The video: On Wednesday, the New York Post blindly applied its trademark saucy headline treatment to the recent stock market turmoil. The nonsensical result — "Crazy stox like a hooker's drawers…UP, DOWN, UP" — quickly drew a chorus of media ridicule led by Stephen Colbert  . (Watch the video below.) "This is analysis that everyone can understand," Colbert joked on his Comedy Central show , before pointing out that a hooker's clients generally prefer her panties to be down and testing out the Post's strange analogy on other big news stories, including the London riots ("London like a hooker's genitals... BURNING").

The reaction: In such confusing economic times, says Laura Prudom at Aol, it's a good thing respectable newspapers like the New York Post go to such great lengths to explain the situation to "us simpler folks who can't follow all the jargon and numbers." It's also a good thing we have Colbert to embarrass journalists for such ridiculous stunts. Agreed, says Sarah Seltzer at AlterNet. "Absurd cultural moments call for absurd responses," and who's better at that than Colbert? His joke about London burning, says John Del Signore at Gothamist, "is pretty hard to top." Judge for yourself: