JANUARY 29, 2021 – I remember old times when The National Enquirer was standard fare at the check-out counter of every grocery store. Above the candy, the tabloid’s front page screamed something crazy like, ALIENS INVADE CHURCH IN TULSA or GRANDMOTHER GIVES BIRTH TO TWO-HEADED ARMADILLO. My reaction was never, “Really?” It was, “How does The National Enquirer stay in business, because who’d ever fall for such nonsense?” Then one day I saw the person in front of me pull the latest issue from the rack and place it between Coke cans and milk cartons on the conveyor belt. I was “flaggerbasted.”
Fast forward to . . . today. As a life-long news junkie, I’ll allow one guess as to what I do every morning immediately after pressing “DISMISS” on my phone alarm. That’s right. I check my news feed (headlines of The Times). Today was typical. “Tabloid” has gone mainstream.
Start with Orange Man. All by himself, he’s the modern equivalent of any given issue of The National Enquirer, prompting the perpetual question, “How does such a loser gain traction, because who’d ever fall for such nonsense?” Except people did and do . . . and will, even long after the headline, CIRCUS CLOWN OCCUPIES OFFAL OFFICE.
It gets worse. Earlier this week, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy flew to Marred-In-Lago and paid fealty to Orange Man, despite the latter’s official loser status. Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz traipsed all the way to WhyRoaming? to dis Liz Cheney for her disloyalty to the Dishonored One. Back in D.C., meanwhile, on the floor of the Senate, Rand-My-Middle-Name-is-Ayn Paul excoriated democrats (who happen to be Democrats) who call for accountability. In the face of Trump’s continuing influence, only five Republican senators are willing to stick their necks out and convict him for the ultimate If-This-Isn’t-Impeachable-Than-What-Is? crime.
After shaking my head in reaction to this morning’s headlines, I switched to my FB feed. The first hint of sunlight was a reminder I needed to be quick about it. My eye caught a comment to a friend’s negative post about the Marjorie Taylor Greene—the newly elected Republican Congresswoman from Georgia who is another walking National Enquirer headline. The comment read, “I live a couple miles outside of her district. She has a strong following of people who believe the same things she does. Hot mess.”
The truth behind the comment didn’t set me free. It made me captive to the bed covers yanked tightly over my head. The world really has gone to hell in a handbasket, I thought. Make that, “a frying pan of sizzling lard.”
The problem, I realized, is that the frying pan isn’t Congress and the sizzling lard isn’t a bunch spineless Republican “leaders.” The pan is our democracy and the lard is a slab off our citizenry, animated by the scorching heat of free speech: falsehoods, ignorance, conspiracy theories, and tortured interpretations of everything from Biblical passages to the Federalist Papers.
The headline of our tabloid times: AMERICA FRIES IN ITS OWN FAT.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
