Call for action: Boycott The Enquirer

I admit, one of my dirty little secrets is that I enjoy celebrity gossip. I think I inherited this from my mom. When I was growing up, there were always copies of The Star, The Enquirer, The Globe and other rag mags laying around our house. Of course, American culture has been trained to worship celebrity as well, so I suspect that indulging in celebrity gossip is a kind of universal mechanism for distraction for many of us.

But. There is simply no excuse for what a couple of reporters at The Enquirer did recently. The mother of actor Brooke Shields, who resides in an assisted living facility for the elderly, was taken out on pass by Enquirer "journalists" who pretended to be friends of the woman. Ms. Shields suffers from dementia, which means that her judgment and capacity to make sound decisions is impaired. I do not know the degree of memory impairment of Ms. Shields, but I do know that if one is placed in an assisted living facility, its fairly reasonable to assume that one needs some level of supervision at all times.

These reporters are the fucking lowest of the low. They took this woman out of her home, her familiar, safe setting, in a supposed attempt to "get a juicy story" about her celebrity daughter Brooke Shields. Assisted living facilities in my state are typically pretty flexible with residents being able to come and go, but I cannot believe that the staff at this residence thought nothing at all about these strangers showing up to take the elder Shields out for lunch out of nowhere. I smell a lawsuit.

Are there really no boundaries when it comes to "getting the story"? Beyond that, it saddens and angers me to think that adults could knowingly take advantage of the confused mental state of an old woman and feel ok with what they do and who they are.

I call for a boycott of The Enquirer. Celebrity gossip at best, is a fun, light, escapist diversion in American culture. But there is no way any medium that sucks the gossip cock to the extent of kidnapping and deceiving a demented old woman should be condoned on any level at all.

Sickening.