This time the big news wasn’t in the supermarket tabs but about them, with Keith J. Kelly’s reporting that The National Enquirer is jettisoning Editor-in-Chief Tony Frost — and pulling out of Florida and heading to the Big Apple. Just what’s going on at the scandal sheets?
Enquiring minds want to know more than why the Frost-led paper mismanaged so badly the February front-page story that falsely claimed the beloved late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman had a gay lover. The tab continues to churn out variations of its steamy exclusive from earlier this year that the Obamas are allegedly headed for divorce. This issue, it plasters Caroline Kennedy on the cover, suggesting she and the president are having an affair. The real news (hook, line and sinker) is that Japanese parliament dude Kazuyuki Hamada wrote a blog item repeating the Enquirer’s initial claims that Obama has been using the Secret Service to cover up affairs. Now Michelle Obama is reportedly blaming Japanese ambassador Kennedy for not standing up for her. In other words, The Enquirer is looking for any excuse to recycle its own news. Still, the supermarket rag is more exciting than its peers, including a solid OJ Simpson piece and fun star pics.
The problem with The Globe is not whether the stories are believable. It’s why anyone should care. We certainly don’t give a hootenanny over Burt Reynolds’ housing woes, Willie Nelson’s fifth black belt, or … Jerry Lewis?!? Wait, he’s still alive? Perhaps the audience for octogenarian celebrity gossip is a hidden cash cow. If so, then by all means The Globe should continue to regale us with news on Casey Kasem’s 82nd birthday party.
Like The Globe, The Examiner highlights way too many stories that no one below the age of 80 will care about, including two pages of pictures on the largest model train railway. Wha? Or the story of how a dog saved owner Lesley Hailwood from choking on a piece of chocolate. (Sad, but true.) Yet The Examiner also shows signs of life with fun pics of ageless celebs, and a colorful piece on the marital woes of Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. We can’t get over the outrageous crime stories, like the sicko DuPont heir who’s getting away with molesting his children because the judge feared he would “not fare well” in prison. And despite our ranting against too many stories about old people, we love the one about the Kansas woman who is refusing to sell her $850 shack to developers for $600,000. “Where would I go,” the spry 91-year-old widow said.
We’re not sure if it’s the glossy magazine paper, but former supermarket tabloid Star magazine looks good these days. Its cover story focuses on Ben Affleck’s marital woes with Jennifer Garner, who is sick of his compulsive gambling. The mag also picked up the exclusive story by The Post’s Claire Atkinson that newslady Katie Couric is eyeing a temporary return to the troubled “Today” show on NBC. While NBC and Matt Lauer are thrilled with the possibility she will return, Savannah Guthrie is worried, the mag says. Sorry, Star, but we can’t shed tears over the insecurities of TV personalities or we’d be crying all the time.
We don’t often notice the staff of the New Yorker taking a keen interest in the plight of inner-city schools. And, lo and behold, the excellent rundown of the mess in Newark is written by a former Washington Post reporter, not a staff writer. Inside we learn that while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shelled out $100 million to help Mayor Cory Booker and Gov. Chris Christie with an ambitious overhaul, $20 million has gone to high-dollar consulting firms. The project was announced on Oprah in September 2010, surprising a city that hadn’t gotten any advance notice of the deal. More than three years later, many Newark residents, some of whom call Booker “Mayor Hollywood,” are still annoyed that the reforms are something that’s being done to them, rather than with them. Speaking of post-traumatic stress disorder, there’s also a good article on researchers who are exploring ways to “take the pain out of painful memories” by altering neural pathways without the use of drugs or electric shocks.
Time asserts on its cover that Vladimir Putin wants not to be Russia’s president or premier, but rather its czar. There’s not a lot to support this in the story inside — to us, he still looks like an aggrieved apparatchik of the KGB. Still, that can pack quite a punch as we’ve seen lately, and the article outlines a worrisome outlook for Russia and its neighbors. The Ukraine “will likely serve as a kind of buffer state between Russia and the West — and a lingering flashpoint for months, if not years to come.” Let’s hope the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which are part of NATO, don’t become another “red line” for Putin to cross. On the next page, we have Jon Meacham defending President Obama for his weak response to the crisis, arguing that “he’s doing what most presidents do.” If that’s the best we can say about Obama’s foreign policy, we’d guess the history books will group him in with the likes of Jimmy Carter rather than FDR or Ronald Reagan.