{"id":28855,"date":"2016-04-17T13:26:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T13:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/?page_id=28855"},"modified":"2016-04-17T13:26:29","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T13:26:29","slug":"the-pop-of-king-enquiring-minds","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/king-family\/columns-king-uit-entertainment-weekly\/the-pop-of-king-enquiring-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pop of King: Enquiring Minds…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"kingcolumn\"<\/a>All right, show of hands\u2014who out there buys the National Enquirer, or at least noodges through it while waiting in line at the supermarket checkout? Come on now, get \u2018em up, Uncle Stevie can see you through his magic word processor and knows if you\u2019re holding back. Besides, I do it, and when I buy it, I read it just as soon as I finish helping my wife put the groceries away. If I can confess, you can too. So get those hands up. You too, Lisa and Owen, I\u2019m watching you.<\/p>\n

There, that\u2019s better.<\/p>\n

The question is, what in the hell makes the Enquirer so damned addictive? What\u2019s the secret of its success? Well, after a critical reading of the last two issues (which mostly took place in a small room where we keep a roll of paper on the wall), I can tell you there\u2019s not just one secret but at least four, and I\u2019m going to EXPOSE THEM for you now, in the best rock-\u2018em-and-shock-\u2018em Enquirer style.<\/p>\n

First, THE CELEBRITY IS YOUR NEIGHBOR! Not always your pal, but yeah! Celebs and Enquirer readers are on a first-name basis! None of that polite distancing nonsense, like in Entertainment Weekly, where folks like Jack Nicholson or Martha Stewart are fully named once and then referred to as \u201cNicholson\u201d or \u201cStewart.\u201d In the Enquirer, Nicholson is Jack (the Aging Party Boy) and Stewart is Martha (Target for Girl Gangs in Lesbian Hell Prison). Because we know these people. We may not like all of them, but they come into our homes almost every day. We discuss their clothes, their hair, their weight gains (or, in some cases\u2014think Calista Flockhart\u2014their ANOREXIA CRISIS), their lovers, marriages, and divorces. Who cares if Calista, Jack, Britney, and others say the stories are just plain wrong? The Enquirer gives it all up in a dishy, just-chatting-about-the-neighbors tone that makes us feel like we\u2019re living right next door. Privacy? What privacy?<\/p>\n

Second, THE CELEBRITY IS NAUGHTY! Many folks seem to harbor the belief that successful showbiz folks have only one ultimate goal: to party till they puke (LOVE HURTS: RAMPAGE MAY COST COURTNEY MILLIONS!), or maybe die (River Phoenix\u2019s DEADLY DOSE!) Thus we have Enquirer rumors about Jack Nicholson and drugs, Pink going topless at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool (gasp!), and that little vixen Britney trying to steal some nice girl\u2019s husband (oh, gosh, that it-rhymes-with-witch).<\/p>\n

Which leads to Three, RICH PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS IN TROUBLE! The one sermon the Enquirer preaches over and over\u2014and why not, when readers never seem to tire of it?\u2014is that talent leads to fame, fame leads to success, success leads to partying, and partying leads to GETTING IN TROUBLE. You may be rich and famous, but you still live right here on the street, sunshine. We know what you\u2019re up to. Have a booze relapse and you risk being outed when you go back to AA meetings. Decide to refuse treatment for addictive behavior? Okay, but one hopes you don\u2019t have a famous parent (FARRAH\u2019S SON FLEES DRUG REHAB!). Oh, and better practice safe sex, or… JFK JR. LOVE CHILD! Need I say more, Bunky?<\/p>\n

And finally\u2014death is so final, isn\u2019t it?\u2014FAMOUS PEOPLE GET TO DIE IN PUBLIC! In the bad old days, the Enquirer was infamous for its death pix\u2014no one who ever saw them can forget the photos of Lee Harvey Oswald getting whisked off to the morgue on a stretcher or Elvis in his coffin\u2014but even in its newest, gentler, more celebrity-oriented incarnation, the Enquirer is still interested in which of the neighbors is getting ready to step out. Who can forget SOUL LEGEND BARRY WHITE\u2019S DEATHBED DRAMA? For that matter, who can forget the Enquirer going on about Steve McQueen\u2019s final months with lung cancer, or its photo of a skeletal Dean Martin being helped out of a car, wearing a gold chain and looking like death on a cracker? Heartwarming stuff!<\/p>\n

Sure, there are lots of other neighborly little features in the Enquirer; you can learn how to have a fabulous vacation without spending a fortune, read reviews of the new DVD releases, maybe spend some time doing the world-famous Enquirer Color Cross (53-Down in the March 29 issue is \u201cSinger Midler\u201d, and I\u2019m guessing that would be BETTE). But the staples never really change: who\u2019s using, who\u2019s cheating, who\u2019s getting fat, who\u2019s in trouble with the law, and who\u2019s getting ready to check out permanently. What Don Henley once called dirty laundry. And still, there\u2019s something about it, isn\u2019t there? Something that just draws us in. We don\u2019t want to read that Roy Horn, months after being mauled and almost killed by one of his tigers, is deeply depressed and can\u2019t make it to the bathroom without help, and part of us understands we have no business knowing that\u2014it should be private\u2014and yet part of us wants that useless information anyway. Why? Because it is useless? Because it\u2019s painful? Because it makes us feel better about feeling well ourselves? Or is it because we want to think this is what being famous gets you, so most of us are better off right where we are?<\/p>\n

Hey, maybe it\u2019s just human nature. Human curiosity. Or a taste for fresh meat. Maybe you readers have an idea.
\nIf so, I give up.<\/p>\n

Enquiring minds want to know.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All right, show of hands\u2014who out there buys the National Enquirer, or at least noodges through it while waiting in line at the supermarket checkout? Come on now, get \u2018em up, Uncle Stevie can see you through his magic word<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4585,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-28855","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28861,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28855\/revisions\/28861"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}