Star Search: Giving Thanks for T&A at the Kansas City Star

It’s that time of year at the Kansas City Star...

The layoffs and  payless furloughs are in the rearview mirror – at east until next year. Now it’s time to rock around the Christmas tree and those fat holiday advertising issues. And what better way to celebrate than plant a pair of big, bad, about-to-be-felt-up boobies on the front page?

That’s right, ladies and gents. The feature, front page pic on Saturday’s Star – in a story about airline security "getting private" – featured a dramatic closeup of an security official putting the squeeze on a headless woman with a pair of double d’s.

As in, king-sized breasts.

Gone I guess, are the days of paranoid copy desk Nazi’s sucking the life out of each and every double entendre.

And rightfully so, I might add.

I remember writing an innocuous item about the honorary consul from Spain talking the Plaza into flying a Spanish flag across the street from what’s now Barnes & Nobel. Frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot to the story outside of the zeal exhibited by the consul for getting it done.

So I flavored it ever-so-slightly with the sub headline, "Spanish Fly."

And darned if it didn’t get past the all the editors. That is until I joked about it with one right before we went to press and she promptly exorcised it from the item.

Small loss for mankind.

Then again, at least it was arguably somewhat clever.

Unlike Saturday’s zooming in on a pair of honking grandmas titties.

At least whoever at the Star selected the Associated Press T&A photo that ran on the editorial page had the good taste to run a pic of a hottie.

And trust me; I worked at the newspaper for 16 years – these kinda things don’t happen by accident.

Think I’m reaching?

Check out the AP pic the Star did run versus the one they chose not to run – by the same photographer, Charles Rex Arbogast.