You’re a tabloid reporter and you’re used to fabricating many of the “facts” and “quotes” in your stories, but there are some days when you can’t even be bothered to do that with any conviction, days when your fevered imagination doesn’t have the energy to get out of bed.
So you get what we see in this week’s tabloids.
George & Amal Clooney are "Dating Other People!” reports the ’National Enquirer,’ in an “Exclusive" inspired by the Clooneys announcing a charity fundraiser offering the winner a private dinner with the celebrity couple at their home in Italy.
The ‘Enquirer’ amazingly interprets the Clooneys' altruism as “an excuse to ignore their wedding vows,” suggesting that the couple are wife-swapping swingers for charity, and that George has “opened the door to other men to enjoy the company of his leggy 41-year-old wife!” Expect the Clooneys to fire off an uncharitable lawsuit any minute now.
The ‘Globe’ cover’s obligatory story about the British Royals boasts: “Explosive Police Dossier Found! Charles’ Motive For Murdering Diana!” Prince Charles allegedly had Diana killed because she was scheming to have him bypassed by the Queen so that the crown would go to son William after QE!!’s death. Which makes no sense: As we’ve noted before, The Act of Settlement of 1701 demands that the monarch’s male heir succeed to the throne no matter what anyone wants. Moreover, Diana was divorced from Charles and anathema to the Palace at the time of her demise, so there’s no way the Queen would have done Diana’s bidding. Read the rest
The recent redefinition of the kilogram based on quantum physics and Planck’s constant has had major ramifications in this week’s tabloids, where such weighty issues as celebrity body fat and how many Angelina Jolies it takes to make up one Brad Pitt are the subject of intense scientific debate.
But even the measurement of mass using universal verities about light and energy doesn’t come close to the level of accuracy achieved by the former Guess-Your-Weight fairground carnies who can pin-point a celebrity’s weight sight unseen with zero margin of error.
This week the tabloids bring us the formula (A - 17) x 2 = B - 20, where “A” is Angelina Jolie three months ago, 17 are the pounds she’s reportedly lost in the past few weeks, “B” is Brad Pitt in 2018, and 20 are the pounds he’s lost lately.
Jolie, who earlier this year was reportedly a slender 97 pounds, has dropped to 80 pounds according to the mathematical geniuses at the ’National Enquirer,’ who claim that her six “scared kids” are “begging her to eat.”
In the other half of the equation, the ‘Globe’ reports that “Bony Brad is Wasting Away!” Jolie’s ex may be suffering “manorexia.” says the rag, using the scientific term for an eating disorder rarely found outside of academic medical journals. If a page falls out of an atlas has it undergone a mapendectomy? Just asking. Pitt has reportedly dropped 20 pounds, so that he is now a mere 160 pounds.
All of which answers the question which has perplexed mathematicians almost as long as Fermat’s Last Theorem: how many Angelina Jolies does it take to make one Brad Pitt? Read the rest
When Carlos Castaneda spoke of “a separate reality,” he could easily have been thinking of this week’s through-the-looking-glass tabloids.
How else to explain the ‘Globe’ cover story: “Malia Obama Caught Up in Harvard Bribe Scandal!” No, she isn’t. Malia allegedly took tennis lessons from the Harvard tennis coach accused of accepting bribes for recruiting non-athletes to the university. But Malia didn’t win a tennis scholarship to Harvard, or any athletic scholarship, so there’s no scandal, just unjustified innuendo.
The ‘National Enquirer’ is no better with its cover story about a coup within the British Royal Family, proclaiming: “William Seizes Throne From Charles! Declares Own Father Unfit to Rule.”
Three minor details: Charles doesn’t have the throne to begin with; The monarch doesn’t “rule” Britain any longer; and the Queen is doubtless aware of the Act of Settlement of 1701 governing the royal succession, which will make Charles the King on her demise whether she or Prince William like it or not. Even if Charles wanted to abdicate on succeeding to the crown it would require an Act of Parliament to make it legal.
The ‘Globe’ sticks it to the Royals with its story: “Mean Meghan to Kate: Keep Your Baby Advice!” Duchess Meghan allegedly exploded angrily when Kate phoned to offer parenting advice. Because the ‘Globe’ monitors all private Royal phone calls, so this must be true. “Man-Eater Angie Strikes Again!” reports the ‘Globe’ about Angelina Jolie, referring to her sexual appetites rather than any possible cannibalism. Jolie is set to “gobble up her hunky new co-star Nicholas Hoult,” claims the rag, though it’s hard to tell if that is an oral sex reference or if she just want to jump his bones - or maybe she has turned cannibal? Read the rest
Let’s give praise where it’s due: the ‘Globe’ has one of the great Royal exclusives of all time with its cover story about Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s newborn son Archie: “Harry’s NOT The Daddy! Baby’s DNA Test Triggers Palace Crisis.”
But just hold on a second - the two-page story inside reveals “. . . new findings show he IS the infant’s biological father.”
Seriously? Was that ever in question?
This “special report,” dubiously emanating from the tabloid’s purported team of spies within Harry and Meghan's Frogmore Cottage home on the grounds of Windsor Castle claims that initial DNA tests on Meghan’s amniotic fluid found that Harry could not be the father - but further tests confirmed that he was indeed Archie’s dad.
I can understand precautionary medical tests and genetic screening being run before a child’s birth, but a DNA paternity test?
Even in the improbable event that the story of a mistaken test diagnosis was true, surely the headline should be: “Harry IS The Daddy!” But evidently that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “Harry’s NOT The Daddy!”
At least the ‘Globe’ is fictionalizing supposedly recent events with this story, whereas its other big stories this week are all rehashed ancient news.
“Gay Elton Jilted Me Days Before Our Wedding!” claims Elton John’s former fiancé, revealing her “heartbreak” . . . 49 years ago. Just to prove it’s an antique story, the Rocket Man’s old flame Linda Hannon is pictured in the ‘Globe’ holding a copy of Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper dated February 19, 1984, bearing the headline: “Elton Jilted Me.” Worse yet, the Sunday Mirror evidently had a line from Hannon that is better than anything she tells the’Globe’: "He was a lousy lover.” Or maybe he just wasn’t that into her? Read the rest
With the news that scandal-plagued American Media Inc. plans to sell its tabloid empire including the ‘National Enquirer’ and ‘Globe,’ the rags’ hacks seem to have given up all pretense of trying to inject reality into their fact-challenged offerings this week. The ‘Enquirer’ pulls out all the stops in trying to scare off a prospective purchaser, with a clutch of dubious stories.
“Aretha Franklin Was Murdered!” screams its cover story. No, she wasn’t. “Queen of Soul EXHUMED after nine months” the cover proclaims. No, she wasn’t. Franklin is still interred, and no coroner or law enforcement agency has made moves to dig her up, “Millions missing!” No - Franklin made a police report last year that $200,000 had been purloined from her bank account, but her death ended the police investigation. And $200,000 isn’t exactly “millions."
“Kinkster Kevin [Spacey] Caught Up in Murder Scandal!” No, he isn’t. Linda Culkin, one of the first to accuse Spacey of molesting young boys, was struck and killed by a car while walking near her Boston-area home. “Investigators have launched a murder probe,” says the ‘Enquirer.' No, they haven’t - the driver remained at the scene and no charges were filed. Culkin was crossing a road against traffic that had a green light. There is no “murder scandal,” and Spacey is not "caught up” in it. The rag also fails to mention that Culkin was obsessed by Spacey, and was jailed in 2013 for making bomb and anthrax threats against the actor.
George Clooney has saved his marriage “from the brink” of divorce with a second honeymoon. Read the rest
Odd how the British tabloids are constantly saying that Meghan Markle is ruining the royal family, by doing awful inappropriate things such as closing her own car door, yet are so very quiet concerning Prince William's supposed affair with his wife's bestie.
We’ll quickly introduce the Marchioness of Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley).
She is the woman at the center of a very royal scandal that has it all: a future monarch with a wandering eye; an elite social circle in the idyllic English countryside; and a strange silence from the British tabloids, who usually leap on every royal misstep (as evidenced by their cruel treatment of Duchess Meghan every other day for the last year.)
Her name is Rose Hanbury, a former model married to the Marquess of Cholmondeley, who is 23 years older than her. Rose already has her own well-established royal connections: her grandmother was bridesmaid at Queen Elizabeth II‘s wedding in 1947.
British press: When you’re a royal and we pay your taxes, all parts of your life are up for grabs. How dare Harry and Meagan not share details about the birth of their child?!!
Also British press: Prince William’s alleged infidelity w/ Kate’s best friend is a private matter. pic.twitter.com/OL3Nhpw5FE
— April (@ReignOfApril) April 25, 2019
Props must go to The Sun for hinting at it; but it's American media that make the hay today.
Read the restThat barely-hairline-having cretin Prince William was really out here smashing some other commoner’s crumpets & biscuits to smithereens while keeping Madam Kate perpetually pregnant with some colonizer infant that will likely inherit his unreliable hairline & I HAVE TO GUFFAW.
Fake news isn’t necessarily fact-free. Context is everything, and it’s the lack of it that can turn facts into fake news, as this week’s tabloids demonstrate.
“Royals New Nazi Shame!” screams the ‘Globe’ cover, showing a blurry black-and-white photo of a seven-year-old future Queen Elizabeth II giving a Nazi salute.
Let’s ignore for one moment the fact that this is not new, but lifted from a Royal home movie filmed in 1933 or 1934, and first made public three years ago.
The Nazi salute today is redolent of the atrocities inflicted under its shadow over the following decade, but at the time this was filmed the gesture was a curious novelty that would have seen on newsreels, and a child mimicking it in the early ’Thirties could not possibly know what it would later come to symbolize.
Britain’s Royal Family certainly had some Nazi apologists, and even early sympathizers in their ranks, but the Queen was never one of them, and framing a seven-year-old’s gesture as fascism is turning facts into fake news.
“Cops Find JonBenet’s Killer!” proclaims the ‘National Enquirer’ cover, returning to its favorite murdered child beauty pageant queen. “Case Closed.”
There is a minuscule factual nugget at the center of this air-filled soufflé: police apparently spent two hours interviewing a blogger who reported on JonBenet Ramsey’s neighbor, Glenn Meyer, allegedly keeping a shrine to the slain child.
Yet the blogger had only been posting allegations made elsewhere originally . . . in the ‘Enquirer’ in February.
Meyer’s widow, Charlotte Hey, aged 86, claims that she asked her husband if he had murdered JonBenet. Read the rest
Supermarket tabloids have given us aliens in the White House, Bat Boy, Elvis lives, and the first photos of heaven, but I never thought I’d read this stunning sentence . . .
“In May, a new ferry service began moving up to 200 passengers and 1,000 tons of cargo every month between North Korea and the Russian port of Vladivostok.”
What the hell is happening at the ‘National Enquirer?’ They’ve gone so deep into Donald Trump’s corner that its readers who crave titilating details of celebrity scandal are being fed a weekly diet of Trumped-up propaganda, which this week brings us a cover story and three pages on “Trump’s secret plan to defeat North Korea’s Doomsday machine.”
America is evidently under siege by North Korea’s escalating nuclear weapons program, and “Donald
Trump has taken bold and extraordinary steps to ensure America survives the siege and emerges with total victory!”
That sounds like something that Kim Jong-un’s propaganda machine might churn out, but it’s here in the ‘Enquirer,’ which laboriously details tanker movements between North Korea and Russia, reporting: “It could be oil - or something much more sinister.” Maybe they’re shipping old copies of the ‘Enquirer’ to North Korea - what could be more sinister that that?
At least it’s not all geopolitics in this week’s tabloids.
Kim Kardashian has been allegedly “caught on drug video” claims the ‘Enquirer,’ though since it was filmed in 2003, that’s neither new or shocking. Dubious reporting abounds in the ‘Enquirer,’ which claims that Natalie Wood “was raped before her death!” The mag explains that a rape kit may have been used during the actress’s autopsy, but no results were ever released. Read the rest
