For some reason, tabloid news grips the entire nation. For this same reason, people care about what Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston are up to. This is crazy stuff. It probably says a great deal about the culture of the United States that the general person would worship these chiseled celebrities so much and pine after their every move. It doesn’t seem like a really healthy thing, for an individual or for a society. There is a theory that says Americans ogle after celebrities because it is their version of the Royal Family of the United Kingdom. The Unites States has never had anything quite like that. Although the Kennedy family has been the closest thing to it

So without a royally elevated class to look up to, the typically person waiting in line at the grocery store instead places their attention on the tabloid newspapers that first build up these celebrities, then work tirelessly to tear them down by pointing out their every flaw. This cycle is some pretty crazy stuff. However, that’s not all. Because of the culture that these celebrities are entering into, they must make themselves look more beautiful that even nature can produce. So they are getting all sorts of plastic surgery that makes them look unnatural. Yet, people still idolize these celebrities and judge themselves against the unrealistic and impossible standards the tabloid newspapers seem to hold them up to.

The real crazy stuff is that on occasion tabloid newspapers are not pure smut. In fact, sometime they break really important stories aside from Paris Hilton being caught drinking and driving . . . again. For instance, during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, the National Inquirer broke the story that Democratic candidate John Edwards was having an affair with someone on his staff who had mothered Edwards’ illegitimate baby. That was a really big story that the mainstream newspapers missed.

So although the majority of tabloid newspapers are at best a source of entertainment and humor and at worst quite harmful to individuals who take them seriously and the culture that supports that type of newspaper, there are some tabloids that do good work to focus the public attention on real issues that matter to them and not on which celebrity is getting too fat. The really crazy stuff about it is that many of the journalists who work for tabloids are actually really good reporters and writers. Instead of using their craft on helping people understand the complex world around them, they drag them through the muck of the world.

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