 responses so far ↓
1 jfruh on Sep 12, 2008 at 8:39 am
I can actually think of few more troubling sentences from a semantic perspective than “may bring ‘certain death’”.
2 Jeffrey Thames [King of Grief] on Sep 12, 2008 at 8:41 am
These were my exact thoughts about 5 minutes ago when I saw the headline myself. And I’m in Houston, so I have the right to be REALLY REALLY indignant if I so choose.
I saved the page myself as a souvenir of the storm and a Bad News Decision alike.
3 Casey on Sep 12, 2008 at 9:06 am
Apparently they heard that the evacuation was going along pretty well and organized and decided that wasn’t good TV. So they do whatever they can to inspire panic… because THAT is news.
4 Smuttynose on Sep 12, 2008 at 9:15 am
Testify my brother!
5 Ariel on Sep 12, 2008 at 9:23 am
Yes, thought out with tenderness and compassion, wasn’t it!
6 Jeffrey Thames [King of Grief] on Sep 12, 2008 at 9:53 am
It gets worse. CNN’s current headline as of this writing:
“Texans wait for Ike’s 22-foot wall of fury”
The accompanying picture:
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/US/weather/09/12/hurricane.ike.texas/t1home.ike.family.ap.jpg
Trust me, we’re not ALL waiting that closely.
7 Rob T Firefly on Sep 12, 2008 at 10:56 am
So THAT’S what became of the writers from “Suddenly Susan.”
8 Onil on Sep 12, 2008 at 11:41 am
So they’re saying, ” Ike’ll kill you.”
9 Casey on Sep 12, 2008 at 11:46 am
Yeah… that explains the “area of effect” weather map’s name change to “kill radius” at weather.com.
10 Ben on Sep 12, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I am sitting Ike out down in Houston as well. I wish I’d remembered to copyright the slogan “I DON’T like Ike” before the storm headed this way, but then again…how many people would get the play on President Ike’s slogan. sigh…I’m old.
BTW I am taking odds on Wayne Dolcefino getting his fat butt washed out into the Gulf while he does a “from the eye of the storm” weather report. You Houston locals know who I am talking about.
You’d guys would be shocked to see the local coverage showing morons down on the Galveston seawall right now with their children watching the storm tide washing over the wall right in front of them. Freaking organ donors and live child abuse.
11 Courtney on Sep 12, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Somewhere the New York Post is weeping at a pun that got away from them.
12 Ben on Sep 12, 2008 at 12:27 pm
“You’d”…yikes…I think I meant “Youse”, but then again, I am not sure why I would type that either…
13 MonkeyCheezPants on Sep 12, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I read sentences like that, and I get out my B.A. in English and sob softly for hours.
14 Onil on Sep 12, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Nah, they’re too busy looking for more pictures of cartoon pigs with lipstick.
15 Ryan on Sep 12, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Stop crying and get back to work. People are waiting to be asked if they want fries with their order.
16 Triangle O. Daver on Sep 12, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I agree completely, Conor. There was absolutely no need for a crude sexual reference in a headline about a HURRICANE.
But then, CNN has no sense of tact. Take this headline, for instance: http://tinyurl.com/44snqc
Is there not a less juvenile way to phrase that headline? It’s disgusting.
17 AndrooGee on Sep 12, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Sexual reference?
I fairly certain that everyone else is talking about the first word of the headline. Not the third.
18 Triangle O. Daver on Sep 12, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Well, in French, an orgasm is called “La petite mort”, which means “the little certain death”.
So I think it’s pretty obvious what this article is REALLY about.
19 Triangle O. Daver on Sep 12, 2008 at 10:38 pm
P.S. In that last post, imagine me saying the phrase “pretty obvious” in the same way that Kenneth Branagh says the phrase in ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’. Please.
20 Triangle O. Daver on Sep 12, 2008 at 10:39 pm
P.S.S. Please pretend that this post was posted as a reply to my previous post and not as an entirely separate post. After all, I think it was pretty obvious that that was what I was going for.
21 MonkeyCheezPants on Sep 13, 2008 at 12:12 am
Hey, my day job is way better than that. I get to order potted plants around. No sass-back from them.
22 Brian O. on Sep 13, 2008 at 9:24 am
I still wonder if they named Hurricane Ike after Ike Turner, it certainly seems to have the same temperment.
23 MonkeyCheezPants on Sep 14, 2008 at 9:24 am
The hurricane doesn’t want to hurt you baby, but sometimes you make it hurt you.
24 Conor Lastowka on Sep 14, 2008 at 4:56 pm
That read really bothered me when watching that movie. Well done.
25 Thad on Sep 14, 2008 at 10:04 pm
A month or so back, when Morgan Freeman was in the hospital after a car accident, E had a story that started out with “Morgan Freeman just had the darkest night of his life.”
I made a similar comment about when it is and is not appropriate to make puns about the movie an actor has most recently appeared in.
26 Brian O. on Sep 15, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Oh, it’s just another red state WHINING and stuff, grow a callous you wimpy cowboys you.
27 Scarlett on Sep 16, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Sorry, us wimpy cowboys and cowgirls have been too busy to grow much of a callous since we’re almost always taking care of blue states like Louisiana in addition to taking care of our own state. Which is pretty damn phenomenal when you see a Democrat mayor and a Republican governor work together to take care of things instead of flailing wildly to blame everyone else so another state can take care of their population. Like some other blue states.
That was a bit acidic, I realize. But at least it wasn’t whiny, so there is that.
28 Bill Corbett on Sep 17, 2008 at 4:05 am
States Receiving Most in Federal Spending Per Dollar of Federal Taxes Paid:
1. D.C. ($6.17)
2. North Dakota ($2.03)
3. New Mexico ($1.89)
4. Mississippi ($1.84)
5. Alaska ($1.82)
6. West Virginia ($1.74)
7. Montana ($1.64)
8. Alabama ($1.61)
9. South Dakota ($1.59)
10. Arkansas ($1.53)
States Receiving Least in Federal Spending Per Dollar of Federal Taxes Paid:
1. New Jersey ($0.62)
2. Connecticut ($0.64)
3. New Hampshire ($0.68)
4. Nevada ($0.73)
5. Illinois ($0.77)
6. Minnesota ($0.77)
7. Colorado ($0.79)
8. Massachusetts ($0.79)
9. California ($0.81)
10. New York ($0.81)
Source:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/
29 MonkeyCheezPants on Sep 17, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I live in California and have been using this point to recruit for my secessionist militia.
30 Brian O. on Sep 17, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Oooh! Burn! Um, and stuff?
31 jason on Sep 18, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I always wonder, with Mike being a big republican, and Kevin seeming (tho he’s never really came out and said it) like more of a liberal, if there are ever any heated discussions or off-limit political joke rules when they’re working together…
32 Scarlett on Sep 19, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Point taken, Mr. Corbett and I do apologize for the ill-thought out remarks made about blue states in general. As much as I would love to blame it on the stress of anticipating a hurricane headed to my home region or the knee jerk response at having my home state maligned, it comes down to typing before thinking things through.
What I should have said is that I didnt’ understand why Texas was being designated a whiny state, red or otherwise. I also should have pointed out that the red state Texas has helped out blue state Lousiana quite a bit. The one thing I will keep from my tempertantrum is that I do think it was/is phenomenal that in these types of crisis, red and blue didn’t matter to our governor and our mayor. They worked together for the common good, for the populations of both states in the cases of the rather devastating hurricanes that have hit both states extremely hard. Neither is perfect, of course, but I thought they set the kind of behavior that should be the norm instead of the exception. Unfortunately, I didn’t take their message to heart when I popped off like that and again, to Brian O., Mr. Corbett, and everyone else, I would just like to apologize for my comments.
Scarlett
As it is right now, I’m not sure what sort of coverage you all are getting out there on Hurricane Ike, but as someone who’s watched the citizens of my state rally and help each other out during this ordeal, it’s my hope that everyone gets a chance to see just how little whining my home state actually does considering the burden it has shouldered for the last few years.
33 Ben on Sep 24, 2008 at 6:35 am
I don’t see the need for an apology on your part since it was someone else who acted the fool and provoked you. People who haven’t been through a hurricane need to run out and buy a clue.
Sorry for the late comment, but I was in Ike’s path and it has taken a while to recover.
Leave a Comment