Posted by chicagomedia.org on August 06, 2009 at 19:45:27:
It's all weird, all the time at this gallery
From celebs to child molesters, subjects offer offbeat news take
August 6, 2009
BY RICHARD ROEPER Sun-Times Columnist
For being such a straightforward news station, WBBM Newsradio 78 has some ... edgy photo galleries on its Web site.
Consider the "Dead or Alive" gallery, which gives you the opportunity to guess whether the likes of Don Knotts, Dom DeLuise, Don Rickles, Beverly Sills and Nick Nolte are still with us.
Or "Celebrity changes through the years," where, "You make the call! Natural progression or plastic surgery?" (Hmmm, that Victoria Beckham looks just a LITTLE chestier in some of the later pics.)
And then there's "Notorious teacher sex scandal photos," with entries such as:
"Lisa Marinelli, 40, substitute teacher at Mitchell High School, charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy ... "
And:
"Rachel Holt, a 34-year-old Delaware science teacher ... charged with 28 counts of first-degree rape after allegedly having sex with her 13-year-old male student 28 times in the last week of March 2006."
The media are all about interaction with the consumer these days -- and sure enough, there's an interactive component to the photo gallery. You can rank the alleged sex offenders on a scale of 1 to 5, as if they're starlets.
I'm not kidding.
Debra Lafave, the Florida teacher accused of having sex with a 14-year-old middle-school student, rates a 4.6 out of 5 in one photo, while the infamous Mary Kay LeTourneau rates a 2.7 for a courtroom shot in her prison attire.
As usual, there's a double standard when it comes to these teacher-student scandals. Nobody would ever, ever post a photo gallery inviting readers to rank males accused of assaulting minors. But if it's gals? Of course it's wrong, but (wink-wink) isn't that Maggie Laughlin a cutie?