Stars! They're Just Like Us!
Sometimes, you need a laugh.
Of the many changes brought on by technology, one of the biggest has been the way information is consumed. With practically everyone carrying a smart device on their person, current news is one click (or preset notification) away.
Seldom mentioned is how this paradigm shift affected celebrity tabloid magazines. Publications such as The National Enquirer1, US Weekly, and Stars were a primary source for gossip and rumors on Hollywood and political figures on supermarket magazine racks. While maintaining a somewhat sleazy reputation in journalism circles, exclusive Hollywood star interviews and the latest scandals on their covers were a prequel to the clickbait headlines we are bombarded with online today.
These magazines were a fixture in many American homes as the go-to for the latest entertainment news.
As more news stories begin to emulate this formula, it becomes harder to determine what is actually worthwhile and what is simply tabloid filler masquerading as competent political media. This 2000 word salad TMZ-style article from Politico, “Kamala in La La Land” is a perfect example of glam media pretending to be real political journalism. Even the graphic used conveys a tabloid style.
The article is bizarre in that it reads more like the day-to-day of a fading Hollywood starlet and not someone who had a shot at becoming the leader of the free world. Aside from a few trite mentions of fellow Democratic consultants grumbling (anonymously, of course) about Mrs. Harris not taking a more engaging role in politics, especially after the DNC spent $1.5 Billion on her failed presidential campaign, the article shares more in common with the celebrity tabloid feature, “Stars! They’re just like us!”
From Politico:
“So she spent days at the Hillcrest Country Club, where her husband is a member, and hosted get-togethers with friends at the home where she and Emhoff settled after their 2014 marriage. She did a lot of cooking, at least for a time, organizing weekly Sunday night dinners with her extended family. She made shopping trips to the Brentwood Country Market — a high-end open-air bazaar replete with luxury eyeglass stores, Goop, and $25 ancient-grain bowls — and patronized such a limited rotation of fancy Brentwood restaurants that members of her security detail started to jokingly grumble about the lack of variety, according to someone who heard the complaints.”
“Kamala goes shopping! Kamala cooks! Kamala goes out to eat!
While understandable for Mrs. Harris to want a break from politics after 20+ years of being the political prom queen, some perks are too good to pass up.
Even if this endangers the public safety of Angelenos:
“Some of the decisions to stay ensconced in Brentwood, it seems, can be ascribed to concerns over security. When she departed Washington, Harris brought with her a Secret Service detail but lacked the ability to blow through stoplights in a motorcade — a particular complication in Los Angeles for a dignitary unaccustomed to the indignity of sitting in traffic.
On Sept. 1, Trump pulled Harris’ Secret Service detail. State and local officials decided to extend their own protection, with Los Angeles Police Department officers working in conjunction with the California Highway Patrol, a move criticized by the city’s police union.
“Pulling police officers from protecting everyday Angelenos to protect a failed presidential candidate who also happens to be a multi-millionaire, with multiple homes and who can easily afford to pay for her own security, is nuts,” the Los Angeles Police Protective League board of directors told the Los Angeles Times.
While security concerns have contributed to Harris’ reclusive approach to life in Los Angeles, it also seemed to fit her preferences. (A spokesperson for Harris did not reply to requests to comment for this story.) Harris and Emhoff recently purchased an $8 million home in an even more isolated oceanfront neighborhood in Malibu, the New York Post reported last week.”
“Traffic is for the little people. LAPD and CHP are for me.”
-The Duchess of Brentwood
Californians were offered a slight reprieve when she announced last summer she would not be tossing her hat (heels?) into the next governor’s race. Former Governor Gray Davis provided cover for this decision in the most elitist way possible:
“In late July, Harris announced she would not, in fact, be running for governor. To some California politicians, including current and potential gubernatorial candidates waiting on her decision, it was a surprise — but not to another career public servant who was unceremoniously dispatched to private life in Los Angeles.
“She spent the last four years meeting kings and prime ministers all over the world, I’m sure that’s a pretty heady experience,” said former California Gov. Gray Davis, who was recalled from office in 2003. “I can understand why she didn’t want to run.”
She met with kings and prime ministers, folks. Who among us can blame her for not wanting to be mere governor of California? The tone deafness of explaining this away neglects that during the 2020 Democratic primaries she wasn’t projected to get enough votes to win California as a sitting senator. But, we’ll never know as she dropped out long before the vote.
The article continues:
“Harris appeared eager to present herself as a notably different figure than the ladder-climbing establishmentarian who had lost two straight presidential races due to what many supporters conceded was a surfeit of both strategic and personal caution. Now she was railing against a “broken” political environment to Stephen Colbert, and in an interview with the New York Times claimed she was embarking on a looser, less scripted “freedom tour.”
When the Democratic National Committee met last month at a downtown Los Angeles hotel, Harris took the opportunity to address party officials — claiming not the mantle of the party’s standard bearer but an angry outsider.
“Both parties have failed to hold the public’s trust,” Harris told party officials. “Government is viewed as fundamentally unable to meet the needs of its people ... People are done with the status quo and they’re ready to break things to force change.”
Politico thoughtfully points out how Mrs. Harris has re-invented herself as the “angry outsider” of standard politics. To somehow imagine a politician whose resume contains former positions as a California state attorney general, senator, and once vice president of the United States doing a rebrand as some maverick outsider is as believable as Bat Boy in the Weekly World News. 2
Say what you will about Bat Boy, but he was a patriot.
The article ends with a feel-good moment at a Compton High School graduation that Kamala attended, allegedly because a personal letter from a student was handed to her husband requested her there.
Politico describes it as an afterschool special scene:
“For all the criticism of Harris’ elite bubble, or lack of desire to go beyond her comfort zone, or enter into unpredictable environments, here she was, walking down a high-school football field, hand in hand with a young woman getting ready to head out into the world — only one of them sure exactly what she would do next with their life.
“There’s a way that Black aunties and grandmas talk, where they’re about their business, but they’re also super, super sweet,” Causey said. “She’s like that. And the good part is she agreed to still be part of my life. That won’t be the last time I see her.”
This article is another sign of how theater kid politics has overtaken the American political landscape. Mrs. Harris is even quoted as saying she took the 2024 loss as “a level of pain akin to the death of her mother.”
Tabloids have been replaced with online magazines pretending to be important journalism with this Politico piece as one of many examples.
Like cockroaches’ after the bombs eventually fall, these magazines are still around, just in a much smaller circulation. This excerpt from 2019 in a Los Angeles Times article shows how much of a cultural impact they once held:
“Though their circulation has been decimated — the once-mighty National Enquirer, which approached 8 million in paid circulation at one point and reached millions more, is down under 180,000 as of June, according to industry monitor the Audit Bureau of Control — tabloids still occupy a unique place in American culture.”
Bat Boy first made an appearance in the Weekly World News in 1992, but kept appearing throughout the years in different fashion. One could almost think of him as a precursor to the viral internet meme.
Thin gruel for the masses, held to the highest standards of that now defunct Weekly World News tabloid, the former standard-bearer of sleaze and the bizarre. Gag me with a spoon. Bleh. A giant meteor strike can't come soon enough.
Great post Arthur from someone who is on the ground and watching his home state crumble before his eyes. But have faith Arthur California will be saved eventually I just know it.