David Pecker controls the National Enquirer and a handful of other sensational tabloid newspapers that assault or entice, depending on your perspective, your senses as you wait to check out at the supermarket. Pecker is chairman and CEO of American Media Inc., publisher of National Enquirer, Star, Sun, Weekly World News, Globe, Men’s Fitness, Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Fit Pregnancy and Shape plus the recently acquired Us Weekly.
To his stable of publications Pecker is said to want to add Time magazine as well as People and Fortune.
Pecker, who at one time helped John F. Kennedy Jr. launch George, is a friend and advocate of Donald Trump, which beggars the question, do we want a publisher who printed truly fake and misleading headlines and stories about Hillary Clinton and whose Enquirer was recently at the center of the Trump-Morning Joe dustup to assume editorial control of some of the most respected mass journals of our country?
Your political leaning will inform your response to that question. My answer, not surprisingly, is no, a thousand times no. But in this age of financial feebleness for far too many media companies, including Time Inc., the shareholders of Henry Luce’s trailblazing weekly might not be able to refrain from accepting a solid offer, even if they disdain its originator.
What America doesn’t need at this time of national division is a further erosion of integrity in the media. Time, People and Fortune have been stalwarts of independent, objective journalism. Under Pecker that impeccable position could be compromised.
By the way, it might interest you to know that “pecker” is Yiddish slang for penis. How fitting. (For a longer look at David Pecker, here’s a profile from the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/03/the-national-enquirers-fervor-for-trump/amp)
If the Shoe Fits: I have a long held bias against women wearing open-toed shoes. I trace it back to my antipathy toward my mother’s choice of footwear. I know I should get over it, but it is there, I admit it and have never sought to impose my prejudice on Gilda, Ellie or Allison, not that they would have let me had I tried.
Anyway, long lead in to another example of too much government regulation, in this case, Republican desire to control attire, mostly that worn by women.
It seems that at the direction of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan there is vigorous renewed enforcement of a dress code for appearing in the Speaker’s Lobby of the House of Representatives. It pertains to all elected congressmen, their staff and reporters. Sans proper attire one can be evicted from the area.
Men have to wear coat and tie; women must be dressed appropriately, which has been interpreted to mean no sleeveless dresses/blouses and no open-toed shoes, preferred items by many women during Washington’s hot and muggy summer.
I found it particularly amusing that Elaine Quijano of CBS News reported on this brouhaha while sitting behind the anchor desk wearing a red sleeveless outfit. She did not reveal what type of shoes she had on.
Clothes Make the Woman: As long as we’re on the subject of women’s clothing, there’s no denying Melania Trump brings her A game to every public event (and probably to every private occasion as well).
Her popularity is soaring but indicative of how shallow Americans and other nationalities can be. They project her eye-candy appeal to positive status (much the same way Michelle Obama’s scores reflected her fashion sense even as she championed better nutrition and physical activity for children) but the public fails to consider Melania’s to date empty portfolio of first lady endeavors, particularly her expressed desire to reduce the incidence of cyber bullying, her husband’s favorite response-to-criticism tool.
Ivanka on the Hot Seat: Despite criticism from many anti-Trump quarters, I have no problem with Ivanka sitting in for her father at the G-20 meeting while he met with the leader of Indonesia. She is as credible as any of Trump’s aides.
But as I noted the other day when she, not he, visited a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, there are some symbolic functions that demand no substitute for presidential attendance.
