Enquiring minds want to know

I saw an AP article the other day on Boston.com noting that American Media, which publishes The National Enquirer, will be filing for bankruptcy.

Well, one could certainly argue that there’s been some degree of bankruptcy associated with the outfit from the outset. It just hasn’t been financial.

The National Enquirer bankrupt?

Somewhere, a famed psychic’s head explodes.*

Although I would read a copy once in a blue moon – if that – in the past,  I actually haven’t picked up an Enquirer in years.  And, since I shop via Pea Pod or in person at Whole Foods, I no longer have the opportunity to graze the headlines as I wait in the checkout line.  The mags at Whole Foods are so tofu-yoga-wellness colorless, I don’t even give them a glance.

By the way, it’s not as much fun to look at what other folks have in their shopping carts at Whole Foods, either. Much more entertaining at Stop & Shop! One time, I was behind a woman whose cart was chocked full of every bad-for-you, no-redeeming-nutritional value thing you could think of. Lucky Stars, not Shredded Wheat. Dr. Pepper, not Tropicana.  Marshmallow Fluff, not Trappist jelly.

The only vegetable she was buying was a couple of frozen packs of candied sweet potatoes. The ones with marshmallows in them.

I’ve certainly got a sweet tooth, but I felt myself going into diabetic shock just looking at what this woman was buying.

Not that everything’s so all-fired pure and holy at Whole Foods. It just doesn’t seem to attract much of an I Brake For Junk Food crowd. (Other than the closet types who drift into CVS afterwards for a one-pound bag of M&M’s.)

But Stop & Shop did carry The Enquirer, and it was always entertaining to see what they were informing us about.

Hilter’s love child. What Marilyn Monroe had for her last meal. Alien invasions.

Now we have oh, so many sources for celebrity gossip, made up “facts”, and crazing speculation, that we don’t need The Enquirer quite as much as we used to.

Oh, they can still pack some punch. The Enquirer broke the John Edwards-Rielle Hunter scandal a couple of years back.

But I don’t need The Enquirer to tell me about Hitler’s love child. I can go to the Google and check out the rumors about Unity Mitford.

As usually happens with a corporate bankruptcy, it’s all spun up into a smart business decision.

"American Media is engaging in this strategy from a position of financial strength and confidence," said David Pecker, the company's chairman and CEO. "It will provide us with the ability to compete even more aggressively with our peers in the industry."

Which it no doubt is. Still, it leaves us all thinking dubious thoughts: ah, yes, getting rid of that pesky debt will help them compete.

Sentimental me, I do hope that The Enquirer manages to hold on.  After all, we there’s no so thing as enough stories about Charlie Sheen, Lisa Marie, O.J. Simpson, Jonbenet, et al.  And there are those tantalizing headlines – which, alas, promise so much more than they manage to deliver.

Intriguing headline	Boring article
Michael Douglas journey to the prison of the damned	Douglas visits his son who’s imprisoned for drug offenses
Hidden horrors: when Jesus was a vampire	Bela Lugosi didn’t just play Dracula, he once portrayed Christ in a Passion Play
Khloe K’s OJ Trauma	Khloe experienced hair loss after her father died. What’s this got to do with OJ? Her father was his lawyer.

And who needs the staid old NY Times, that boring gray lady, reporting on Ted Sorenson’s death when we can  read about JFK’s Guru Felled by Stroke in the garishly painted that-ain’t-no lady that is The Enquirer.

But sometimes the headline’s do pretty much capture the story – I didn’t even have to click through on [Charlie] Sheen: Boozy Naked Berserk to figure that out.

By the way, what is the truth behind that famous psychic’s head explodes header?  Enquiring minds want to know….

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*Classic Enquirer headline.