The Tabloids and The Gunfighter

Comrade Zanne has decided to call me out about my family's consumption of celebrity tabloid magazines, since I mentioned them in a recent post. So let me tell you about it

I mentioned that Mrs Gunfighter and I "read" the celebrity tabloids... all of them. We regularly purchase US, Life & Style, OK!, The Star, and In Touch. While I know that this sounds like a significant investment, let me just say that there is method to our madness.

We look at the tabloids like this: We don't watch a terribly huge amount of network television, and almost never go to the movies... or rent movies for that matter. Having said this, we are able to keep up with entertainment aspects of pop-culture, while sitting at the kitchen table.

OK, now you know our basic reasoning for buying those rags. Let me tell you another aspect of our reasoning. Reading (ok, looking at the pictures) tabloids is Patriotic. That's right, we are Americans!, and as such, we love nothing more than moralizing and tsk-tsking about the recent Re-hab antics of Britney Spears. We love to say that WE would never do anything like get busted by the cops for playing the bongos while naked and smoking dope. No. Not us. Not good ol' Ward Cleaver Gunfighter & family. Not buyin' it? Well, ok.

The truth is that, to us, Hollywood might as well be another planet, and celebrities are aliens... or at least zoo creatures. We look. We point. We cringe. They aren't like us, and we, thank God, aren't really anything like them. For an hour or so on a friday or saturday evening, we look at and discuss the freak-show and then get back to our regularly scheduled lives.

Harmless fun.