1. The Bezos/National Enquirer business is a reminder that there has been a longstanding affinity between authoritarian politics and gossip mongering tabloids, going back at least a century to William Randolph Hearst.
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3. The early "yellow journalism" of Hearst was really socially conscience muckraking -- i.e. accounts of exploitation. That changed when Hearst started to move to the right in the 1920s and 1930s & his tabloids then fanned moral panics about sex & drugs.
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4. The Hearst papers and other right-wing outlets (notable Joseph Patterson's New York Daily News) found that reactionary politics & gossip could go hand in hand, with writers like Walter Winchell, Louisa Parsons, and Hedda Hopper regularly smearing the left.
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5. If you think about it, gossip is a naturally conservative social force: you tell tales about people who break conventions. In the midcentury tabloid press, that meant gossip about movie stars that were communists, leftwing, gay or otherwise unconventional.
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7. Beyond Hearst, we see this fusion of tabloids with the right again and again: think of Page 6 & the New York Post or the broader journalistic practices of our latest William Randolph Hearst: Rupert Murdoch.
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8. Conversely: has there ever been a left-wing tabloid or gossip columnist? I suppose Winchell had a New Deal period but he turned hard right. Maybe Drew Pearson? Maybe Gawker? Some examples, but not a lot.
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9. Trump himself was a pure product of this fusion of right-wing politics with tabloid culture. Much of his early fame came from his ability to dominate the headlines of the New York papers & the mentorship of Roy Cohn taught him the value of chits & compromising info.
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10. I have a longer think piece here about the connections between weaponized gossip, Trumpism, and right-wing politics:https://newrepublic.com/article/143688/donald-trump-weaponization-gossip …
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