Objective reality is dead. We are just guests at the wake.

The Portland Police Department have closed the investigation of charges against Al Gore for sexual assault against a massage therapist for an incident that happened in 2006. The public would be completely unaware of this except for the National Enquirer. Over at my other blog, It's News 2 Them™, I have followed the headlines they have had about Al and the therapist. I point you toward this link from the middle of the story, which has a further link to an investigation by Talking Points Memo, a center-left political news blog.

The Enquirer got a Pulitzer nomination for their work on the John Edwards story. This isn't the worst major award mistake in my lifetime. Henry Kissinger has a Nobel Peace Prize, for pity's sake. In my lifetime, Around the World in 80 Days, The Sound of Music, Rocky, Ordinary People, Dances With Wolves, Braveheart, Crash and Slumdog Millionaire were Best Picture winners. The Pulitzer's mistake was just a nomination and not a win, but it ranks right up there with these other mistakes.

I've only been reading the tabloids closely for about seven months now and only the covers, but I'm a quick study. Some of the supermarket rags have reporters who do a good job, but many of the headline writers are grotesque hacks. They are happy to put people in jail who haven't even been charged yet, and in the case of Al Gore, it looks like he'll never be charged in this case. The Portland Police decided the woman's story wasn't credible, and though the Enquirer denies it, the Portland Police say the woman was paid by the Enquirer. In such a case, I believe the Portland Police.

None of this matters a whit. There are people who hate Al Gore and will believe with all their hearts that this was a whitewash and a miscarriage of justice. More than that, they will believe that Al Gore's alleged inability to control his penis is proof that Anthropogenic Climate Change is just a figment of evil people's imaginations.


Before you think this is an indictment of right wing stupidity, let's recall the story that brought the National Enquirer out of the wilderness, their exposé of the drug habits of Rush Limbaugh. By bribing Limbaugh's maid, they got a lot of the details correct about his Oxycontin use. On tape, he told the people who were his middlemen to keep silent or he would be in jail.

They didn't keep silent. He admitted his addiction and went into rehab. Charges were filed against him by the police of doctor shopping to get more pills than a single prescription would fill. He did get thousands of pills in the space of a few months, so the facts looked to be incontrovertible. He hired a big scary lawyer, Roy Black. The district attorneys in Palm Beach allowed him to plead not guilty in exchange for court ordered supervision for 18 months after a three year investigation.

In the eyes of the law, Mr. Limbaugh is a free man. This does not stop some people from thinking he is just a rich person who gamed our now decrepit and corrupt legal system.

In much the same way, but with the split being racial instead of political, the legal system letting both Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson free are seen as either wise use of the court's power or the end of civilization as we know it.

If you have a particular prejudice, then you are a niche and someone will scratch you. On the Internet, on TV, in the newspapers, there is someone who will tell you what you want to hear, no matter what happens. Obama crushes McCain in a landslide? This is a major victory for a Republican splinter group that will call itself the Tea Party. Even more evidence is present about global warming? The polls can show that the public is turning against the idea.

Science is just "theory", much weaker than its modern rival "conjecture". After all, science said bumblebees can't fly. Stupid, stupid scientists.

In brief, objective reality is dead. We are just guests at the wake.

The place that makes the other blog work

My other blog It's News 2 Them™ is easier to write than this one, since it's all just rip and read and add the occasional snark and context. But it would be impossible without a place where I can get the headlines from all of The Only Ten Magazines That Matter, and that means I get on my bicycle every Thursday and visit DeLauer's News Stand in downtown Oakland. As you can see from the sign, the place has been a fixture on Broadway (between 13th and 14th Sts.) since 1907. It's currently owned by some very nice guys from Ethiopia, and even though I don't buy the magazines, I try to give them some patronage when I go in and treat their business like a browsing library.

DeLauer's is conveniently located near the 12th Street BART station and their selection of magazines and periodicals of all kinds is second to none. I know that this blog is read by people all over the place, but if you are local to the San Francisco Bay Area, why not stop by and give DeLauer's a look see? It's your one stop place to shop for new periodicals of all kinds.

Respect for journalism.

In recent weeks, the Huffington Post has been semi-obsessed about the National Enquirer. They have published several stories about the tabloid being in the running for a Pulitzer based on their exclusive story about John Edwards, Rielle Hunter and their love child. Ross Douthat, the conservative who replace the late William Safire in the opinion department at The New York Times, wrote a piece saying the Enquirer earned the place at the table and even deserved to win. This week, the Times' Stephanie Clifford a hard news piece about the process the Enquirer used to get the John Edwards story, which included some actual shoe leather reporting instead of just paid sources, the tabloid's usual modus operandi.

I'm just a blogger and not a journalist. But I'm following the tabloids regularly now with the introduction of my other blog, and let me say with some authority that the National Enquirer is still a joke and deserves no respect from serious journalists.

Let me be specific. I won't confuse them will the silly Weekly World News or Globe or the National Examiner, all of which are published by the same company. The website for American Media, Inc. shows how dishonest the company is. They say they publish 16 magazines, but on their front page they only list 11. You have to do some clever clicking to find them admitting to publishing the completely unreliable stuff.

But again, let's just focus on the Enquirer, which I half jokingly refer to as The Flagship on the other blog. They have the same problems as all the other tabloids have to one degree or another, which is they publish lies. Their headlines regularly overstate or misstate the substance of their stories.

Many people gave the Enquirer credit for saying Michael Jackson had six months to live before he died, but they miss how often the paper makes those predictions and gets them wrong. The one mathy thing I'm going to do on my other blog is publish a list once a month of everybody who has been associated with a story saying either "xxx is dying" or "xxx's brave last days". As of this morning, there are 21 people who have had that honor so far this year, and all 21 are still alive. The people specific to the Enquirer are Marie Osmond (allegedly suicidal), Whitney Houston, Bill Clinton, Gary Coleman, Barbara Billingsley, Dennis Hopper and Loretta Lynn. Of the people on this list, Dennis Hopper is really ill and Barbara Billingsley is really old, over 90. Most of the rest spent some time in the hospital, and spending time in the hospital is reason enough for any of the tabs to say a person is dying.

Let's focus on the Enquirer's big scoop, the John Edwards' infidelity story. This week's headline says "John Edwards is going to jail!" In the actual story, the Enquirer says a grand jury is ready to charge Edwards with crimes relating to the coverup of his relationship with Rielle Hunter. This is exactly the kind of sloppiness that removes the Enquirer from the list of reliable sources. They push a possible indictment to certain time in the slammer, skipping those boring steps of the actual indictment, a trial ending in a conviction and a decision on sentencing. People who followed the Scooter Libby story will also recall that if they are doing their jobs correctly, anyone with actual decision making power in a grand jury is supposed to remain silent, though those called in to testify can say whatever they like.

Here's another example of why the Enquirer is still a joke and not a serious place for journalism. They reported a story late last month with the headline "Paula Deen's bitter divorce shocker!" I foolishly chose this story to be one of the last I put on my blog, leaving it for my Wednesday post, the last news of the tabloid week. It's been one of the most popular stories on Google searches of my blog ever since, so popular that I violated my prime directive and read the story, not just the headline. (There's been a lot of prime directive violation on my blog. Captain Kirk would be so proud of me.)

A lot of people wanted to know what was going on with the celebrity chef. The answer is... nothing, at least nothing much in the present. The gist of the story is that a few years back, Paula's new husband's adult daughter didn't get along with Paula and advised her dad not to marry. The story ends with Paula and the daughter reaching an understanding, but never was a divorce proceeding anywhere to be found. The first half of the sentence is true, it involved Paula Deen and there was some bitterness. But there was no divorce and the story isn't shocking.

Journalism isn't perfect. I've been involved marginally in stories reported in the press and I know they sometimes get facts wrong. But the people writing the headlines at real news sources have an obligation to tell the true story, not just go off on wild speculation of possible outcomes of verifiable present day events.

I'm keeping track of the tabloids so you don't have to. They are still lying scumbags. Entertaining lying scumbags, I'll grant you, but what they do is nothing like real journalism.