Saturn’s moon Iapetus will destroy Earth, and other tabloid stunners
[My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]
Prince Charles is now a serial killer. Having murdered Princess Diana, he recently ordered the assassination of his "secret daughter" who claimed to be next in line for the British throne. That's the claim in this week's Globe magazine, which having had fun for the past two years reporting on "Sarah" - allegedly conceived in vitro by Charles and Diana during a pre-marital fertility test, and implanted by a devious doctor into his wife's womb - has now killed her off.
As if that wasn't enough, the Globe declares that "Charles ordered her death." Presumably because the Tooth Fairy was busy and the Easter Bunny doesn't do contract hits on innocent women.
There has never been a shred of evidence that the Globe's mystery Sarah ever existed, let alone died. She appears to have been inspired by a 2011 novel The Disappearance of Olivia, which imagined a fictionalized child of Princess Diana's growing up in Florida.
Now - surprise, surprise - Sarah has disappeared while traveling on the Greek isle of Crete, and "a special tracking device she always kept hidden in her clothing" has stopped signaling.
Let's ignore for one moment that there are currently no reports of missing tourists on Crete, and the fact that the Globe wasn't imaginative to dream up a tracking device embedded under Sarah's skin rather than in clothing that is easily shed. Why, when Prince Charles' imaginary "secret daughter" fictionally disappears is she first assumed dead, and secondly presumed murdered on her father's orders? The Globe has the answer: "She knew the truth about Princess' death in Paris car wreck." Right. If she ever existed as claimed, Sarah would have been 15 years old and living a life utterly unrelated to the British monarchy when Princess Diana died in 1997. How could she know the truth about anything happening within the Royal Family, let alone events one night in a tunnel in Paris? Perhaps she reads the tabloids - that's clearly the best way to keep up with the truth about those dastardly Royals.
The fate of Prince Charles' secret daughter has as much of the ring of truth about it as many of the offerings in this week's tabloids.
Bill Cosby was "caught fleeing country!" screams the grammatically-challenged National Enquirer cover, detailing his "plot to escape justice." But as the 78-year-old disgraced entertainer prepares to face his first criminal trial for sexual assault, the Enquirer claims he has "stashed millions overseas and has plotted his escape from America." The evidence for this? Zero. It's just what "top law enforcement experts fear." That should stand up in court.Charlie Sheen "moved to Mexico to satisfy his sick vices!" claims the Enquirer, which claims the actor has purchased a three-home waterfront estate for $1 million in Rosarito. Let's get real: For Sheen a $15 million mansion would be moving to Mexico. A $1m estate? Just a vacation retreat.
On the political front, Hillary Clinton is "freaked out . . . on booze and food binges as Feds expose her lies!" yells the Globe, which actually ran the same story last week with the throw-away line that Hillary is "hooked on pills" amid a larger rant about her physical and mental health. This week Hillary's alleged predilection for prescription pills is front and center in yet another unsubstantiated attack by the Trump-loving tabloids that alleges: "People are very, very worried about her!" I'd be worried about her too, under all that assault by the tabloids.
Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani "elope in Vegas!" says the Globe - except they haven't. Demi Moore is "painfully thin" and "heading for a deadly collapse," while Britain's Princess Kate is being "eaten alive by stress," claims the Enquirer, for whom being thin is always a life-threatening medical crisis, except when it's a life-long aspiration.
Fortunately we have the crack investigative team from Us magazine to tell us that Kate Hudson wore it best, Paula Abdul believes in UFOs, Roselyn Sanchez carries keys, Chapstick and mascara in her handbag, and the stars are just like us: they drink iced coffee, have facials and walk their dogs - revelations that will doubtless touch many readers and change their lives forever.
The "toxic marriage" and "nasty divorce" of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard dominates the covers of People magazine and Us mag respectively. Both promise the "inside story," but fail to deliver. People mag claims that Depp is possessive, while Heard is freedom-loving, evidently a synonym for screwing around, though she insists she was always faithful. Us mag merely reports the he-said/she-said clash: Heard's allegations of physical and emotional abuse by Depp, and his army of friends insisting that's not the gentle peace-loving Caribbean Pirate they all know and love.
None of this will matter soon if the National Examiner is right in reporting: "Darth Vader's Death Star Ready To Attack Earth!" Evidently Saturn's moon Iapetus bears an uncanny resemblance to Star Wars' Death Star, complete with a giant crater that looks like the deep-space battle-station's planet-destroying weapon. Photos of Iapetus were taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2004, so presumably the Examiner's scientific team has spent the past 12 years analyzing the images before reaching this devastating conclusion. While conceding that Darth Vader and Imperial Stormtroopers "may not" be living within Iapetus, the mag's crack reporting team found someone on a UFO web site willing to speculate that "Iapetus is a constructed object, it's artificial." And that must mean it has weapons pointed at Earth, because aliens (who say they believe in Paul Abdul, too.)
Onwards and downwards . . .