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The big Christmas celeb-story was the Katy Perry/Russell Brand divorce announcement. For tabloids it had everything- she’s a lipstick lesbian and his addictive personality means that there has to be something either up his nose or on his dick at all times.
It’s been the latter for years now which has made him the thinking woman’s sexual predator of choice and a tabloid favourite.
What the tabloids don’t like is not having the sleazy details.
Over the summer we had riots and phone hacking. Everything’s gone quiet now and we’re left with the old bogeymen.
The Mail sees global warming as some kind of conspiracy that involves the BBC, the lib dems, Richard Dawkins and someone at a council who wants to rebrand Christmas as Winterval.
In fact on Monday they managed to combine a climate change story with another of their favourite topics when they discovered that wind turbines were immigrants (‘Two thirds of the UK’s wind turbines are foreign-owned’).
Last week was depressing as hell. Foreigners kept on dying all over the world with no respect for tabloid circulation.It was a week so full of human suffering that the announcement of the budget was comic relief.
The government got pretty much what it wanted from the right-wing tabloids on Thursday when they explained the budget to us stupids. The Mail happily put Osborne’s transparently phrased summary that the budget would “put fuel in the tank” of the economy on their front page. Do you think the Chancellor wanted our attention focused on any specific aspect of the budget perchance? The Mail were very keen to report on the 6p cut in petrol duty. 6p that consisted of delaying a planned 5p rise and cutting 1p from a price which had already been pushed up more than 3p by the VAT increase. You lucky people.
Anyway, sorry about that- budgets are boring. Creative accounting may be creative but it’s still accounting.
That popular bogeyman, the BBC, has had to suffer the slings and arrows of British newspaper writers again over the last few weeks. It’s been very quiet since Christmas in tabloid-news terms. That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been plenty of events that have been shaping the world- simply that there hasn’t been adequate stories to keep tabloid readers interested.
Nothing sells better than incensing people and given them that warm fuzzy glow that comes from feeling indignant. The Eastenders Cot Death Story Controversy should not be confused with The Eastenders Cot Death Story.
The latter revolved around one of its central characters losing her baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and then stealing anther character’s baby. The former asks some terrifying questions about the BBC about whether they hate all ‘right-thinking’ people.
This week’s summary of some the stories reported by the tabloids starts off quite fun, gets a bit serious in the middle before resuming silliness at the end. It is what’s known in management (and Spinal Tap) circles as a shit sandwich. Except with funny bread and shit that’s some kind of metaphor for something really clever.
With miners (Yay- live ones!/Oh Bugger- dead ones!) being all the rage these days it’s nice to see The Mail getting into the sprit of things and actually undertaking their own mining expedition.
Journalists are laden with picks and shovels making great progress as they tackle the bottom of the Royal Wedding barrel looking for one last nugget of news. Last Friday they ran a story on page 9 headlined Revealed, how William is actually marrying Nanny with the further subhead of After all Charles fell for a dead ringer of his.
The tabloids were given a week off from having to rely on stoking anger and intolerance, and got to devote half of their pages to the new Coalition Party Announcement that Wills and Kate are planning to marry in a symbolic act to support unpopular economic policies.
Yes, David Cameron is hoping that Prince William’s marriage will give him a head-of-state makeover, a look pioneered by Tony Blair following the death of Diana.
Cameron quickly announced that the wedding date will be a bank holiday, which means that millions of people will still be able to not give a shit about people they don’t know, but in their own time. Which is jolly nice. It certainly puts all that icky stuff like war and poverty into perspective. Read More >>>
The Daily Mail was enjoying its moment in the sun this week as the originators of a genuine ‘internet phenomenon’- the cigar guy snapped at the Ryder Cup by one of their own photographers. Yep, it took a week off from articles about suicide websites, and middle class houses being destroyed by Facebook-alerted gatecrashers, to decide this technology thing might be a bloody good wheeze after all.
What isn’t fun at all though are drugs. Especially when taken by successful hard-working people.
After Nigel Kennedy’s recent admittance to smoking marijuana the Mail’s comment section, whilst discussing children selling drugs at school, put the blame on celebrities such as “classical music’s self-styled bad-boy”. Only in Mailworld is a 53 year-old classical violinist a corrupting influence on the youth of today. Read More >>>
It’s been quiet for the tabloids this week. Things have gotten so bad, they’ve been forced into covering politics! Admittedly their coverage of the Labour leadership has been more like the video for Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but with Liam and Noel Gallagher cast as the cold war leaders.
There was such a severe dearth of decent celeb-stories for them to cover that The Sun reported the revelation that Kate Moss was taking Folic Acid, popular amongst hopeful and pregnant mothers, by having a page long banner calmly announcing “KATE’S ON ACID”.
The Daily Mail accused Madonna of being undignified and not acting her age because of some saucy Dolce & Gabanna pics, although when Helen Mirren is pictured scantily clad, it’s a triumph for the representation of older women everywhere. The Mirror decided to dedicate a front page to Coleen Nolan almost having her arm ripped off (known in some circles as not having her arm ripped off) when handling a pony, the content of which amounted to a more sober ‘ex-pop star breaks finger’ scoop. Read More >>>
