covering up

Bruno Is Too Sexy, Too Naked For One Newsstand

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If you’ve never come across a Hudson News bookstore, you’ve obviously never been in an airport or train station. But with 500 outposts nationwide, Hudson News quietly became one of the biggest retailers of Us Weeklys, USA Todays, shlocky romance paperbacks, and M&Ms to commuters. So when it makes even a semi-controversial decision, it doesn’t go unnoticed. Like the time it censored the January 2009 issue of GQ, which featured a naked (albeit with carefully placed hands) Jennifer Aniston, by treating it like any other adult rag: covering it up. And now that editor-in-chief Jim Nelson cooperated with Sacha Baron Cohen’s media onslaught for the current July issue featuring Bruno? The magazine’s bottom half is being covered by a black bar in Hudson News stores. Which is fitting, since the entire issue does read like a copy of Playgirl.

Oh, and speaking of covering things up, is a naked Asher Roth (he of the undergrad anthem “I Love College”) your idea of a smart marketing campaign?

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