Brangelina . . . and Your Duty as a U.S. Citizen

Friday afternoon I dropped into a pharmacy-variety store downtown and saw the rack of magazines below on the counter between the cash registers, which I photographed. I want to draw your attention to three of the four publications: the one at the upper left and the two on the bottom . . .

In case you can’t make out the full text about the cover stories, the Vanity Fair cover reads: “Angie Solo…” and there’s some sort of subhead about “…Became Difficult.” The current US Weekly issue proclaims: “Angie & Brad: The Divorce is Off! Inside the incredible story of how they’re fighting for their marriage, family & love.”

But the current issue of In Touch asserts: “Brad’s Getting Married! … Furious Angelina doesn’t want another woman around her kids … Sober and drug-free, Brad is finally ready to find happiness.”

So. Three different publications that peddle three different and absolutely conflicting scenarios: that Angelina Jolie is firmly on her own . . . that she and Brad Pitt are patching up their marriage . . . and that Pitt is marrying somebody else.

The direct contradiction between the tales proffered by these three contemporaneous covers, even though they’re ostensibly about the same people at roughly the same point in time -- that is to say, now -- are disturbing, but it’s nothing new for this genre; it’s just not usually so blatant, in such an timely and obvious manner.

I couldn’t care less about the truth of the matter (which is probably unavailable to almost everyone for the moment). Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie are living their lives as best they know how, and it’s really none of our business.

Because of its past record and other bono fides, the Vanity Fair story is probably the closest to the truth, so I’ve linked it. The text that accompanies the obligatory fashion-glamour photography includes a fairly interesting exploration of the background on her latest movie project, “First They Killed My Father,” for Netflix, about the 1970s Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. I doubt I’m the only reader who thought of something else when he read the sentence “In Cambodia, yelling is not just disrespectful—it’s also considered a sign of weakness.”

Out of curiosity, I checked to see whether copies of the other two cover stories are available online, and they are. The In Touch account cites “an insider” and “a direct source” in ACTUAL QUOTATIONS to support their contention that Pitt is about to marry a “beautiful artist” who’s “30-ish, doesn’t know or associate with anyone in Hollywood and only knows on or two of his films”; and the US Weekly article also references “a source.”

To boost their patina of credibility, both US Weekly and In Touch repeat fairly neutral quotes from the Vanity Fair interview with Jolie. Both also tart up their supposed authority with quotes from a May interview with Pitt in GQ. It’s a little heartening that the first hit that turned up when I Googled the In Touch story was a site called Gossipcop that explained (thre days ago) that the Brad-to-remarry story from In Touch is a total fabrication. (Apparently, the divorce-in-limbo-they-may-reconcile angle in US Weekly is not hot enough to warrant repudiation.)

I’ve spent far more time and space on the content than I care to, in order to set the stage for my larger point.

The mechanics and ethics of the “journalism” involved are of mild interest: who made up the stories that are not accurate, on what (if anything) the writers and magazines have based whatever claims they make about their subjects, and how often the targets of such stories bother to sue the publications that indulge in this mendacious gossip (and why they don’t more often, given how many false stories get printed).

The longtime standard practice of doctoring slips of information and hints, and “fixing” photos (decades before PhotoShop came along) or using them out of context for maximum effect, are also lessons for critical thinking. Odds are, the US Weekly cover photo is faked. Pitt and Jolie were probably never out together and dressed like that; not in the last six months, at least. We might speculate that the magazine took a recent shot of him at an awards ceremony and another of her at a charity benefit, say, and melded them together, perhaps with a background crowd from some other event entirely. And chances are, we’d be right.

In a similar way, when one of these publications -- or the National Enquirer, or the Star or the Globe -- chooses to peddle a horror story about some celebrity’s bad behavior, they’ll usually include a photo that has no relation to the event (or non-event) whatsoever. It’s just an unflattering shot that a freelance shooter captured on the fly weeks or even months before, and made some money selling it to the paper as a stock photo for later use.

But that’s not my main point, either.

What concerns me is the relationship to these publications’ target audience: the consumers of this material and the long-term effects of this kind of casual, ongoing dishonesty. Who buys this crap? When someone sees a magazine display like this, does he or she feel any urge to say: man, I gotta stop wasting my time with this B.S.? Or do people automatically buy their favorite tabloid, possibly even snap up all three conflicting issues?

Does the sight of three mutually contradictory messages on competing magazine covers, or a pattern of off-and-on contradictions and reversals over time, ever give the millions of people who buy these rags pause?

Or to put it most charitably, are millions of Americans buying these magazines with the full understanding that they’re being fed lies and fantasies, and they’re expending dollars and the time required to read them just for leisure? (Dare one say, pleasure?)

Perhaps. But I’m afraid this is one of many symptoms of how wrong this country has gone in the recent past, especially the last year. (If you’re interested in the nexus between supermarket tabloids and libel law, and why they’re sued so relatively infrequently despite all their lies, here’s an excellent analysis from The Atlantic in 1999.)

This week’s magazine display illustrates at least two issues -- two dire national problems -- that might seem trivial, but run nasty and deep:

• The triumph of entertainment “news” (that is to say, distraction by weltschmerz and Schadenfreude)

• Widespread unwillingness (or, god help us) inability to think critically

If you’re not familiar with the terms, the wonderful German word weltschmerz (“VELT-shmairtz”) refers to world-pain or world-weariness; hence, depression and deep apathy. Schadenfreude (“SHAW-dun-froyduh”) is an even more useful word from the German. Literally, “harm-joy,” it describes the emotional state or experience of joy, pleasure, or satisfaction in witnessing or learning about the troubles, failure, or humiliation of someone else. Ordinary folks read about the miseries of the famous to distract themselves from their own defeats and dissatisfactions.

“Fake news” -- in the most real sense, as opposed to the way the President has casually employed it to refer to stories he doesn’t like or agree with, whether they’re true or false (and often, they’re true) -- goes back nearly a century, and probably further.

The National Enquirer was founded in 1926. By the 1950s, it had established a sensationalistic approach to national crime and sex scandal stories. In the early Sixties, it hustled impulse newsstand sales with headlines such as “I Cut Her Heart Out and Stomped On It” (Sept. 8, 1963) and “Mom Boiled Her Baby and Ate Her” (1962). (Did/does ANYONE have an actual subscription to such trash?)

It’s both interesting and unsettling to note, however, that the paper managed to worm its way into (semi-)legitimate news territory on occasion. A voice for isolationism and pro-fascist propaganda in the 1930s, the tabloid and its publisher were indicted for sedition by a grand jury in 1942 for “subverting the morale of U.S. troops” by editorializing against the nation’s entry into the Second World War.

More recently, the Enquirer managed to break stories of dubious newsworthiness that were uneasily parroted by more mainstream sources later, such as John Edwards’s extramarital affair in 2007, and Bristol Palin’s unmarried teen pregnancy after advocating for sexual abstinence in 2008.

When speculation surfaced about a potential Pulitzer Prize to the Enquirer for its investigation of Edwards, a certain future President said the tabloid should be “respected” for that work, and he questioned why it didn’t receive the reward. (Self-righteously but amusingly, the San Francisco Examiner sniffed that this would be like “nominating a porn flick for an Oscar”).

Which brings this discussion to where my mind went after I saw the magazine stand on the counter on Friday:

When people become so blasé about their sources of information, and about the blurred distinctions between valid news and mere entertainment, is it any wonder we allowed a clown into the Oval Office who gets his “facts” from advocacy “news” sites, who peddles lies and historical inaccuracies pretty much every day, and who doesn’t seem to care what the truth might be? . . . about anything?

When every piece of information becomes equal to every other (“both sides” are to blame for violence in Charlottesville?), or drowned and lost in a sea of gossip and lies; when a misperceived need for “fairness” drives even legitimate news sources to seek a “balancing” opinion from, say, an NRA spokesperson every time an enraged man mows down his estranged wife and children with an assault weapon . . . then essential moral distinctions become clouded and even throttled by meaningless verbiage.

Which, for all the triviality of Brangelina, starts to color and ultimately destroy Americans’ ability to be active and critical citizens. Wars become entertainment that’s thrilling for a few weeks or a month or two, but lose market share in a short time and become subject to indifference, even as they grind on in their costly way.

You haven’t forgotten that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are still going on after 16 years and 14 years, respectively, have you? . . . though they’ve been rebranded for political purposes from “Operation Enduring Freedom” and “the Second Persian Gulf War” as “the War on Terrorism” and “the Iraq Insurgency.” Before they were officially declared over, nearly 2,400 U.S. military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and nearly 4,500 in the latter.

Yet the sons and daughters of your neighbors, possibly even your family, are continuing to die in Afghanistan (six as of June 11) and Iraq (eight so far this year) for reasons that were unclear from the start and I daresay nobody could articulate today. Six and eight are certainly improved mortality stats than nearly a thousand per year at their height 12 years ago, but cold comfort for those dead soldiers’ families today. And that’s not counting the more than 1,000 civilian contractor casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq before 2007 -- a particularly odd and deadly form of corporate outsourcing.

I could go on about the larger issues raised by muddy thinking and the dodging of critical, attention-worthy issues for citizens, from the gutting of the EPA and the national parks system to the lie that government is somehow solely responsible for my rising health insurance premiums, in favor of Kardashians, Game of Thrones, the latest Xbox and video games, and doping in professional sports, but I’ve more than made my point.

You might consider devoting more attention to such issues and investigating misleading or incomplete news reports, let alone casual online assertions in memes and posts, for yourself.

Or not.