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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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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There has to be something here about Hearst being the basis for Citizen Kane and that being Trump’s favorite movie and basically running his campaign against Hilary the same way Kane ran against his opponent except nobody cared about Trump’s sex scandal
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I was really hoping Trump would retire to Xanadu
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Did you mean Louella Parsons?
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Yeah, typo.
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