The Queens Nazi shame, JonBenets killer found, and Owen Wilsons baby mama revealed, in this weeks dubious tabloids
Fake news isnt necessarily fact-free. Context is everything, and its the lack of it that can turn facts into fake news, as this weeks tabloids demonstrate.Royals New Nazi Shame! screams the Globe cover, showing a blurry black-and-white photo of a seven-year-old future Queen Elizabeth II giving a Nazi salute.Lets ignore for one moment the fact that this is not new, but lifted from a Royal home movie filmed in 1933 or 1934, and first made public three years ago.The Nazi salute today is redolent of the atrocities inflicted under its shadow over the following decade, but at the time this was filmed the gesture was a curious novelty that would have seen on newsreels, and a child mimicking it in the early Thirties could not possibly know what it would later come to symbolize.Britains Royal Family certainly had some Nazi apologists, and even early sympathizers in their ranks, but the Queen was never one of them, and framing a seven-year-olds gesture as fascism is turning facts into fake news.Cops Find JonBenets Killer! proclaims the National Enquirer cover, returning to its favorite murdered child beauty pageant queen. Case Closed.There is a minuscule factual nugget at the center of this air-filled souffl: police apparently spent two hours interviewing a blogger who reported on JonBenet Ramseys neighbor, Glenn Meyer, allegedly keeping a shrine to the slain child.Yet the blogger had only been posting allegations made elsewhere originally . . . in the Enquirer in February.Meyers widow, Charlotte Hey, aged 86, claims that she asked her husband if he had murdered JonBenet.He would just smile at me, she recalls. He wouldnt deny it.Its about as far from a confession as one can get, but the Enquirer blithely reports that Hey courageously confessed her ex-husband was responsible for the slaying.No, she didnt. Nor did police find JonBenets killer. Case closed? I dont think so.Owen Wilson - Secret Baby Mama Found! reports the Enquirer, in another story that contains the merest factual sliver.Fact: Owen Wilson has been approached by a woman whose identity has not been made public, claiming that he is the father of her unborn child.Fact: Wilson has volunteered to undergo a paternity test.But has the Enquirer Found this mystery woman? The tabloid publishes a grainy security camera photo of a man who could possibly be Wilson, standing next to a blonde woman. Its impossible to identify either from the blurry image shot from a considerable distance.Surveillance footage caught the two whooping it up in the wee hours of Feb 28, reports the Enquirer, allegedly using CCTV footage from the Hotel Croyden in Miami Beach, FL.How do we know that this is the purported mother of Wilsons child?An insider tells the rag: Theres nothing to definitively say this woman is the one who approached Owen saying shes pregnant.No kidding. Shes just a woman photographed with a man who may or may not be Owen Wilson. And thats a fact.Too often, however, this weeks tabloid stories are fact-free.Robin Williams killed himself because he was haunted by the ghost of John Belushi, reports the Globe with what must be assumed to be a straight face, under the headline: Belushis Ghost Drove Williams to Suicide!"Thats the bombshell conclusion dropped by insiders and medical experts, the rag continues. Medical experts blaming suicide on a ghost? Right.Goldie & Kurt elope after cancer scare! claims the Globe, after years spent claiming that the couple were about to split. Dont hold your breath for proof of a marriage license.Carrie Fisher Died From AIDS! reports the Globe, basing its report on the fact that she had an affair with the Queen singer when Fisher was just 17 years old in 1973.He is the most likely candidate to have passed the AIDS death sentence on to Fisher, claims the 'Globe source, private investigator Vincent Parco. But AIDs didnt become an epidemic until 1981, eight years after Fisher and Mercury hooked up. And even if she had contracted the illness, by the final decade of her life AIDS was no longer a death sentence, but rather a disease mostly controlled by a drug cocktail. And as a vocal AIDS activist, its hard to imagine that the Star Wars actress would not have gone public with the diagnosis if she had indeed contracted the illness.Fortunately we have the crack investigative team at Us magazine to tell us that Kendall Jenner wore it best, that Ozzys son Jack Osbournes favorite U.S. city is Jackson, Wyoming, that tennis ace Caroline Wozniacki carries candy, sunglasses and a phone charger in her Louis Vuitton tote, and that the stars are just like us: their cars break down, they feed parking meters, they jog, read on the beach, and shop at supermarkets. Who knew?Finally, I cant resist noting the excellent advice given by Americas Top Psychic Healer Tony Leggett, to the reader in the National Examiner who writes: Dear Tony: I see evil spirits and cant sleep. They touch me, too. Do you ever see them going away?Leggett responds: They are called incubus. Wear heavy clothing when you go to bed. Demand loudly that they go away. Put some sea salt in each corner of your bedroom. Yes, that should do it.Onwards and downwards . . . Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/XYzbFZtaa9E/the-queens-nazi-shame-jonb.html
