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The Cynical Guy Reads The Tabloids

Has it come to this? A descent into the tabloids? Isn't it enough to be bombarded by the pink bubblegum of celebrity culture every time I log onto America Online? (Now that AOL and the publisher of People have tied the knot, colorful images of Jennifer Lopez and Nicole Kidman seem to follow me everywhere I click.) Isn't it more than enough to endure the continued existence of relentless celebrity suck-up vehicles like 'Entertainment Tonight,' which are essentially free career advertisements in the guise of TV programming? (Show me the equivalent of 'Entertainment Tonight' for columnists -- believe me, we need the publicity more than the overpampered Hollywoodies do!) 

Just as the ancient heroes Odysseus and Orpheus descended into Hades on righteous personal missions, your Cynical Guy felt compelled to explore the underworld of contemporary pop culture. So I descended: on a recent trip to the supermarket, I plucked both the Enquirer and the Globe from their perches near the cash register and carried them into the privacy of my living room for further scrutiny. You might be surprised at what I found.

I've long been fascinated by the power of the American tabloids. I still remember seeing the Enquirer, several decades ago, in its ancient incarnation as a crude sensationalist rag comparable to today's Weekly World News. To this day I can summon up exactly how I felt when a kid in my fifth-grade class flashed me the paper with the now-immortal headline, 'I Cut Out Her Heart and Stomped on It.' My gut response was a combination of 'Cool!' and 'Yuck!' I wondered that such creatures prowled the earth. And that's what sells tabloids. We want to see the underside of human existence, the side concealed from us in network TV programming and glossy magazines. We don't necessarily want to see people suffering. Well, yes we do, but mainly we want to know that even our celebrities have their frailties: they commit fashion gaffes, they squabble in public, they grow tubby around the waist, they get caught with their paramours, they go broke, they abuse substances and people, they fall on their faces, they eventually get old and sick and die -- just like us commoners.

From their little racks beside the cash registers, today's tabloids generate more heat than ever. With their teasing headlines and candid front-page paparazzi shots of celebrities in all their radiance and dishevelment, they hint at something dark and unstable beneath the surface glitz. This is what makes them so irresistible. Unlike People magazine or 'Entertainment Tonight,' which fawn unabashedly over their celebrated subjects and cast them in the role of democratic royalty, the supermarket tabloids strip away the regal facades to reveal a vast circus of human flesh and frailty. 

The tabloids generally don't go for the kill unless they pick up the sweet scent of blood. (They've been ruthless in hounding the parents of the late Jon-Benet Ramsey, for example, and they started baying at Robert Blake immediately after the suspicious execution-style murder of his troublesome wife.) In fact, I was surprised to see that the majority of stories in both the Enquirer and the Globe were essentially sympathetic close-up portraits of vulnerable stars who are struggling just like you and me. They grapple with diets and divorces, boozing and bulimia, affairs and arrests. We see the upside and the downside of being a celebrity, and in this way the tabloids provide an unretouched snapshot of life at the apex of popular culture.

Like Shiva, the Hindu god whose dual nature embraced both creation and destruction, the tabloids give exposure to rising stars and bear witness to their eventual ruin. You could argue that the tabloids CAUSE their eventual ruin, but I found their reporting to be fundamentally balanced and surprisingly trustworthy. It's the  diabolical headlines that dupe us with intimations of scandal far beyond what the actual story reveals. You can count on the headlines to scream about this or that celebrity's 'Nightmare Marriage'... 'Secret Anguish'... 'Secret Family Tragedies'... 'Secret Plastic Surgery'... 'Bitter Feud'... 'Cancer Scare'...'Murder Secret'... 'Divorce Showdown'... 'Sex Shocker'... 'Dirty Secrets'... 'Secret Love Life'... 'Secret Police Files' ('Secret' seems to be the operative word, if you haven't noticed)... 'Fight for Life'... and, eventually, 'Sad Last Days.' No matter that the 'Secret Anguish' turns out to be a case of psoriasis or that the 'Cancer Scare' involved having a benign mole removed from the left shoulder. The headlines tell us that our celebrities pay for their fame with untold miseries. The actual stories simply confirm that their lives aren't quite as charmed as we might have suspected. 

This knowledge reassures us that all is right with the world. Even though the subjects of the tabloid stories earn more in a month than most of us do in forty years, we're convinced that maybe our celebrities are just like us, only richer and prettier and more famous, with bigger homes, better-looking mates, live-in chefs and devoted agents. Other than that, they're just folks. We warm up to them, go see their films, buy their ghostwritten memoirs and contribute to their $15 million haciendas in the Hollywood Hills. And we never tire of watching them suffer in the tabloids.

The Cynical Pick of the Week
The Ford Motor Company has spent untold millions replacing all the defective Firestone tires on their vehicles. Now it's reported that the new tires have even worse safety records than the old ones. The only viable solution: bring back Henry Ford! His luckless company should try to clone the old man from one of his authentic hair samples floating around on eBay.

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," currently lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online. 

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