There is a virus that haunts this country. It is everywhere, in our food, water, air and land. We are FUBAR.
The last indicator of this virus is the birth of a new sleazy magazine in Slovenia. An act which I fully support because Slovenia has very low media diversity and we should welcome any attempt to bring a new newspaper to life.
Just this morning I was listening to the radio and they had a “Person of the week” show going on. You know, they nominate three names and people vote by phone. Bojan Požar, the journalist who is behind the Direkt was one of those three persons.
It always amazes me, not what people do, but how other people react. Common people. Everyday Joe and Jane. This one caller ranted about Požar and his newspaper for three solid minutes and when the DJ asked her if she bought the newspaper she said “Well, of course!”
Ahem. I rest my case.
Well, I think there is a special kind of thrill in reading something that you thoroughly disapprove of, just so that you can indulge in the rush of the wonderful self-righteous holy ire that fills you every time you turn a page and discover yet more shocking and lurid evidence of the omnipresent depravity and corruption that is engulfing the world. “Dear me, dear me, what’s this world coming to!” you can hear the moral majority saying as they turn the pages, pretending to be shocked but secretly enjoying themselves immensely.
Besides, how could one not take delight in reading a sleazy tabloid that promises to smear the famous people with filth? We all wish to see the rich and famous people defiled and dragged into the gutter. There is no hatred more elemental, and more thoroughly justified, than that of the average person towards those who dared to set themselves up a step above him. There is no delight more visceral, and no hope more enduring, than to observe that the rich and famous are really fallible and miserable, and that their success is due to their depravity rather than to their virtue, and to their luck rather than to their ability; and that, beneath the glittering veneer of their lives, their souls are a sordid, rotten, barren hell.
Well, I’m getting carried away by my own rhetoric again. I don’t know much about tabloids anyway. But as far as I understand, some of them make an effort to be nice to the celebrities whereas others try to find their niche in being as brutal and unkind as possible, and it has always been my impression that Pozar’s efforts tend to belong to the latter category. I don’t doubt that this sort of thing will attract a nontrivial number of readers.
Anyway, my personal opinion of the tabloids is that they should be banned outright. As always, when people are given the opportunity to choose between quality and filth, they will choose filth and wallow in it happily for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, if they only had good newspapers to choose from, and no tabloids, they would read the good papers just as happily as they read the tabloids now, they wouldn’t feel that they are missing anything, and the net results on their minds, their characters, and on the well-being of the society as a whole would be extremely salutary.