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When I was a little kid in the '70s, I read a *lot* of the National Enquirer. A sweet old lady used to save her copies for me. She knew that I liked to read, and she figured that reading newspapers was educational. She was right! I could not get enough of that fine paper 1/
It published all the news that our local paper wdn't. Stories about psychics, aliens, and celebrity misdeeds. I couldn't believe that the paper we subscribed to wouldn't do a year-end roundup of predictions for the coming year by noted psychics. Sybil Leek is saying what's up! 2/
How come the president never talked about Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle? Wasn't that something we needed to know? The Enquirer did. Erich von Däniken got his due from the Enquirer; the snobby rest of the media ignored him. And Howard Hughes! Where would we have been 3/
without the Enq to keep us updated about his last days? Also, the Enquirer used more fun words than our normal paper did. "Hubby" and "tot," for example. Plus, who knew celebrities were such hot messes? Thank you, Enquirer! I thought that Lantana, Florida, must be one of 4/
the most interesting places in the world. And the Enquirer had great ads. My dad had to yell at me to make me stop annoying him to buy me some book that would teach me how to develop telekinetic powers. "It's all fake," he said. Big liar! I thought. 5/
He just didn't want me to develop telekinesis and other powers like my hero, Uri Geller, who was ALWAYS in the Enquirer. Normal boys admired sports heroes. I admired an Israeli tabloid spoon-bender. My poor dad. I don't think he ever knew that the retired public health 6/
nurse from his office, Miss Marian Delcourt, was my National Enquirer dealer. He thought she was just a dear old thing. In fact, she was subverting the dominant paradigm by poisoning the mind of an area youth! And then there was MAD magazine with all the Yiddish. I bring all 7/
this up because my 13 year old saw me watching Telly Savalas clips, and asked me how come she knows what "Who loves ya, baby?" means but has no idea who Telly Savalas is? I told her it's from reading all of my old '70s MAD magazines. It's so weird how my kids are 8/
surprisingly fluent in mid-70s pop culture, even though they were born in '99, '04, and '06, respectively. Why? The MADs I saved from my childhood. No Enquirers, though. The Enquirer got respectable, and quit writing about the Bermuda Triangle. We live in a vale of tears. /end
