Tabloid to mainstream in one easy sleaze...Part Two.

With the injured sniffiness of a knocked-up Victorian parlormaid, The Huffington Post features David Perel, Editor in Chief at The National Enquirer today. Not content that his bought-and-paid-for story was, yes, true, David Perel makes a semi-argument for his rag's respectability, while utterly missing the point. He also unearths some of the insults levied at The National Enquirer by the mainstream media, apparently most hurt by Canada's Globe and Mail, which pronounced The Enquirer, "icky", and offers a little insight into The Enquirer's fondness for atavistic terms like "love child".

Actually, it's terms like "love child" that make The Enquirer icky, as well as its pursuit of icky stories like the amount of blubber Kirsty Ally is currently hoisting or Hillary Duff's pocky butt. And The Enquirer isn't alone here, in the pantheon of tabloid sludge. The UK's Sun and Daily Mail are both equals in exposing the bastards of the rich and famous. Reading any of these doubtful journals, a reader is hard-pressed to find a newsy world beyond people who microwave their pets, drunken celebrities and their lack of underwear, and unions between unsuitable species ("Elderly Woman Marries Dog").

But it's not the who-the-hell-cares aspect of the tabs that's objectionable, it's their prissy disapproving point of view. Since Amy Winehouse and her remorseless drug use currently makes these people a good steady living, I would think the tabloids would praise her coke smoking/snorting/shooting to the skies: "Amy Hoovers Eight-Ball In Front of The Queen! Whatta Gal!" Instead, as the paps snap Amy slumped among her garbage cans, the tabs are careful to include quotes from her faux-concerned friends, We're all terrified she'll be dead in six months. Right.

But Perel seems to feel that the bright line between journalism or not, has to do with whether a story is "true", rather than whether it should be told at all. Triumphantly, he notes that when the story of a Bigfoot corpse surfaced, it was the MSM that published pix of an obvious gorilla suit in a freezer-chest, not The Enquirer. But this just seems to be an argument along the order of who's-stupid-now? rather than having much to do with newspaper standards.

Personally, I am a omnivorous reader of crap and non-crap alike. In the crap sweepstakes, I always favored The Weekly World News, with its patently false images of Hillary and her lusty affairs with aliens, its eye-catching headlines ("Famous Psychic's Head Explodes!"), and its on-going discoveries of Bat Boy, the child raised by bats who, wuddya know, looked just like a bat! As someone deeply appreciative of traditional forms, I enjoyed the way The Weekly World News tirelessly recycled the same headlines year after year. There were the moody adventures of Bat Boy, reportage of unlikely animal activities, the influence of space aliens in the White House, heads exploding, the end of the world linked to the pope or Brittney Spears etc. To my potent joy, I've discovered that The Weekly World News now has a website, www.weeklyworldnews.com, and advertises itself as "The World's Only Reliable News", which is sort of like a grifter murmuring, Trust me just before he vacuums your wallet clean.

A dear friend took me to lunch today. During the pad thai, our talk turned to the subject of unsavory information. And since she's around my age, we reminisced about the dear dead days when news did not include either crazy shit or grubby shit. "Prurient interest," my friend said, dreamily, forking a noodle. "I remember that my parents talked about things that just appealed to our prurient interests."

Like most structures, organic and non-organic alike, humans contain little cess pools and garbage-pails within themselves. But after the age of four or so, most of us have lost our fascination with these parts. But some of us never do.

A shame, really, since the world is so much bigger than its toilets.

Normally I would end with that last sentence, since I'm such a fan of the snappy closing remark. But I'd like to add that my weblog list now includes athensboy.wordpress.com, which is my husband's new blog. He specializes in discovering the surprising, the startling, and the strangely humorous. In all our years together, which are many, he has never failed to crack me up at least once a day. I urge you to check him out and add an unexpected joy to your hours.