Chyron (on-screen headline) on MSNBC just now: “Fmr Wall Street Professionals Trade Laptops For Lap Dances.”
No, the news is not that out-of-work Wall Streeters, unable to break their expensive Scores habits, are now hawking their computers in order to fund their weekly lap dances; it’s that MSNBC found a laid off Morgan Stanley analyst who is now a stripper at Rick’s Cabaret in New York City. (Which explains the other bit of the headline: “From Jobless to Topless.”) Cue topical background music (in this case, Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls and Donna Summer’s She Works Hard For The Money). Cue painful cable news anchor transition talk (in this case, from Contessa Brewer: “You know, a girl’s got to eat. We’ll be right back…”)
UPDATE: I see that MSNBC “found” on its own neither this Morgan-Stanley-analyst-turned-stripper nor the entire “trend” of stripping ex-Wall Streeters: the New York Post did. (MSNBC: give credit where credit is due!) And the Huffington Post pokes some holes in the whole deal.
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.