Let me just say right up front that I don’t have a problem with celebrity journalism per se. I don’t disapprove of gossip, God knows, or think that it’s any particular shame that movie stars have to deal with paparazzi every time they want to do a mundane errand like stocking up on Diet Coke — it’s part of the Faustian bargain of fame, blah blah, and if Courtney Love is on the front page of the Post all Pomeranian-on-poppersed out, that is an edition of the Post that I will buy, read, and enjoy. Well, more like “wait for someone to leave on the train, furtively pick up, and enjoy,” but my point is that Courtney Love has nobody to blame but herself. Not that I think the tabloidization of the culture is an overall positive, obviously, but I also think it’s not the culture’s worst problem.

My problem with celebrity journalism is not that it’s nosy and mean. I mean, I’ve subscribed to Vanity Fair for over a decade, and if I have any issues with that mag, it’s that it’s taken a marked and disappointing turn for the more edifying and high-minded in the last few years; anti-Semitism in France is a serious issue, but I don’t read VF to learn about serious issues. I read VF for updates on celebrity murder cases, sepia-toned reminiscences about Wallis Simpson and how she was actually a big horsy weirdo, and giddy analyses of how much the cover subject nervously chain-smoked during his or her interview. Dear Graydon Carter: Less policy-wonking, more of the Onassis fossil record, please. Love, Sarah.

No, my problem is that, at times, celebrity journalism is not nearly nosy or mean enough. Without the nosy and the mean, I just really don’t care what celebrities get up to most of the time, because most of the time…they don’t seem to get up to much that we plebes aren’t also getting up to on a more limited budget. They shop. They go to Starbucks. They eat out. I mean, Renee Zellweger went to Barneys…big whoop. I’d go to Barneys too if I were her and I had a lot of money. I’d bring my Oscar in and make Barneys find a bunch of little outfits for it. But I don’t really think it’s newsworthy that Renee Zellweger went to Barneys unless she, like, peed in a potted plant in the VIP dressing room or something. And if she did that, Us Weekly isn’t reporting it, either because it didn’t happen so who cares that she went to Barneys and bought a shirt, seriously, or it did happen but Us Weekly can’t report it because then Barneys management won’t let their photographers malinger around outside waiting for famous people to come out anymore, because it’s bad publicity for Barneys that Squinty McWeightLoss whizzed in their foliage. Either way: Shut up, Us Weekly.

Us Weekly never has anything substantive to say. At least Vanity Fair will investigate that story and run a photo of the plant and get comments from the sales clerks and make it seem like a real investigative piece. Us Weekly literally will run stories in which the fact that there is no story…is the story. The latest issue, for example, would like us to know that Julia Roberts…still has twins. And is still married to Danny Moder. And is still kinda toothy. The accompanying candid of Danny Moder on his bicycle is not really news, unless a previous news cycle reported that Danny Moder’s inability to ride a bicycle was threatening their happy union, which I don’t recall.

And Us Weekly tends to have nothing to say about people of no consequence, too. And to do so repeatedly. Mischa Barton is so thoroughly and profoundly uninteresting that it’s going to take a full pot of coffee for me to complete a sentence containing her name — she doesn’t do anything particularly scandalous, she’s not untalented enough to bother making fun of, she’s barely old enough to drive. Why should I care? Because she’s making out with her faux-indie boyfriend Brandon what’s-his-nuts on the beach? Again? Some more? Eighteen-year-olds do a lot of making out. What is the story here? That she’s bony and rich? Still not seeing it.

Nor do I understand why it’s considered a good use of paper to report that the stars use their Sidekicks a lot — if we can use the word “stars” in this context, which, given that Jessica Alba features heavily in the reporting, we really cannot. Because…who? No, seriously. What has she done lately, besides (apparently) break up with Derek Jeter? Ha ha, Honey. Good one. …No. Seriously. Why do I care about Jessica Alba’s telecommunications choices? Because she’s famous, so I should want to be just like her? She’s not that famous in the first place, so…that’s it? That’s all you’ve got?

The magazine is just such a waste of time, truly. A lot of the purported “celebrities” it covers have done nothing of note within recent memory, except appear constantly in Us Weekly. Think about it. What does Paris Hilton actually do? She goes to events and she shops and she poses at weird Matisse-y angles with her subatomic purse dogs, and she’s captured on film doing all these things by Us Weekly, but if Us Weekly didn’t record her every Jamba Juice outing, would anyone care what she’s wearing? No. Not really. She’s famous for being famous. Nobody actually cares. Kate Hudson, same thing. The woman hasn’t registered on the culture in any way in years save for her marriage to and subsequent spawning with a grubby scarecrow, and evidently this is automatically interesting because…because…no, I don’t know why it’s interesting. She already peaked with Almost Famous; nobody even remembers which Counting Black Crowes mid-nineties Hootie-minion “band” her husband sang for. Nobody remembers because nobody cares, except Us Weekly, because Us Weekly could get pictures of them and by God, Us Weekly is going to use them.

Apparently, the “editorial” “policy” over there is dictated by the available photos. Mischa Barton is smooching with Brandon whoever-the-hell in the parking lot of a Ralph’s? Run it. Meanwhile, Liza Minnelli fell her ass out of bed and hit her head a couple weeks ago, and EMS workers found her “intoxicated” when they arrived — that is a story! One I want to read! But I guess they didn’t have a photo of Liza handy, so instead, we get yet another chapter in the interminable “Britney, Because She Is A Female Between The Ages Of 13 and 50, Could Totally Be Pregnant” saga. I mean…for real, they do this with/to every woman of childbearing age in Hollywood. I think they even did it to Ellen a few months ago, because they followed her into a drugstore and saw that she failed to buy condoms, like, well, since she’s GONE OFF BIRTH CONTROL, she’s OBVIOUSLY starting a FAMILY with OH WAIT A MINUTE NO. Okay, maybe she is starting a family; hell if I know, and if she is, good for her, but it’s like assuming that she’s converting to Islam because she didn’t buy a pork roast either.

Actually, I think that this is what drives me the most bazoo about Us Weekly. If I had any context for their vain attempts to make me give a crap about J.Lo’s recent visit to a maternity store, okay, maybe I’d take an interest, but their so-called supporting evidence is never evidence of anything except itself. Everyone is either totally in love or totally breaking up, but these assertions aren’t based on anything that actually happened; it’s like the machine is run by a binary code punch and every story is a tiny variation on either “Yay!” or “Boo!” For instance…okay, you know how, when you’re in the middle of watching 24 but then your food arrives, you pause the TiVo, and when you come back into the living room with your dinner, Kiefer is paused in such a way that he looks like a Fraggle? He doesn’t look like a Fraggle, really; it’s just where you happened to pause it. Us Weekly finds the photo equivalent of that, then builds a whole story around it with no context at all, like “Kiefer Sutherland Actually A Fraggle? Excl-Us-ive Story Inside!” And I’ll get to the stupidorama headlines in a minute, but…okay, Kiefer Sutherland isn’t a Fraggle. He just isn’t. Us has quotes, though! Saying that it’s not totally impossible that the Kief is a Fraggle, because you can’t prove a negative! From…let me see here…ah, yes: An “onlooker”! Or a “witness”! Or “a source close to the 24 set”! Not a source on the set, mind you, or a source willing to be named, or Frank Oz, but a source nonetheless!

Come on, people. I saw George Wendt on the street in L.A. once. He had Topsiders on. If I had phoned that hot tip in to Us, would the nation then have read a story headlined “Cheers Star’s Fallen-Arch Tragedy”? Probably not, because a source close to me at the curb reported that George Wendt is still pretty fat, and Us Weekly doesn’t really cover fat people, unless they got thin recently. Or unless they wear a lot of…I hate even typing the word, because enough already…”bling.” Can they not just say “sparkly jewelry”? Name the kind of jewelry? It’s a diamond bracelet. Just say “diamond bracelet.” It isn’t “bling.” Nobody says “bling” anymore.

And nobody has said “hunky” since…I don’t even know when. Between that and “hubby,” it’s like a parody of itself. Although I did enjoy the usage of “hubby” in the current issue, because the hubby in question is…Brad Pitt. So there’s a whooooole feature on Brad and Jen’s beach holiday or whatever — featuring, ironically, the first picture in the history of Us Weekly‘s breathless coverage of their marital problems in which their body language legitimately suggests the two of them aren’t really getting along that well, instead of relying on the word of some body-linguist faux-pert that Jen’s keeping her fingernails long means she wants to claw Brad’s eyes out, like, please — and yet the world already knows that they split up. Heh. Good one, Us. Not. And do not use the word “bopped” when you mean “danced,” because my God.

Furthermore: “TSUNAMI TRAGEDY: A Model’s Heartache”? Are you kidding me with that? I skipped the article, because…well, I skip all the articles, and I’d never heard of this model, and she’s evidently alive, so…I know more than I need to about this “story” already. I think her boyfriend died, which is sad, of course, but we’re only meant to care because she’s a model. Non-models who lost their entire families? Not Us Weekly’s purview, and that’s fine, but honestly, this is not a story Us should get anywhere near, even tangentially. It’s way out of their depth (please pardon the expression), and the implication that it’s only sad because someone pretty is sad is…icky. Again, not that she shouldn’t be sad. It’s just not sad-der because she’s pretty. You know what I mean.

But really, that headline prompted more of a reaction in me than anything else they usually run. Most of it is just…visual white noise. I don’t read the articles because…I can’t. The words just slide off my brain, because the words have to do with Anna Nicole Smith’s money problems, or Nick Lachey playing golf, and I just…don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, it happens when I try to read New Yorker pieces, too; it’s not like I can’t concern myself with such trivial matters, because…dude, I love trivial matters. The Girls’ Bike Club is rather a trivial matter, and I would “concern myself with” writing new chapters of it all day if I had the time. But the trivial matters in Us don’t seem to have any meaning or framework at all, and not everyone who’s famous is equally famous, or exciting, but Us just sort of conflates Elvis and Eva Longoria, the way a two-year-old will put any old thing in his mouth just because he can and he doesn’t care if it’s a Tater Tot or a rusty nail…I don’t know. The whole “if you get a Birkin bag, you’ll be almost as good and real as a famous person” thing…if it’s done with style, it’s sort of fun in a plasticky way, but Us Weekly is just relentlessly “ooh, shiny” and it’s boring.

There isn’t anything wrong with “ooh, shiny” as a philosophy or a cultural interest. But editorial policies need to have more than one note, and using the term “BFF” in captions, without irony, does not count as a note.

January 10, 2005

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