Stock up?

I'm sure those of you who aren't being oppressed by communist China love having free reign of the internet, and have been to msn.com and yahoo.com, two major news/email/search engine sites.  As you've noticed, many of the articles aren't "news" at all- in fact, msn.com has a section they deem as "must-see" when the articles are nothing remotely resembling something someone HAS to see.
Case in point:  here are three actual headlines from the "must-see" section of msn.com
"Jeter's bachelor pad goes up for sale"
"Surprise!  Facebook users are jerks"
"Which city was the hottest?"
"Bing: Man sentenced for attacking pelican"*

And these are all from right now!  It's not like I've been writing down the best ones over the course of the month and saving them, as of 11:23pm pacific time, those are the headlines under "must-see".

Whereas I need to go cnn.com to find a headline like "Jobless slide continues to reach 2 month low"

Anyway, that's not what this blog is about: More so than the Earth-shattering headlines that these websites produce, I'm fascinated by the stock photos they put to accompany these stories.

Like this one:

What did the call sheet for this look like?

NEEDED FOR PHOTOSHOOT: 5 young, attractive, professional looking white males.  Must have suits that kinda look like suits an actual person would wear.  Wait, on second thought, we don't want to seem sexist.  Better make it 2 women and 3 men, that's fair.  Oh, no, but then it could be considered racist.  Make one of the women black.  Oh man!  They can't be too young or good looking, THAT'S discriminatory too!  OK- 2 women, 1 white, 1 black, sort of good looking, but not ugly- that would be disgusting- and young enough to not be old, but not really young looking.  And 3 men, 1 young, 1 sort of older, but not like grandpa old- gross- and maybe one of them could be gay.  But not TOO gay, we don't want to offend anyone.

That's how most of these pictures look- google search "business group" and take a gander.

It's terrible!
And how sad they work in this colorless empty void!  I thought my office was boring-yikes, at least we have objects in it.
Also, no wonder the unemployment rate is so high, apparently there is no room in the workplace for anyone of Asian or Latin decent.

How awkward must these be to shoot?  What kind of direction are they getting?  Especially for the pictures that are supposed to illustrate "bad" working conditions, like so:

This was a picture under an article through msn called "how to address an annoying coworker"
I wonder if they had to tell the guy to have a "more annoying" look on his face?  And I wonder if the "annoying" coworker bragged about any of this to his friends and family. "Hey, guess what!  I was paid to have my picture taken!  ......I'm the guy everyone hates."


But what has to be even worse, and even more uncomfortable, is shooting the sexual harrassment pictures:

"Tom?  That was great, but can you give me more "lecherous"?  That was only a 5 on the creeper scale, and I'm looking for an 8.  Perfect!!"




*Extra kudos, msn, for not only giving us that gem, but for linking us to a site that links us to multiple links possibly containing the story.  Efficient, to be sure.