July 5, 2012 • 49 mins
Having started as an egalitarian answer to 19th-century newspapers, tabloids came to peddle shock and sleaze. They've cleaned up a bit, but they remain the world's guilty pleasure. Learn more about the fascinating history of tabloids with Chuck and Josh.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to you Stuff you Should
Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck
Bryant uh, and this is Stuff you should Know. It's podcast.
(00:23):
It's audio only, um, but coming soon it will also
include smells. Oh yeah, smell a vision, not vision, smellow
found smell it. We'll just call it smellow rama. I
mean grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm
grumpy Jerry. Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at
(00:45):
each other when I came in here. No, Jerry was
mad at me for being mad at her, which doesn't count.
It's just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm
not grumpy. It's just head legitimate grumpy, right stripe. Everyone's scrapy,
so Chuck. Yes, I want to tell you about a
great American hero, William Katka Uh. Many years ago, in
(01:11):
the wilds of I wish I could remember where he
was found Mississippi, a little guy known as bat Boy
was captured. He was caught on a rooftop during a
flood in Mississippi, and the authorities seized him and UM
took him into their care. He became a ward of
(01:32):
the state. That makes sense because bat boys are known
to go to higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he
did true to form uh so uh bat Boy at
first he didn't like this captivity, UM, but eventually he
kind of became something of a patriot by um volunteering
(01:52):
to go search for Osama bin Laden and his Al
Qaeda operatives UM in the caves of Afghanistan. The reason
bat Boy was so good at it because he was
raising caves half bat half boy name Um. He wasn't
able to find Ben Lawden, but he still returned to
(02:12):
the U S a hero after a long long flight
because he just flew himself. Of course, and we know
of bat boys exploits thanks to a little newspaper known
as The Weekly World News. Have you heard of this?
Two things? I used to subscribe to The Weekly World Yeah,
(02:32):
for like a year in high school, me and my
buddy rad did because it was fun Radcliffe Radford, And
two I didn't realize that bat boy they continued his exploits.
I think bat Boys sold a lot of papers for
the Well, I knew he did, but I didn't know.
I didn't know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm
glad to know that he was fighting the terrorists. He
(02:54):
he did, he tried to. I don't know if he
was successful. At least he went equipped more than with
just a sword. Um. But yeah, so bat Boy was
a prominent character, I guess. And the Weekly World News,
which which also bills itself as the world's only reliable newspapers. Yeah,
that that little tagline or whatever. Yeah, it's not around
(03:18):
anymore in print. Yeah, I think I remember shutting down
and being sort of sad. Is online, I guess. Yeah,
in two thousand and eight it moved to and moved online.
So really every aspect of that story from this outrageous
um claim that bat Boy was captured and sent to
Afghanistan to UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's
(03:41):
most reliable, the world's only reliable newspaper, to it's shutting
down and going online because of massive profit losses after
being purchased by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The
Weekly World News is a perfect analogy for the course
of tabloids of the last like twenty as a whole. Yeah,
(04:02):
and we're gonna dig into that. Um I think it's funny.
I never because I didn't know the little tagline, but
I guess they figured if we're just going to be
making up stories, because the Weekly World News, for those
of you who haven't read it, isn't just a tabloid.
I mean it's like it's it's fan fiction. I mean,
it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend. But that's why it's
(04:23):
funny that they said that the only reliable thing. They said, Wow,
we might as well just say that in the thing,
get it? Yes, And one of their apparently one of
their editors, is quoted as saying, I could only find
one source for this quote, so I don't know how
true it is. It could be made up, which would
be kind of like this apropos meta parody of the
whole thing, But um he said, if our if our
(04:45):
readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Really, so they
were well aware. That's great and it isn't an extreme example,
but there are there are some aspects of the Weekly
World News that do fit the bill of that of
a standard table. So I mean, let's talk about it.
What what is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start
at the beginning or should we just talk about it
(05:06):
a little bit then do the history? Do you want
to do the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the
history first, because positive that we don't practice. So I
did see, Um, there was one slight error. This is
an ed Grabanowski article, which are always great. But did
you see this other etymology for the word tabloid with
the pill company UM in the late eighteen hundreds, apparently
(05:28):
um Burrows, Welcome and Company was a pharmaceutical company in England.
They produced at the time, like medicines, were all like
BC powder good, he's powder, They're all powdered. And he
I think was the first one to make into a
pill by compressing the powder and he called it a tabloid. Yeah,
(05:49):
it probably was. And um that that word became to
mean anything figuratively, that was a small dose of anything.
So the word tabloid, it actually became came before I
believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, Uh, the
physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like the
(06:10):
origin of life on Earth comes from another planet. But really,
where did the origin of life begin? Right, it doesn't
answer the question. It's the same thing, like, okay, so
maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then it
was associated with newspapers. The tabloid paper ums printed on
a smaller, more compact version of the normal newspaper newsprint
(06:36):
called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid is a smaller,
more compact version. The broadsheet is longer and wider UM
and then the tabloid were usually printed on the smaller paper,
hence the word yeah. So at first it was a pill,
then it became the size of the paper, and then
later on it just became um the style of the
(06:59):
paper and size, but really the style. But tabloids, as
were explaining them, are basically like um. They are also
commonly referred to as rags, as um gutter public Yeah,
they're gossip sheets, whatever it's it's basically it's a it's
a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded newspaper and um tabloids. One
(07:25):
of the ways that they exist and always have existed
is in comparison to quote legitimate newspapers. So like originally
newspapers that say, like the beginning the early nineteenth century.
They were extremely stuffy. They were extremely expensive. They were
like six cents per which was like half a day's
(07:45):
pay for the average labor. Really dry. Man. If you
ever read these old New York Times articles, there's like
they just really just you know, they lay out the
facts and then say the end, exactly like the AP
used to do. Until a few years ago. The AP
always did that who, what, when, how, where and why
(08:06):
the old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a
quote in there and that was it. Um. And so
out of this, I guess kind of boredom and a
need for the working class to be able to, you know,
get their news too, because I couldn't afford it, came
the predecessors of tabloids, called the penny Press. So they
were cheaper, and they also did something different. They took
(08:31):
stories from just these boring facts political stories, business stories,
that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories.
And they changed the style of writing. Sentences were shorter,
paragraphs were shorter, way more emotion It was it was
designed for that, like listen to the triumph of this
family over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what
(08:54):
we see now in mainstream newspapers exactly. Yes, a lot,
a lot of our stream um media owes quite a
bit to the evolution of tabloids, and there's actually a
point where it kind of spread. Finally it made a jump.
But you can see throughout the history of tabloids and
newspapers this interplay where tabloid's almost kind of break ground. Yeah,
(09:15):
take a bunch of heat and flak for it, and
then newspapers like latch onto what they're doing. After after
it becomes co opted in normal behind the guys of
you know, we're the upstanding publication. Disgusting, right, I'm disgusted
by it, all um. Yellow journalism came about in the
era of William Randolph Hurst with his New York Journal
(09:38):
later called The New York Journal American, and he was
the first person in the United States, at least, because
I think in England it even started out before us,
but not mistaken. In England, I think they were kind
of like the birth of some of the more tabloid
style writing. But in America William randolf Hurst did with
(09:58):
all of a sudden he are to doing some celebrity
stuff and some murderer and little sensational gore here and there,
and he found that it sold really well up until
the Depression, when nothing's old really well. Um pick up
after the Depression when a very monumental figure in tabloid
history named Janetta Jenettos Pope or Gene Pope Jane Pope
(10:23):
j Jr. Um He bought a hearst paper called the
New York and Choir for Grand, changed it to tabloid size,
started uh printing you know, you know, stuff that he
figured people like to stare at a car crash. So
he was actually inspired literally by seeing people like jockeying
(10:45):
to see the blood and the gore in a car
crash and thought, Wow, people really are disgusting and crazy,
so I'm going to give them what they want. And
he did remember the crime scene photography episode we talked
about Uigi um he he and he sold a lot
of stuff to Geene Pope. Um he printed a lot
of his like gory crimes photos. What's his name, Lewis
(11:08):
fellig I think, but he went by W E G
E EG interesting So I said it again, Um yeah,
I was cueing like the Executive Orders episode, how many
times like I'll bunch, do you know why because it
was super interesting. Um. So he starts selling a lot
of papers based on this new style. And then a
(11:31):
guy named Rupert Murdoch who you may have heard of,
who saw or proved that you could actually have pretty
wide circulation um, and began selling News of the World
in England millions of copies sex scandals. And then the
Pope said, you know what, if he can sell millions
and millions of copies, so can I let me change
(11:51):
the name of the National Enquirer. Boom right, the National
Enquirer was born, but um, the Inquirer is we know
it's ill wasn't born yet. It was the thing they
were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and lesbianism and
like horrible acts of violence posthumous violence. There is this
(12:13):
one headline, um about a team ripping the head off
of a corpse to get at its gold teeth, and
always with the gory crime scene photos like the pulp
comics were doing too. Yeah, very much. It was just
very tawdry. It's um, I mean, if the stuff and
the Inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was just like
it's not fathomed. But the reason it's not is again
(12:36):
because of Gene Pope, so he had a lot of competition.
And not just he, but the whole industry was facing
a big problem in that news stands were starting to dry.
So Jeane Pope came up with an idea. He's like supermarkets.
Everybody goes to supermarkets. I need to get in there.
And now I stand in the line at the checkout stand. Right.
But he knew like there was no way that any
(12:58):
any respectable supermarket it was gonna sell his tabloid, his rag.
So he cleaned the thing up, right. He um added
way more. He took a queue from Rupert Rupert Murdoch
and his News of the World, and um added way
more celebrity stuff, sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like you know,
(13:18):
um this stuff he was talking about before it that
was just really it was more like a like a
the Senator got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And
there's this guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the
for Vanity Fair, and he wrote this article called us Confidential.
It was in the June two thousand two issue of
(13:40):
Vanity Fair. It was about this and about that transition
going from you know, the crime scene photography to um
astrology overnight so he could get into supermarkets. Uh, he said. Um.
The Inquirer's staff was aghast. It was like asking an
experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So
(14:00):
that's pretty much how the Inquirer's staff took We got
to clean up our acts and start writing about astrology
and celebrity sex scandals. And it wasn't even cleaning them
attacked that much. Just not like you said, we're going
to become the you know, New York Times. But that's
why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand in
line at a supermarket checkout line, it's because in the
nineteen sixties, Jeane Pope was like, we got to get
(14:22):
in the supermarkets. I think people either read these or
they don't. Like I don't think anyone dabbles in tabloids,
you know what I'm saying. It's kind of like soap operas,
Like no one just says, like, let me watch a
little bit of Days of Our Lives, Like you're either
hooked on this stuff or not. I agree with that,
but I think a lot of people are guilty of
picking up the tabloid and thumbing through it and then
(14:43):
not buying it in the supermarket checkout line. Well, now
you know what they do now, and of course we're
gonna get to this, might as well bring it up.
They look at People Magazine and US Weekly because they
have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote
unquote respectable thing to pick up and read, even though,
come on, do you ever read a People magazine? I have,
(15:05):
it's sort of tabloid at times, it is, and um
actually you can thank the Star for that. Um. Star
used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid. Yeah, and it
went over to the glossy format at some point. I
think that maybe the late nineties, and um it, it
married those two things, glossy people magazine format with tabloid
(15:29):
and it was enough of his success that people was like, well,
we've already got the glossy magazine part, let's just start
doing the tabloid thing. Yeah. I mean, well, people have
I mean, legitimate articles still, but and they're not like
making stuff up, but they've definitely gone way into the
you know, look at the cellulite on the beach in
Malibu and look at this person and look at that person,
(15:50):
and who wore it better? Plastics? Yeah, exactly, stuff like that,
who wore it better? I know somebody who's been reading people. Yeah,
when you have the two ladies with the same dress
me and especially when it's like two to eighteen, now,
I know, especially when it's like you know, it's just
means sometimes I'm gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll
(16:12):
be like, a who aren't better Kevin Smith or podcaster
Chuck Bryant. People go, I guess Kevin Smith because I've
never heard of this other guy. It's the same. It's
the same dude anyway. Alright, So um, that's pretty much
the quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States,
at least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're
lousy with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading
(16:34):
edge of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let
get to that, all right. So before we go onto
tabloid stories and how they get these stories, we should
point out that in the National Choir, the Star of
the Globe, the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're
all purchased by American Media, Inc. Like all all of
(16:56):
those just snap them all up basically just about on
the show, now, every big tabloid in the United States
was purchased by this one company, and um, yeah, I
think that's never a good thing. Or maybe that's just
me being it, you know. Well that's the funny thing.
Like the title of this sidebars, they control everything you
read unless you don't read any of those things. So, um,
(17:18):
the the am I. Actually they're the reason the Weekly
World News shut down. Um, they were like, okay, these
things losing money. Am I posted a hundred and sixty
million dollar loss in two thousand and six and was
facing like a billion dollars in debt. Yeah, bad boy
boys of the Internet. Yeah that makes sense. That's where
bad boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this. What
(17:41):
what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean,
it's tabloids like pornography, you know when you see it,
all right, it's tough to define. That's not um entirely
the case. There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among
tabloids that make a tabloid a tabloid, I agreed, So
what are they? Well Ed points out here something really important.
(18:02):
The key to a tabloid story is not that it
be true, just that someone has said that it's true, right,
and they latch onto that person. And as long as
they say, you know, attribute these quotes to this person,
then they can't be held accountable. And that person is
frequently cited as an expert and a close friend. Sure,
(18:25):
I mean, if somebody it's all the way you present
the story. If the if you're saying, if your whole
story is all about how this person said something, it's
not really about the story. The story is still there,
but you're focusing on this person. It's like the the
rule of the of the tabloid industry. It's kind of
a trick though, because very much you're tricking people into
(18:45):
thinking you're reading about a story about Brandjelina. In fact,
you're reading a story about a former made that worked
for branch Elina and what they think is true, right,
or some crazy person who has nothing to do with
Brandngelina who like just um, maybe saw one of them
(19:06):
in a coffee shop and like, notice they didn't tip
or something like that. Bam, there's your story. Um. Also,
like we said that, they like to add experts, and
but the experts are in no way, shape or form
qualified In a lot of ways, they have no credentials.
They're not vetted. It's more say, like, um, the example
Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast. Right, if somebody
(19:30):
spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot, researching bigfoot.
There there's no institute out there to qualify them, to
give them credentials, but you could reasonably make a case
of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right. The
thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star or
the weekly World News is not going to the trouble
(19:50):
of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so and
so says that there's a bunch of these things out
and he's seen a bunch and he's an expert exactly.
My favorite is the leading quote, like, uh, they will
get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop,
and they will say did she look that? They would
(20:11):
say maybe something like, yeah, she looked like she looked jittery,
and they would say did she look strung out and
that she had possibly been up for days without eating. Yeah,
she sort of looked like that, And then all of
a sudden, that's the quote. Witnesses say she looked strung
out and like she had not eaten for days, and Uh,
all they have to do is say yes, exactly yes,
(20:33):
or like would you say this? And if the prison
says yes and you just said that. Another hallmark of
tabloids is making a huge deal out of something I
guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah, and like
actually looking through other newspapers to find some quasi interesting
(20:53):
story and then blowing it up into possibly a front
page feature. Um, just by getting into this story, really
interviewing a lot of people involved, um, and then maybe
throwing an expert or something like that, and just basically
making a lot a lot of hay out of something
very um, kind of negligible. UM. And this by adding
(21:18):
a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do you
think about this? What do you think about that? It
takes it from being about the story, right, like a
um man saved a goat from a burning building, to
what these people think about this man and his goat?
And you can do anything with that exactly the love affair,
you mean, maybe who knows if somebody said it, then
(21:41):
they could conceivably report if anyone said, um. Celebrity Uh,
celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of
tabloids these days at least, and they the writers have informants,
all kinds of informants, from um security, people who would
work from them, or who worked at venues where they
(22:01):
might have been hairstylists, nail salon people like anyone that
can dish up dirt, and they get in the rotation
and uh I, remember we shot you ever heard of
Janet Charlton, No, you might recognize her. She was a
gossip columnist and think did stuff for TV like Entertainment Tonight.
(22:23):
But that's how she made her living. And she was
like one of the more famous ones. And we shot
a commercial at her house one time in l A.
And she was there hanging out, and uh I was like,
you gotta tell me some stories. And of course she
just loved that kind of thing, and she would just
sit down and regale us with stories about Michael Douglas
and his secret sex addiction, and and she was He
always said like, well, you know, my sources tell me.
(22:45):
She had a list, a rollodex of people on the
bank roll that she would pay, you know, a few
bucks if it was not a big deal, to a
lot of money, if it was a big celebrity with
big news and it's um, that's pretty much standard, like
you were saying. There, there's this guy named, um, Paul
McMullen who wrote for I think News of the World,
(23:08):
and um, you know Dentel Elliott he was he was
Indiana Jones's sidekick. I can't remember his name, but the
older British guy. Okay, here's this this huge star in
Great Britain and he had a very very beloved too
and he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin.
And after he died, Um, she took like a big
(23:29):
turn for the worst. And this cop tipped off I
think another person who in turn tipped off Paul McMullin.
But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it.
Um that this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute,
she's so much of a heroin addict, So whatever you
want to do with that. Paul McMullin goes and like
(23:49):
offers to pay this this lady like drug money for
sex or whatever, and she agrees, and like all of
a sudden, he starts reporting on it. He's got photos
and everything. Well she ended up killing youself, Oh my god.
And he now says like, you know, I take responsibility
for that, which is meaningless. But um, yeah, he the
all started with a cop knowing about this and then
(24:12):
tipping off the reporters. That's so sad. Cops are not
immune to this kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh.
Another way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um.
From what I've gathered, you're either you fall into three categories.
You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You either are
(24:37):
lucky enough and are smart enough to kind of be
low profile and you're not really a subject of tabo tabloids.
There's a lot of big stars you've never seen the
tabloids Harrison for yeah. Uh. Or number three is you
play ball a little bit, which means, you know what,
I'll give you a little information here and there. I'll
(24:57):
leak out some stuff here and there. If you play
nine with me, I'll play ball with you. Maybe I'll
let you know, like what restaurant I'll be coming out
of one night you can photograph me. Give you your
little time. And um. Sometimes the movie studios a leak
stuff to get get up a little pressed. They did
that a lot a lot back in the day. But
(25:17):
it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic relationship
between the person who needs their star to maintain this.
It's position through things like just basically you're a star
because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such
thing as bad pressed. Like you might be in there
for your cellulite. But what if someone picks up the
magazine They're like, Oh, I wonder whatever happened to her?
(25:39):
I thought she was dead, And all of a sudden
they're like, she's not dead, she just has cellulite. How sad?
How sad? But at the same time, I feel better
about myself exactly. Um, So, I guess one of the
ways that you stay in the tabloids is through have
(26:00):
your picture made. A group of people known collectively is paparazzi,
and they, actually, I found out, are named after a
paparazz so photographer. You didn't know that named paparazzo with
a capital P. He was a character in Um Follini
Fellini's Ladulce Vita that's movie, and um apparently they were
(26:24):
already extant, but they got their name through this character.
But even then they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the
seventies again thanks to Jane Pope. Um that they really
became the kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today.
And it was all because Jane Pope was obsessed with
(26:45):
Jackie Oh and Aristotle and he would pay so much
money for anything on them that people that the photographers
were like just really really became aggressive and assertive because
of it. And they're way worse in Europe because of
Geane Pope and because they initially started doing this stuff
in Greece and in in Europe. Um and that that
(27:08):
still is connected to this day, to the death of
Um Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly the driver
had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased paparazzi
on motorcycle. Yeah, very sad, but that's all Generoso Pope Jr. Um.
I'll bet that guy wore huge black glass thick ones
like Robert de Niro at the end of Casino. God.
(27:31):
That's great. Um. Supposedly Fellini too, I dug this up.
Took the word from an Italian word that described the
buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified, but he said
in an interview in Time magazine in the sevenies that
he's like, yeah, I always just associated with something buzzing
around you in your way, Like, well, that's paparazzi. Um,
(27:52):
and there's that movie too, Paparazzi Is that what it
was called? From two four? Yeah, with the dude, uh
what's his face? Goes back and beats up ol Houser.
Did you see it? No? I ran across it on
IMDb today. It's not bad at all. Um. It's also
it could very easily be based on the life of
Alec Baltwoin Uh yeah sure or something yeah yeah, because
(28:15):
there's I think the categories you were describing, um, the
people who are just so big that they can't keep
a low profile, but they also don't want or need
that that the tabloids on them. But I've also very
much gotten the impression. It's like there's a lot of
people out there who feed it to him, who wanted,
who craving, And I can't feel bad for those people
(28:38):
at all. It's as and because there are people plenty,
like you're saying, like plenty of people out there who
are big stars, but you never see anything about him
in the tabloids just because they just stay out of it.
They stay away from it, you know. Yeah, I'm trying
to think of one. I mean, there's so many. That's
probably why I can't think of it. But like Harrison
Ford is a good example, I guess, except when he
(28:59):
started eating close to Flockhart. They were, they were in
the tabloids a lot. But I also suspect like most
of that stuff was all very pleasant, like hand holding things.
So yeah, but she was in the tabloids a lot
because of her weight, so that fed into that, you know,
like maybe she'll be happy and eat again now that
she has Harrison Ford. You know, yeah, he's just like
(29:19):
eat this, eat that too. Here, eat this all right,
let's talk about let's talk about the law. Because this
was really interesting, I thought, because the first thing you
think of the rest of it was not interesting at all. No,
I thought, I thought this was super interesting though, because
the first thing I think of is why aren't these
people suing every day? Suing these tabloids. Some try, some do,
(29:44):
Some have been successful for a while. For the early tabloids,
ones like um oh what were they called? Like Confidential
I think was one of the early tabloids, um like
the Tatler Um, they're just whatever stupid name about, not
(30:05):
about airing dirty laundry. That was the name of some
pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties. Dirty laundry was
probably one of them, I'll bet um. And they got
away with that stuff because well, for two reasons. This
guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote I watched a
wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty much this definitive
history of the tabloids. And he's got his bona fides
(30:28):
because he was an editor for the National Enquirer, right, um,
And he said, there's two reasons. In the fifties and sixties. One,
if you were a legitimate star, these things were so
in the gutter that the stoop to suing them was problematic.
In one, it was the attention that lawsuit would attract,
because the regular press was gonna start talking about it
(30:50):
would make you look as bad as well, it would
draw a lot more attention to the original story. And
the second thing is, even if you want that publisher
doesn't have the money to pay you, good luck. Then
Jeane Pope once again changes everything. Jeane Pope and Rupert Murdoch,
all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um.
I think Jeane Pope took the inquiry from like fifteen
(31:12):
thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its
peak in the eighties. Um. And so the suddenly they
did have deep pockets and things changed, and um, Carol
Burnett kind of still to this day stands as like
a bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids as
far as the law goes. Yeah, she sued in uh
(31:32):
after nine article said, and I have to read this quote,
it's pretty good. At a Washington restaurant, a boisterous Carol
Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger.
She traped around the place, offering everyone a bite of
her dessert, and they didn't put her dessert in quotes
I would have. Uh. Carol really raised eyebrows when she
(31:54):
accidentally knocked a glass of wine over one diner and
started giggling instead of apologizing. So they basically said she
was blitzed at this restaurant. And yeah, he's a big
fan probably, And she sued in one one point six
million dollars, which was and we'll find out here in
(32:17):
a second. This is one of the hallmarks of their
litigation settled out of court for much much less, well,
very quietly. She got a big settlement because in one
dollars one point six millions, like a hundred billion today,
I think, uh. And then um, it was reduced by
an appeals court, which is usually step two in these
(32:37):
kind of suits two grand Yeah, and then it was
settled out of court. So I would imagine for even
less than that. Um, but it was still it was
a big deal. It was the first time really that
like a major star was able to win a defamation
lawsuit against the tabloid. But it was one of the
I don't want to say it was one of the
only times. It was one of the very few times,
(32:58):
especially if you are going on the premise of all
the people who want to sue the tabloids and don't
actually bring a suit because things have changed now now
the tabloids have these reputations for being extremely fearsome litigators,
where like, if you want to sue them you thought
that story that ticked you off was bad, They're gonna
(33:19):
get anything they can and they're going to do it
through the court. So like when Aretha Franklin or no, um, oh,
Elizabeth Taylor, Yes, when she tried to sue I think
the Inquirer, or when she did see the Inquirer. The
Inquirer's lawyers tried to subpoena all of her medical records
for the past thirty years. So they go after everything.
They tried to drag your life into the spotlight to
(33:41):
make it like really not worth your while to sue them. Yet,
the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New
York Times article, h Vincent Cfo Everyone's italian Um. Everybody
has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the
scorpion defense, which is you don't attack a scorpion because
(34:01):
you will get stung um. Aside from not the not
the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's pretty straightforward.
I guess that do they need to be complex, but
you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's the
spider analogy, that's the two year old analogy. Oh, like,
don't mess with the two year old. You'll get thrown
up on or been pooped on on. The scorpion can
(34:26):
only do one thing to your all can humiliate you
in a number of ways. Have you ever heard so
there's this whole thing that like, scorpions commit suicide if
you set them on fire by stinging themselves. Really and
apparently there's a lot of like YouTube videos out there
people like doing this with scorpions, like them on fire,
and then the scorpion will like jump about and like
sting itself and eventually die. Well, I'll be trying to
(34:47):
put the fire up. They found that this. They found
that that scorpions are almost entirely immune to their own venom,
and that really all this is just the reaction of
being burned alive. They're like trying to like they're flailing about,
and one of the flails is like they're they're stingers
moving and sometimes it stings itself. So it appears to
(35:08):
dumb kids who set scorpions on fire that scorpions committing
suicide terrible and that awful. That's a great tangent though, thanks,
all right, don't burn animals or insects of any kind, kids,
It's just means setting yourself up for being a sociopath
later in life. Also, legally, speaking with tabloids, um, you
(35:29):
have to prove malice. Yeah, that's the big one. Not
only that what they printed was false, but that they
knowingly printed information they knew was false, because it's got
to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They
just printed a rumor about me that wasn't true. It's
got to have malice behind it. Libel is printed. Slanders stated,
(35:50):
with your mouth, there's are the two differences, or I
guess you could blink it out with your eyes. That's true. Um, So,
basically the scorpion defense and then the delays. The first
thing they're gonna do is start filing motions to delay,
to delay to You spend a lot of money, a
lot of money, so and if you think about it,
(36:11):
there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah, it's
your reputation. So a star who has a bunch of
money says, I have a bunch of money, and I'm
really mad at these guys, and i want to teach
them a lesson. So I'm going to soothe them, and
that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids try
to make it not worth your while, that you'll drop
it because you don't really need this money. You're looking
(36:34):
for a judgment, and hopefully you'll get bored. Well in
the tabloids don't care even if they drag this thing
out in print a retraction six months later, no one remembers.
No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well six
months later, that's a it's a well put because apparently
part of the judgment of some of these and in
successful suits is that you can't write about um this
(36:57):
star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they're like,
cut a deal so times and say, you know what,
I'll drop the lawsuit, just give me a break for
the next year. And then they put on their calendar
Tom Cruise one year from now, set reminder to start
effing with him again and um. Another way that tabloid
stay out of court is most of their UM articles
(37:22):
are read screened by an attorney or attorneys they have
a retainer. So each article it's printed kind of comes
with this this implicit um stamp of approval from a
legal expert. You you really don't have a case if
you want to sue against this. Yeah, they want to.
(37:43):
They want to walk right up to the line of
libel and stop there. And they're pretty good. And you're
in aiate on it, and you're in aid on it,
and I imagine the writers are really good at it,
and then as backup, they have their own attorneys that
are even better at it, and so they're like, yeah,
this is not libelous, prove it and spend half a
million dollars trying to prove this. And some people do,
(38:05):
like Aretha Franklin, I think settled Tom Cruise, Schwarzenegger and
Katie Cruise. And one did she win because Katie Holmes
just filed in March. She is she settled for a
donation to her charity unless she has done it twice.
She did it just this past March. She filed suit
(38:27):
against him for this one cover. Um like yeah, bags
under her eyes and they're like Katie's drug problem? Why
she won't leave Tom? All this? And I also the
article kind of goes after Scientology and um, well, based
on that list Nicole kid meant Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.
(38:47):
It makes you wonder, like, huh, I wonder how how
much Scientology encourages suing for defamation and articles that also
include you know, stuff against Scientology because you both that
just had the big little supposed Taudrey affairs here in Georgia.
(39:09):
And then I guess another homework that's not really in UM.
It's not really in the article, but I think you
can make a pretty strong case is that sometimes a
lot of times the tabloid gets things right, but the
the way that they do it often is very much
(39:31):
unethical and immoral as far as UM the standards of
the press is concerned. And that's what Rupert what's been
going on with Rupert Murdoch, like UM Parliament, like a
parliamentary UM panel basically said you're not fit to run
news corps any longer because this scandal is so huge,
with the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't
(39:54):
remember what episode we talked about in it, but there
was the girl who was kidnapped and like the News
of the World, writers were hacking into her UM voicemail
and then deleting them and so the police thought she
was still alive and it was possibly affecting the course
of the investigation. They they identified four thousand celebrities, athletes, politicians,
(40:16):
people of note UM who were whose emails were hacked
four thousand, and then another thousand that had likely been hacked.
Some people have already sued in one like CNA Miller
Steve Coogan of Our Party people and Tristan Shandy. Um,
(40:36):
some people have already won. But for the most part
it's um. These people aren't gonna get any any damages awarded.
It's basically just no news of the world is shut
down now. But it was out of hand. And now
they're they're showing that they were also hacking email, which
great Britain has this kind of um. This this computer
theft law now, which makes email hacking way worse than
(41:00):
phoen hacking. So if that opens up to be a
big thing, there's people are actually gonna start doing time
for it. Yeah, that's what I say. But like I
was saying, sometimes they get things right. They do um.
Over the years, we'll mention a few O. J. Simpson
case the National Enquiry, and it seems like it's generally
the Inquirer that that sort of scoops the legit ones.
(41:21):
It's never like the Star. Yes, you know, so the
National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial, the story
about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah, they scooped the
story of the dealer that sold him a knife similar
to the murder weapon. I guess knife dealers the way
they scooped the shoes story. Remember there were bloody footprints.
(41:44):
I thought this was awesome. They really went to town
because there was a Bruno Molly bloody footprint at the
scene and O. J. Simpson said, I don't, I don't.
I've never owned a pair of shoes like that. And
they went back and found footage of him from like
wearing them on the field, like reporting yeah, and proved
(42:08):
that yes, indeed he did have those shoes. And he's like,
oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh. Bill Cosby's kid n's
remember when he was killed, the inquiry offered a hundred
thousand dollar reward for information and that actually led to
somebody coming forward and giving the information that led to
the capturing of the killer. That's right, Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah.
(42:31):
In two thousand one, he Um came out and was like, oh, yeah,
I guess he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart
when he was running for president, I remember this well.
He was on the monkey business down in Miami with
what was her name, Donna Rice Um. When you look
(42:51):
at it now, he h, I haven't seen it. I
don't think she's just like sitting on his lap and
he's just got a big grin on his face and
he's got a T shirt that says Monk Shines grew
And it was it was all over the place at
the time, but he dropped out of the race. It
was because of this this um picture in the inquiry.
They scooped everybody on it and Russia Limbaugh, Yeah, my
(43:14):
favorite drug addict that was exposed, Russia Limball. Yeah. I
remember he was buying oxy cotton from his maid. He
was on like how many pills a day he bought, well,
I don't know how many a day, but he bought
apparently thirty thousand pills from her. I think he was
on like some ungodly amount like twenty or sixty or
eighty pills a day. Just so I remember hearing it
(43:35):
was like, how is he alive or even not a
standing up? Yeah, but that was the inquirer that did that.
But again, so there there could be it could have
come from a tip, right, Yeah, it could have come
from um. Yeah, they could have um. They could have
gotten this information from wire tapping, from whatever. It doesn't
(43:58):
mean it's wrong, but just one of the hallmarks of
the tabloid is that the they'll follow sometimes looser ethics
than maybe. Again, a New York Times reporter um said,
tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned Um, at the peak,
the National Choir was on about five million copies in circulation. Now,
(44:19):
all of the leading ones in the United States combined
sell about five point four million. So they've really gone down.
And one of the reasons why is because they were
so successful that mainstream media became much more tabloid e
and tabloids became much less, much less different. The field
(44:41):
of competition increased, Yeah, and basically everyone was kind of
doing similar stuff now. And they point out the article
during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because stuff you
were seen on CNN and was just as salacious as
anything you would read in the Star. And again, it's
like the mainstream media kind of took a cue from tabloids,
(45:02):
as they have so many other times, so pissful about that.
With the Clinton thing, they were probably just like, let's
let's make up some stuff. Let's like what if he
used a cigar and they were like those crazy stuff
about Yeah, exactly, it was all true with Clinton, man,
those nuts looking back. Yeah, so you got anything else? Um,
(45:24):
I got nothing else? Well, then that's tabloid's Chuck. If
you want to learn more about tabloids and see a
picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type in
tabloids T A B L O I D S in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which
means it's time. Now, it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
(45:46):
I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me, Josh
and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina, conducting
research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship. I wanted
to let you know that your podcasts it was a
great resource for English learners in other countries. Um. I've
been introducing your podcast to students and adults I meet
(46:08):
who are interested in furthering their English and learning more
about US culture. Yeah, a little scary too, Um. The
idea of a podcast culture does not yet exist in Argentina.
When I introduce the idea in your program to people here,
they're very curious and eager to listen. They make great
wine too, by the way, Argentina, Okay, that's good stuff.
(46:28):
Your podcast is providing a fun, informative way for students
here to practice listening to different English accents, um, to
try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes, to
learn new vocabulary why I feel a lot of heat
all of a sudden, um, and to become more informed
on the various issues you discuss. The idea of people
listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge is
(46:51):
part is a part of us culture that I am
proud to share and thank you very much for that.
Spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela part it's scaring.
Thank you very much for that. We're becoming a cult
like figures like Rodriguez, who there's this like singer songwriter
from I think the late sixties early seventies, and he
(47:11):
just went by the name Rodriguez and released a couple
of albums that it's totally flopped here and um, he
just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that in
South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just incredible
status over there, and everyone wondered what happened to him,
And finally years later he found out like he's like
(47:32):
a mythical figure in South Africa. You know, there's a
documentary that just came out about the whole time it
sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary. Well,
it sounds like that feature film, like something someone would
make up. I saw a movie like that. You mean,
I went to Silver Docks and saw The Impostor and
it was very much like that. Where the one of
(47:55):
the producers afterwards the Q and it was like he
was asked if they were going to turn it into
like a feature film, and he's like, we can't, Like
there's just too many it's too outlandish that if you
fictionalized it, people would be like, this is stupid. Why
did you Why did you make these choices? Do I
want to see it? Yeah? You should. It's very good, awesome. UM,
okay if you have a doc recommendary documentary recommendation, so
(48:19):
I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a DOCU wreck.
Thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um
is that correct? Doc you wreck? Because I think I've
seen that written before. Yeah, I just made it up. Um.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
(48:41):
you Should Know, and you can email us your rex
too Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com? Yeah h. Brought to you by the
(49:05):
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to you Stuff you Should
Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck
Bryant uh, and this is Stuff you should Know. It's podcast.
(00:23):
It's audio only, um, but coming soon it will also
include smells. Oh yeah, smell a vision, not vision, smellow
found smell it. We'll just call it smellow rama. I
mean grumpy people today. I'm not grumpy. You're grumpy. I'm
grumpy Jerry. Jerry's grumpy. I'm fine. Y'all were grumping at
(00:45):
each other when I came in here. No, Jerry was
mad at me for being mad at her, which doesn't count.
It's just everyone's grumpy. It's such a grumpy day. I'm
not grumpy. It's just head legitimate grumpy, right stripe. Everyone's scrapy,
so Chuck. Yes, I want to tell you about a
great American hero, William Katka Uh. Many years ago, in
(01:11):
the wilds of I wish I could remember where he
was found Mississippi, a little guy known as bat Boy
was captured. He was caught on a rooftop during a
flood in Mississippi, and the authorities seized him and UM
took him into their care. He became a ward of
(01:32):
the state. That makes sense because bat boys are known
to go to higher ground during flooding. Yeah, and he
did true to form uh so uh bat Boy at
first he didn't like this captivity, UM, but eventually he
kind of became something of a patriot by um volunteering
(01:52):
to go search for Osama bin Laden and his Al
Qaeda operatives UM in the caves of Afghanistan. The reason
bat Boy was so good at it because he was
raising caves half bat half boy name Um. He wasn't
able to find Ben Lawden, but he still returned to
(02:12):
the U S a hero after a long long flight
because he just flew himself. Of course, and we know
of bat boys exploits thanks to a little newspaper known
as The Weekly World News. Have you heard of this?
Two things? I used to subscribe to The Weekly World Yeah,
(02:32):
for like a year in high school, me and my
buddy rad did because it was fun Radcliffe Radford, And
two I didn't realize that bat boy they continued his exploits.
I think bat Boys sold a lot of papers for
the Well, I knew he did, but I didn't know.
I didn't know they kept it up. That's awesome. I'm
glad to know that he was fighting the terrorists. He
(02:54):
he did, he tried to. I don't know if he
was successful. At least he went equipped more than with
just a sword. Um. But yeah, so bat Boy was
a prominent character, I guess. And the Weekly World News,
which which also bills itself as the world's only reliable newspapers. Yeah,
that that little tagline or whatever. Yeah, it's not around
(03:18):
anymore in print. Yeah, I think I remember shutting down
and being sort of sad. Is online, I guess. Yeah,
in two thousand and eight it moved to and moved online.
So really every aspect of that story from this outrageous
um claim that bat Boy was captured and sent to
Afghanistan to UM calling itself tongue in cheek, the World's
(03:41):
most reliable, the world's only reliable newspaper, to it's shutting
down and going online because of massive profit losses after
being purchased by this huge conglomerate of tabloid papers. The
Weekly World News is a perfect analogy for the course
of tabloids of the last like twenty as a whole. Yeah,
(04:02):
and we're gonna dig into that. Um I think it's funny.
I never because I didn't know the little tagline, but
I guess they figured if we're just going to be
making up stories, because the Weekly World News, for those
of you who haven't read it, isn't just a tabloid.
I mean it's like it's it's fan fiction. I mean,
it's completely ridiculous. They don't pretend. But that's why it's
(04:23):
funny that they said that the only reliable thing. They said, Wow,
we might as well just say that in the thing,
get it? Yes, And one of their apparently one of
their editors, is quoted as saying, I could only find
one source for this quote, so I don't know how
true it is. It could be made up, which would
be kind of like this apropos meta parody of the
whole thing, But um he said, if our if our
(04:45):
readers are informed, it's usually by accident. Really, so they
were well aware. That's great and it isn't an extreme example,
but there are there are some aspects of the Weekly
World News that do fit the bill of that of
a standard table. So I mean, let's talk about it.
What what is a tabloid? Well, Um, should we start
at the beginning or should we just talk about it
(05:06):
a little bit then do the history? Do you want
to do the history first? Man, Yeah, let's do the
history first, because positive that we don't practice. So I
did see, Um, there was one slight error. This is
an ed Grabanowski article, which are always great. But did
you see this other etymology for the word tabloid with
the pill company UM in the late eighteen hundreds, apparently
(05:28):
um Burrows, Welcome and Company was a pharmaceutical company in England.
They produced at the time, like medicines, were all like
BC powder good, he's powder, They're all powdered. And he
I think was the first one to make into a
pill by compressing the powder and he called it a tabloid. Yeah,
(05:49):
it probably was. And um that that word became to
mean anything figuratively, that was a small dose of anything.
So the word tabloid, it actually became came before I
believe about ten years before the shrunken newspaper, Uh, the
physical newspaper shrinking. Well, it still works. It's like the
(06:10):
origin of life on Earth comes from another planet. But really,
where did the origin of life begin? Right, it doesn't
answer the question. It's the same thing, like, okay, so
maybe that's the origin of the word tabloid. Then it
was associated with newspapers. The tabloid paper ums printed on
a smaller, more compact version of the normal newspaper newsprint
(06:36):
called a broadsheet. Right, so the tabloid is a smaller,
more compact version. The broadsheet is longer and wider UM
and then the tabloid were usually printed on the smaller paper,
hence the word yeah. So at first it was a pill,
then it became the size of the paper, and then
later on it just became um the style of the
(06:59):
paper and size, but really the style. But tabloids, as
were explaining them, are basically like um. They are also
commonly referred to as rags, as um gutter public Yeah,
they're gossip sheets, whatever it's it's basically it's a it's
a uh, slightly shifty, underhanded newspaper and um tabloids. One
(07:25):
of the ways that they exist and always have existed
is in comparison to quote legitimate newspapers. So like originally
newspapers that say, like the beginning the early nineteenth century.
They were extremely stuffy. They were extremely expensive. They were
like six cents per which was like half a day's
(07:45):
pay for the average labor. Really dry. Man. If you
ever read these old New York Times articles, there's like
they just really just you know, they lay out the
facts and then say the end, exactly like the AP
used to do. Until a few years ago. The AP
always did that who, what, when, how, where and why
(08:06):
the old journalistic pyramid exactly and then like maybe a
quote in there and that was it. Um. And so
out of this, I guess kind of boredom and a
need for the working class to be able to, you know,
get their news too, because I couldn't afford it, came
the predecessors of tabloids, called the penny Press. So they
were cheaper, and they also did something different. They took
(08:31):
stories from just these boring facts political stories, business stories,
that kind of thing, and started working on human interest stories.
And they changed the style of writing. Sentences were shorter,
paragraphs were shorter, way more emotion It was it was
designed for that, like listen to the triumph of this
family over their evil landlord or whatever kind of what
(08:54):
we see now in mainstream newspapers exactly. Yes, a lot,
a lot of our stream um media owes quite a
bit to the evolution of tabloids, and there's actually a
point where it kind of spread. Finally it made a jump.
But you can see throughout the history of tabloids and
newspapers this interplay where tabloid's almost kind of break ground. Yeah,
(09:15):
take a bunch of heat and flak for it, and
then newspapers like latch onto what they're doing. After after
it becomes co opted in normal behind the guys of
you know, we're the upstanding publication. Disgusting, right, I'm disgusted
by it, all um. Yellow journalism came about in the
era of William Randolph Hurst with his New York Journal
(09:38):
later called The New York Journal American, and he was
the first person in the United States, at least, because
I think in England it even started out before us,
but not mistaken. In England, I think they were kind
of like the birth of some of the more tabloid
style writing. But in America William randolf Hurst did with
(09:58):
all of a sudden he are to doing some celebrity
stuff and some murderer and little sensational gore here and there,
and he found that it sold really well up until
the Depression, when nothing's old really well. Um pick up
after the Depression when a very monumental figure in tabloid
history named Janetta Jenettos Pope or Gene Pope Jane Pope
(10:23):
j Jr. Um He bought a hearst paper called the
New York and Choir for Grand, changed it to tabloid size,
started uh printing you know, you know, stuff that he
figured people like to stare at a car crash. So
he was actually inspired literally by seeing people like jockeying
(10:45):
to see the blood and the gore in a car
crash and thought, Wow, people really are disgusting and crazy,
so I'm going to give them what they want. And
he did remember the crime scene photography episode we talked
about Uigi um he he and he sold a lot
of stuff to Geene Pope. Um he printed a lot
of his like gory crimes photos. What's his name, Lewis
(11:08):
fellig I think, but he went by W E G
E EG interesting So I said it again, Um yeah,
I was cueing like the Executive Orders episode, how many
times like I'll bunch, do you know why because it
was super interesting. Um. So he starts selling a lot
of papers based on this new style. And then a
(11:31):
guy named Rupert Murdoch who you may have heard of,
who saw or proved that you could actually have pretty
wide circulation um, and began selling News of the World
in England millions of copies sex scandals. And then the
Pope said, you know what, if he can sell millions
and millions of copies, so can I let me change
(11:51):
the name of the National Enquirer. Boom right, the National
Enquirer was born, but um, the Inquirer is we know
it's ill wasn't born yet. It was the thing they
were crazy headlines about, like interracial sex and lesbianism and
like horrible acts of violence posthumous violence. There is this
(12:13):
one headline, um about a team ripping the head off
of a corpse to get at its gold teeth, and
always with the gory crime scene photos like the pulp
comics were doing too. Yeah, very much. It was just
very tawdry. It's um, I mean, if the stuff and
the Inquiry today is tawdry, it's this was just like
it's not fathomed. But the reason it's not is again
(12:36):
because of Gene Pope, so he had a lot of competition.
And not just he, but the whole industry was facing
a big problem in that news stands were starting to dry.
So Jeane Pope came up with an idea. He's like supermarkets.
Everybody goes to supermarkets. I need to get in there.
And now I stand in the line at the checkout stand. Right.
But he knew like there was no way that any
(12:58):
any respectable supermarket it was gonna sell his tabloid, his rag.
So he cleaned the thing up, right. He um added
way more. He took a queue from Rupert Rupert Murdoch
and his News of the World, and um added way
more celebrity stuff, sex scandals, but nothing tawdry like you know,
(13:18):
um this stuff he was talking about before it that
was just really it was more like a like a
the Senator got caught with somebody or whatever. Um. And
there's this guy named James Walcutt. He wrote for the
for Vanity Fair, and he wrote this article called us Confidential.
It was in the June two thousand two issue of
(13:40):
Vanity Fair. It was about this and about that transition
going from you know, the crime scene photography to um
astrology overnight so he could get into supermarkets. Uh, he said. Um.
The Inquirer's staff was aghast. It was like asking an
experienced team of grave robbers to take up gardening. So
(14:00):
that's pretty much how the Inquirer's staff took We got
to clean up our acts and start writing about astrology
and celebrity sex scandals. And it wasn't even cleaning them
attacked that much. Just not like you said, we're going
to become the you know, New York Times. But that's
why they're there. Yeah, that's why when you stand in
line at a supermarket checkout line, it's because in the
nineteen sixties, Jeane Pope was like, we got to get
(14:22):
in the supermarkets. I think people either read these or
they don't. Like I don't think anyone dabbles in tabloids,
you know what I'm saying. It's kind of like soap operas,
Like no one just says, like, let me watch a
little bit of Days of Our Lives, Like you're either
hooked on this stuff or not. I agree with that,
but I think a lot of people are guilty of
picking up the tabloid and thumbing through it and then
(14:43):
not buying it in the supermarket checkout line. Well, now
you know what they do now, and of course we're
gonna get to this, might as well bring it up.
They look at People Magazine and US Weekly because they
have nicked from tabloids as well and become a quote
unquote respectable thing to pick up and read, even though,
come on, do you ever read a People magazine? I have,
(15:05):
it's sort of tabloid at times, it is, and um
actually you can thank the Star for that. Um. Star
used to be a tabloid sheet tabloid. Yeah, and it
went over to the glossy format at some point. I
think that maybe the late nineties, and um it, it
married those two things, glossy people magazine format with tabloid
(15:29):
and it was enough of his success that people was like, well,
we've already got the glossy magazine part, let's just start
doing the tabloid thing. Yeah. I mean, well, people have
I mean, legitimate articles still, but and they're not like
making stuff up, but they've definitely gone way into the
you know, look at the cellulite on the beach in
Malibu and look at this person and look at that person,
(15:50):
and who wore it better? Plastics? Yeah, exactly, stuff like that,
who wore it better? I know somebody who's been reading people. Yeah,
when you have the two ladies with the same dress
me and especially when it's like two to eighteen, now,
I know, especially when it's like you know, it's just
means sometimes I'm gonna start wearing hockey jerseys and they'll
(16:12):
be like, a who aren't better Kevin Smith or podcaster
Chuck Bryant. People go, I guess Kevin Smith because I've
never heard of this other guy. It's the same. It's
the same dude anyway. Alright, So um, that's pretty much
the quick history of tabloids. Yeah here in the States,
at least England. We keep mentioning England because they're they're
lousy with it. Well, they're kind of on the leading
(16:34):
edge of the decline of tabloids right now. Yeah, let
get to that, all right. So before we go onto
tabloid stories and how they get these stories, we should
point out that in the National Choir, the Star of
the Globe, the National Examiner, and Weekly World News, we're
all purchased by American Media, Inc. Like all all of
(16:56):
those just snap them all up basically just about on
the show, now, every big tabloid in the United States
was purchased by this one company, and um, yeah, I
think that's never a good thing. Or maybe that's just
me being it, you know. Well that's the funny thing.
Like the title of this sidebars, they control everything you
read unless you don't read any of those things. So, um,
(17:18):
the the am I. Actually they're the reason the Weekly
World News shut down. Um, they were like, okay, these
things losing money. Am I posted a hundred and sixty
million dollar loss in two thousand and six and was
facing like a billion dollars in debt. Yeah, bad boy
boys of the Internet. Yeah that makes sense. That's where
bad boy belongs. So okay, let's talk about this. What
(17:41):
what makes a tabloid? It's not just subjective. I mean,
it's tabloids like pornography, you know when you see it,
all right, it's tough to define. That's not um entirely
the case. There are some actual, um discernible distinctions among
tabloids that make a tabloid a tabloid, I agreed, So
what are they? Well Ed points out here something really important.
(18:02):
The key to a tabloid story is not that it
be true, just that someone has said that it's true, right,
and they latch onto that person. And as long as
they say, you know, attribute these quotes to this person,
then they can't be held accountable. And that person is
frequently cited as an expert and a close friend. Sure,
(18:25):
I mean, if somebody it's all the way you present
the story. If the if you're saying, if your whole
story is all about how this person said something, it's
not really about the story. The story is still there,
but you're focusing on this person. It's like the the
rule of the of the tabloid industry. It's kind of
a trick though, because very much you're tricking people into
(18:45):
thinking you're reading about a story about Brandjelina. In fact,
you're reading a story about a former made that worked
for branch Elina and what they think is true, right,
or some crazy person who has nothing to do with
Brandngelina who like just um, maybe saw one of them
(19:06):
in a coffee shop and like, notice they didn't tip
or something like that. Bam, there's your story. Um. Also,
like we said that, they like to add experts, and
but the experts are in no way, shape or form
qualified In a lot of ways, they have no credentials.
They're not vetted. It's more say, like, um, the example
Grabmanowski uses is like a bigfoot enthusiast. Right, if somebody
(19:30):
spends a lot of time, uh, searching for bigfoot, researching bigfoot.
There there's no institute out there to qualify them, to
give them credentials, but you could reasonably make a case
of this person's a big foot bigfoot expert. Right. The
thing is is like the Inquirer or the Star or
the weekly World News is not going to the trouble
(19:50):
of explaining that. They just say bigfoot expert so and
so says that there's a bunch of these things out
and he's seen a bunch and he's an expert exactly.
My favorite is the leading quote, like, uh, they will
get the random person who saw Angelina Jolina coffee shop,
and they will say did she look that? They would
(20:11):
say maybe something like, yeah, she looked like she looked jittery,
and they would say did she look strung out and
that she had possibly been up for days without eating. Yeah,
she sort of looked like that, And then all of
a sudden, that's the quote. Witnesses say she looked strung
out and like she had not eaten for days, and Uh,
all they have to do is say yes, exactly yes,
(20:33):
or like would you say this? And if the prison
says yes and you just said that. Another hallmark of
tabloids is making a huge deal out of something I
guess other newspapers would consider small stuff. Yeah, and like
actually looking through other newspapers to find some quasi interesting
(20:53):
story and then blowing it up into possibly a front
page feature. Um, just by getting into this story, really
interviewing a lot of people involved, um, and then maybe
throwing an expert or something like that, and just basically
making a lot a lot of hay out of something
very um, kind of negligible. UM. And this by adding
(21:18):
a bunch of quotes and stuff and what do you
think about this? What do you think about that? It
takes it from being about the story, right, like a
um man saved a goat from a burning building, to
what these people think about this man and his goat?
And you can do anything with that exactly the love affair,
you mean, maybe who knows if somebody said it, then
(21:41):
they could conceivably report if anyone said, um. Celebrity Uh,
celebrity news is obviously one of the biggest parts of
tabloids these days at least, and they the writers have informants,
all kinds of informants, from um security, people who would
work from them, or who worked at venues where they
(22:01):
might have been hairstylists, nail salon people like anyone that
can dish up dirt, and they get in the rotation
and uh I, remember we shot you ever heard of
Janet Charlton, No, you might recognize her. She was a
gossip columnist and think did stuff for TV like Entertainment Tonight.
(22:23):
But that's how she made her living. And she was
like one of the more famous ones. And we shot
a commercial at her house one time in l A.
And she was there hanging out, and uh I was like,
you gotta tell me some stories. And of course she
just loved that kind of thing, and she would just
sit down and regale us with stories about Michael Douglas
and his secret sex addiction, and and she was He
always said like, well, you know, my sources tell me.
(22:45):
She had a list, a rollodex of people on the
bank roll that she would pay, you know, a few
bucks if it was not a big deal, to a
lot of money, if it was a big celebrity with
big news and it's um, that's pretty much standard, like
you were saying. There, there's this guy named, um, Paul
McMullen who wrote for I think News of the World,
(23:08):
and um, you know Dentel Elliott he was he was
Indiana Jones's sidekick. I can't remember his name, but the
older British guy. Okay, here's this this huge star in
Great Britain and he had a very very beloved too
and he had a daughter who was addicted to heroin.
And after he died, Um, she took like a big
(23:29):
turn for the worst. And this cop tipped off I
think another person who in turn tipped off Paul McMullin.
But the cop got a few hundred pounds for it.
Um that this girl was like, she's kind of a prostitute,
she's so much of a heroin addict, So whatever you
want to do with that. Paul McMullin goes and like
(23:49):
offers to pay this this lady like drug money for
sex or whatever, and she agrees, and like all of
a sudden, he starts reporting on it. He's got photos
and everything. Well she ended up killing youself, Oh my god.
And he now says like, you know, I take responsibility
for that, which is meaningless. But um, yeah, he the
all started with a cop knowing about this and then
(24:12):
tipping off the reporters. That's so sad. Cops are not
immune to this kind of thing too, believe it or not, Josh.
Another way they'll get their information is from the celebrities themselves. Um.
From what I've gathered, you're either you fall into three categories.
You either fight fight fight the tabloids. You either are
(24:37):
lucky enough and are smart enough to kind of be
low profile and you're not really a subject of tabo tabloids.
There's a lot of big stars you've never seen the
tabloids Harrison for yeah. Uh. Or number three is you
play ball a little bit, which means, you know what,
I'll give you a little information here and there. I'll
(24:57):
leak out some stuff here and there. If you play
nine with me, I'll play ball with you. Maybe I'll
let you know, like what restaurant I'll be coming out
of one night you can photograph me. Give you your
little time. And um. Sometimes the movie studios a leak
stuff to get get up a little pressed. They did
that a lot a lot back in the day. But
(25:17):
it still goes on. Yeah, it's like a symbiotic relationship
between the person who needs their star to maintain this.
It's position through things like just basically you're a star
because the public is aware of you. Yeah, no such
thing as bad pressed. Like you might be in there
for your cellulite. But what if someone picks up the
magazine They're like, Oh, I wonder whatever happened to her?
(25:39):
I thought she was dead, And all of a sudden
they're like, she's not dead, she just has cellulite. How sad?
How sad? But at the same time, I feel better
about myself exactly. Um, So, I guess one of the
ways that you stay in the tabloids is through have
(26:00):
your picture made. A group of people known collectively is paparazzi,
and they, actually, I found out, are named after a
paparazz so photographer. You didn't know that named paparazzo with
a capital P. He was a character in Um Follini
Fellini's Ladulce Vita that's movie, and um apparently they were
(26:24):
already extant, but they got their name through this character.
But even then they weren't crazy. It wasn't until the
seventies again thanks to Jane Pope. Um that they really
became the kind of reckless, relentless nuisances that we have today.
And it was all because Jane Pope was obsessed with
(26:45):
Jackie Oh and Aristotle and he would pay so much
money for anything on them that people that the photographers
were like just really really became aggressive and assertive because
of it. And they're way worse in Europe because of
Geane Pope and because they initially started doing this stuff
in Greece and in in Europe. Um and that that
(27:08):
still is connected to this day, to the death of
Um Diana, Princess of Wales. They were supposedly the driver
had been drinking, but they were supposedly being chased paparazzi
on motorcycle. Yeah, very sad, but that's all Generoso Pope Jr. Um.
I'll bet that guy wore huge black glass thick ones
like Robert de Niro at the end of Casino. God.
(27:31):
That's great. Um. Supposedly Fellini too, I dug this up.
Took the word from an Italian word that described the
buzzing sound of a mosquito. That's unverified, but he said
in an interview in Time magazine in the sevenies that
he's like, yeah, I always just associated with something buzzing
around you in your way, Like, well, that's paparazzi. Um,
(27:52):
and there's that movie too, Paparazzi Is that what it
was called? From two four? Yeah, with the dude, uh
what's his face? Goes back and beats up ol Houser.
Did you see it? No? I ran across it on
IMDb today. It's not bad at all. Um. It's also
it could very easily be based on the life of
Alec Baltwoin Uh yeah sure or something yeah yeah, because
(28:15):
there's I think the categories you were describing, um, the
people who are just so big that they can't keep
a low profile, but they also don't want or need
that that the tabloids on them. But I've also very
much gotten the impression. It's like there's a lot of
people out there who feed it to him, who wanted,
who craving, And I can't feel bad for those people
(28:38):
at all. It's as and because there are people plenty,
like you're saying, like plenty of people out there who
are big stars, but you never see anything about him
in the tabloids just because they just stay out of it.
They stay away from it, you know. Yeah, I'm trying
to think of one. I mean, there's so many. That's
probably why I can't think of it. But like Harrison
Ford is a good example, I guess, except when he
(28:59):
started eating close to Flockhart. They were, they were in
the tabloids a lot. But I also suspect like most
of that stuff was all very pleasant, like hand holding things.
So yeah, but she was in the tabloids a lot
because of her weight, so that fed into that, you know,
like maybe she'll be happy and eat again now that
she has Harrison Ford. You know, yeah, he's just like
(29:19):
eat this, eat that too. Here, eat this all right,
let's talk about let's talk about the law. Because this
was really interesting, I thought, because the first thing you
think of the rest of it was not interesting at all. No,
I thought, I thought this was super interesting though, because
the first thing I think of is why aren't these
people suing every day? Suing these tabloids. Some try, some do,
(29:44):
Some have been successful for a while. For the early tabloids,
ones like um oh what were they called? Like Confidential
I think was one of the early tabloids, um like
the Tatler Um, they're just whatever stupid name about, not
(30:05):
about airing dirty laundry. That was the name of some
pulp tabloid in the fifties and sixties. Dirty laundry was
probably one of them, I'll bet um. And they got
away with that stuff because well, for two reasons. This
guy wrote, um uh yeah, he wrote I watched a
wild hoggy my baby, which is pretty much this definitive
history of the tabloids. And he's got his bona fides
(30:28):
because he was an editor for the National Enquirer, right, um,
And he said, there's two reasons. In the fifties and sixties. One,
if you were a legitimate star, these things were so
in the gutter that the stoop to suing them was problematic.
In one, it was the attention that lawsuit would attract,
because the regular press was gonna start talking about it
(30:50):
would make you look as bad as well, it would
draw a lot more attention to the original story. And
the second thing is, even if you want that publisher
doesn't have the money to pay you, good luck. Then
Jeane Pope once again changes everything. Jeane Pope and Rupert Murdoch,
all of a sudden, these things have enormous circulations. Um.
I think Jeane Pope took the inquiry from like fifteen
(31:12):
thousand or a hundred thousand to five million at its
peak in the eighties. Um. And so the suddenly they
did have deep pockets and things changed, and um, Carol
Burnett kind of still to this day stands as like
a bell weather for the celebrities versus the tabloids as
far as the law goes. Yeah, she sued in uh
(31:32):
after nine article said, and I have to read this quote,
it's pretty good. At a Washington restaurant, a boisterous Carol
Burnett had a loud argument with another diner, Henry Kissinger.
She traped around the place, offering everyone a bite of
her dessert, and they didn't put her dessert in quotes
I would have. Uh. Carol really raised eyebrows when she
(31:54):
accidentally knocked a glass of wine over one diner and
started giggling instead of apologizing. So they basically said she
was blitzed at this restaurant. And yeah, he's a big
fan probably, And she sued in one one point six
million dollars, which was and we'll find out here in
(32:17):
a second. This is one of the hallmarks of their
litigation settled out of court for much much less, well,
very quietly. She got a big settlement because in one
dollars one point six millions, like a hundred billion today,
I think, uh. And then um, it was reduced by
an appeals court, which is usually step two in these
(32:37):
kind of suits two grand Yeah, and then it was
settled out of court. So I would imagine for even
less than that. Um, but it was still it was
a big deal. It was the first time really that
like a major star was able to win a defamation
lawsuit against the tabloid. But it was one of the
I don't want to say it was one of the
only times. It was one of the very few times,
(32:58):
especially if you are going on the premise of all
the people who want to sue the tabloids and don't
actually bring a suit because things have changed now now
the tabloids have these reputations for being extremely fearsome litigators,
where like, if you want to sue them you thought
that story that ticked you off was bad, They're gonna
(33:19):
get anything they can and they're going to do it
through the court. So like when Aretha Franklin or no, um, oh,
Elizabeth Taylor, Yes, when she tried to sue I think
the Inquirer, or when she did see the Inquirer. The
Inquirer's lawyers tried to subpoena all of her medical records
for the past thirty years. So they go after everything.
They tried to drag your life into the spotlight to
(33:41):
make it like really not worth your while to sue them. Yet,
the celebrity attorney that was interviewed for this awesome New
York Times article, h Vincent Cfo Everyone's italian Um. Everybody
has Italian said that it's basically he calls it the
scorpion defense, which is you don't attack a scorpion because
(34:01):
you will get stung um. Aside from not the not
the most complex analogy, I like it. No, it's pretty straightforward.
I guess that do they need to be complex, but
you can call it. That's the snake analogy, that's the
spider analogy, that's the two year old analogy. Oh, like,
don't mess with the two year old. You'll get thrown
up on or been pooped on on. The scorpion can
(34:26):
only do one thing to your all can humiliate you
in a number of ways. Have you ever heard so
there's this whole thing that like, scorpions commit suicide if
you set them on fire by stinging themselves. Really and
apparently there's a lot of like YouTube videos out there
people like doing this with scorpions, like them on fire,
and then the scorpion will like jump about and like
sting itself and eventually die. Well, I'll be trying to
(34:47):
put the fire up. They found that this. They found
that that scorpions are almost entirely immune to their own venom,
and that really all this is just the reaction of
being burned alive. They're like trying to like they're flailing about,
and one of the flails is like they're they're stingers
moving and sometimes it stings itself. So it appears to
(35:08):
dumb kids who set scorpions on fire that scorpions committing
suicide terrible and that awful. That's a great tangent though, thanks,
all right, don't burn animals or insects of any kind, kids,
It's just means setting yourself up for being a sociopath
later in life. Also, legally, speaking with tabloids, um, you
(35:29):
have to prove malice. Yeah, that's the big one. Not
only that what they printed was false, but that they
knowingly printed information they knew was false, because it's got
to be libelous. It can't just be maliciously libelous. They
just printed a rumor about me that wasn't true. It's
got to have malice behind it. Libel is printed. Slanders stated,
(35:50):
with your mouth, there's are the two differences, or I
guess you could blink it out with your eyes. That's true. Um, So,
basically the scorpion defense and then the delays. The first
thing they're gonna do is start filing motions to delay,
to delay to You spend a lot of money, a
lot of money, so and if you think about it,
(36:11):
there's nothing to really gain here necessarily. Well, yeah, it's
your reputation. So a star who has a bunch of
money says, I have a bunch of money, and I'm
really mad at these guys, and i want to teach
them a lesson. So I'm going to soothe them, and
that they Basically the first tactic is the tabloids try
to make it not worth your while, that you'll drop
it because you don't really need this money. You're looking
(36:34):
for a judgment, and hopefully you'll get bored. Well in
the tabloids don't care even if they drag this thing
out in print a retraction six months later, no one remembers.
No one reads retractions or cares about retractions. Well six
months later, that's a it's a well put because apparently
part of the judgment of some of these and in
successful suits is that you can't write about um this
(36:57):
star for a said amount of time. Yeah, they're like,
cut a deal so times and say, you know what,
I'll drop the lawsuit, just give me a break for
the next year. And then they put on their calendar
Tom Cruise one year from now, set reminder to start
effing with him again and um. Another way that tabloid
stay out of court is most of their UM articles
(37:22):
are read screened by an attorney or attorneys they have
a retainer. So each article it's printed kind of comes
with this this implicit um stamp of approval from a
legal expert. You you really don't have a case if
you want to sue against this. Yeah, they want to.
(37:43):
They want to walk right up to the line of
libel and stop there. And they're pretty good. And you're
in aiate on it, and you're in aid on it,
and I imagine the writers are really good at it,
and then as backup, they have their own attorneys that
are even better at it, and so they're like, yeah,
this is not libelous, prove it and spend half a
million dollars trying to prove this. And some people do,
(38:05):
like Aretha Franklin, I think settled Tom Cruise, Schwarzenegger and
Katie Cruise. And one did she win because Katie Holmes
just filed in March. She is she settled for a
donation to her charity unless she has done it twice.
She did it just this past March. She filed suit
(38:27):
against him for this one cover. Um like yeah, bags
under her eyes and they're like Katie's drug problem? Why
she won't leave Tom? All this? And I also the
article kind of goes after Scientology and um, well, based
on that list Nicole kid meant Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes.
(38:47):
It makes you wonder, like, huh, I wonder how how
much Scientology encourages suing for defamation and articles that also
include you know, stuff against Scientology because you both that
just had the big little supposed Taudrey affairs here in Georgia.
(39:09):
And then I guess another homework that's not really in UM.
It's not really in the article, but I think you
can make a pretty strong case is that sometimes a
lot of times the tabloid gets things right, but the
the way that they do it often is very much
(39:31):
unethical and immoral as far as UM the standards of
the press is concerned. And that's what Rupert what's been
going on with Rupert Murdoch, like UM Parliament, like a
parliamentary UM panel basically said you're not fit to run
news corps any longer because this scandal is so huge,
with the phone hacking scandal UM where we I can't
(39:54):
remember what episode we talked about in it, but there
was the girl who was kidnapped and like the News
of the World, writers were hacking into her UM voicemail
and then deleting them and so the police thought she
was still alive and it was possibly affecting the course
of the investigation. They they identified four thousand celebrities, athletes, politicians,
(40:16):
people of note UM who were whose emails were hacked
four thousand, and then another thousand that had likely been hacked.
Some people have already sued in one like CNA Miller
Steve Coogan of Our Party people and Tristan Shandy. Um,
(40:36):
some people have already won. But for the most part
it's um. These people aren't gonna get any any damages awarded.
It's basically just no news of the world is shut
down now. But it was out of hand. And now
they're they're showing that they were also hacking email, which
great Britain has this kind of um. This this computer
theft law now, which makes email hacking way worse than
(41:00):
phoen hacking. So if that opens up to be a
big thing, there's people are actually gonna start doing time
for it. Yeah, that's what I say. But like I
was saying, sometimes they get things right. They do um.
Over the years, we'll mention a few O. J. Simpson
case the National Enquiry, and it seems like it's generally
the Inquirer that that sort of scoops the legit ones.
(41:21):
It's never like the Star. Yes, you know, so the
National Enquirer scooped in the O J. Trial, the story
about his shoes, the Bruno Molly's. Yeah, they scooped the
story of the dealer that sold him a knife similar
to the murder weapon. I guess knife dealers the way
they scooped the shoes story. Remember there were bloody footprints.
(41:44):
I thought this was awesome. They really went to town
because there was a Bruno Molly bloody footprint at the
scene and O. J. Simpson said, I don't, I don't.
I've never owned a pair of shoes like that. And
they went back and found footage of him from like
wearing them on the field, like reporting yeah, and proved
(42:08):
that yes, indeed he did have those shoes. And he's like,
oh those shoes right, yeah. Uh. Bill Cosby's kid n's
remember when he was killed, the inquiry offered a hundred
thousand dollar reward for information and that actually led to
somebody coming forward and giving the information that led to
the capturing of the killer. That's right, Jesse Jackson's illegitimate child. Yeah.
(42:31):
In two thousand one, he Um came out and was like, oh, yeah,
I guess he found out it's true. Yes, Gary Hart
when he was running for president, I remember this well.
He was on the monkey business down in Miami with
what was her name, Donna Rice Um. When you look
(42:51):
at it now, he h, I haven't seen it. I
don't think she's just like sitting on his lap and
he's just got a big grin on his face and
he's got a T shirt that says Monk Shines grew
And it was it was all over the place at
the time, but he dropped out of the race. It
was because of this this um picture in the inquiry.
They scooped everybody on it and Russia Limbaugh, Yeah, my
(43:14):
favorite drug addict that was exposed, Russia Limball. Yeah. I
remember he was buying oxy cotton from his maid. He
was on like how many pills a day he bought, well,
I don't know how many a day, but he bought
apparently thirty thousand pills from her. I think he was
on like some ungodly amount like twenty or sixty or
eighty pills a day. Just so I remember hearing it
(43:35):
was like, how is he alive or even not a
standing up? Yeah, but that was the inquirer that did that.
But again, so there there could be it could have
come from a tip, right, Yeah, it could have come
from um. Yeah, they could have um. They could have
gotten this information from wire tapping, from whatever. It doesn't
(43:58):
mean it's wrong, but just one of the hallmarks of
the tabloid is that the they'll follow sometimes looser ethics
than maybe. Again, a New York Times reporter um said,
tabloids today, Josh, like you mentioned Um, at the peak,
the National Choir was on about five million copies in circulation. Now,
(44:19):
all of the leading ones in the United States combined
sell about five point four million. So they've really gone down.
And one of the reasons why is because they were
so successful that mainstream media became much more tabloid e
and tabloids became much less, much less different. The field
(44:41):
of competition increased, Yeah, and basically everyone was kind of
doing similar stuff now. And they point out the article
during the Lewinsky trial, sales went down because stuff you
were seen on CNN and was just as salacious as
anything you would read in the Star. And again, it's
like the mainstream media kind of took a cue from tabloids,
(45:02):
as they have so many other times, so pissful about that.
With the Clinton thing, they were probably just like, let's
let's make up some stuff. Let's like what if he
used a cigar and they were like those crazy stuff
about Yeah, exactly, it was all true with Clinton, man,
those nuts looking back. Yeah, so you got anything else? Um,
(45:24):
I got nothing else? Well, then that's tabloid's Chuck. If
you want to learn more about tabloids and see a
picture of the beloved bat boy, you can type in
tabloids T A B L O I D S in
the search bar at how stuff works dot com, which
means it's time. Now, it's time for listener mail. All right, Josh,
(45:46):
I'm gonna call this. Uh, don't cry for me, Josh
and Chuck. Hi, guys, I'm currently working in Argentina, conducting
research and teaching English on a Fulbright scholarship. I wanted
to let you know that your podcasts it was a
great resource for English learners in other countries. Um. I've
been introducing your podcast to students and adults I meet
(46:08):
who are interested in furthering their English and learning more
about US culture. Yeah, a little scary too, Um. The
idea of a podcast culture does not yet exist in Argentina.
When I introduce the idea in your program to people here,
they're very curious and eager to listen. They make great
wine too, by the way, Argentina, Okay, that's good stuff.
(46:28):
Your podcast is providing a fun, informative way for students
here to practice listening to different English accents, um, to
try and pick up on some colloquialisms and jokes, to
learn new vocabulary why I feel a lot of heat
all of a sudden, um, and to become more informed
on the various issues you discuss. The idea of people
listening to podcasts purely to further their own knowledge is
(46:51):
part is a part of us culture that I am
proud to share and thank you very much for that.
Spreading your fan base in Argentina, Angela part it's scaring.
Thank you very much for that. We're becoming a cult
like figures like Rodriguez, who there's this like singer songwriter
from I think the late sixties early seventies, and he
(47:11):
just went by the name Rodriguez and released a couple
of albums that it's totally flopped here and um, he
just went the way of obscurity. Didn't realize that in
South Africa, these two albums are achieved like just incredible
status over there, and everyone wondered what happened to him,
And finally years later he found out like he's like
(47:32):
a mythical figure in South Africa. You know, there's a
documentary that just came out about the whole time it
sounds like a movie or something. There's a documentary. Well,
it sounds like that feature film, like something someone would
make up. I saw a movie like that. You mean,
I went to Silver Docks and saw The Impostor and
it was very much like that. Where the one of
(47:55):
the producers afterwards the Q and it was like he
was asked if they were going to turn it into
like a feature film, and he's like, we can't, Like
there's just too many it's too outlandish that if you
fictionalized it, people would be like, this is stupid. Why
did you Why did you make these choices? Do I
want to see it? Yeah? You should. It's very good, awesome. UM,
okay if you have a doc recommendary documentary recommendation, so
(48:19):
I guess it'd be a documentary recommendation, a DOCU wreck.
Thank thank you. Um, we're always looking for that. Um
is that correct? Doc you wreck? Because I think I've
seen that written before. Yeah, I just made it up. Um.
You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
(48:41):
you Should Know, and you can email us your rex
too Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com? Yeah h. Brought to you by the
(49:05):
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
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