Tabloid Trash

The tabloids create their own stories about people's lives that don't exist.

Elizabeth Olsen

I’ve never understood the fascination with tabloids and tabloid journalism (an oxymoron in term if I ever heard one). Why people crave lies and innuendo designed to shock (and hurt) is beyond me. Yet, the public has an insatiable appetite for this garbage which in turn fuels these tabloids and gossip shows. If everyone would stop buying them, they’d fade away; but that’s clearly not going to happen anytime soon.

My mother, an intelligent octogenarian with all her marbles, frequently tells me tabloid stories that she’s read or heard. As much as I try to explain that this is all crap, she is not to be deterred. I refuse to let her near the tabloids in the supermarket but she is drawn to the headlines like a moth to a flame. The only saving grace is that she’s too cheap to buy them, so her exposure is limited.

Here are just a few randomly selected headlines from The Globe and the National Enquirer. How can anyone take this garbage seriously?

The Globe: Queen dying! Camilla’s evil plot to seize the throne.

National Enquirer: Kim Kardashian lost 75 pounds in three weeks post-pregnancy.

The Globe: Michelle breaks down over Obama gay scandal!

National Enquirer: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s secret divorce papers.

The Globe: Kate crowned queen.

National Enquirer: Nixon killed JFK and stole his brain!

National Enquirer: Oprah: Only 3 years to live!

People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.

Jerry Seinfeld

Yesterday I was shocked (and very little shocks me). My niece and her boyfriend are visiting from Calgary and we were all at my mother’s place. My mother mentioned some piece of tabloid garbage and my niece knew all about it. Apparently my beautiful, intelligent niece reads the tabloids when she’s on cardio equipment in the gym. I don’t expect anyone to read War and Peace on the treadmill, but tabloids?????? Members of my own family are supporting an industry that should have been shut down years ago. Unfortunately, it appears that I am in the minority. Call me an intellectual snob if you like (my mother does), but there is no way in hell I’m ever going to read that crap.

Supermarket tabloids and celebrity gossip shows are not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a fundamental part of a much larger movement that involved apathy, greed and hierarchy.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Make someone smile today.

Geri