Keystone Kops

And other Talk Around the Trailer Park

by Thomas Hart

G21 Staff Writer

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/tab4.html") and enter it in the box after you click through.

Version 4.0, Event #126 G21 SPORTS: KO's CALLS. KRIS OLSON now has his own logo, an apologia, and a look at the week in Sports! ON DRUGS: ADAM J. SMITH exhorts us all to stick to our sense of rationalism during the coming $2 Billion Prohibitionist media blitz. TABLOID HART: has a whole lot going on! THOMAS HART dishes on the Boulder Colorado PD, Chuck Heston, the Weekly World News, and Toni Braxton. But that's not all: After reading the article, visit Tom's new TRAILER PARK, a place for chat, link listings, and even more of the Gossip & Innuendo you've grown to love. And your HOUSE OF CARDS has another new JOKE OF THE DAY! In DON'T READ ME FIRST! ROD AMIS gives the Ess Eff Valedictory he's been building up to for a week. LAST WEEK'S EVENT BarnesandNoble SEARCH: Every writer here still reads offline. We support Barnes and Noble and hope you will, too. This is the place to find the best and brightest! For rapid response, use The Message Board HOME

The Boulder, CO, Police Department -- Ha-ha-ha

If you are a member of the (Peoples' Republic of) Boulder, Colorado, Police Department and somebody asks you where you work you just have to mumble into your hand, don't you? I mean, every news media organization from MSNBC to the National Enquirer has dissed these guys over the last two weeks.

And enquring minds know why, don't we, fellow Sanitation Engineers?

And far it be from the favorite "newspaper"-of-record in Tabloid Hart's corner of the trailer park, the National Enquirer, to hold back from point the finger at the child beauty queen's own father, John Ramsey. MSNBC, this past weekend, on Jane Pauley's "Time And Again," leaned back from saying that the Boulder Kops were timid about interrogating or questioning the actions of one of the richest men in town, but the NE ain't pulled no punches thus far.

If I was police detective working out of Boulder's Homicide squad, even with the new head honcho on the investigation they got, I'd be durned tempted to answer: "I'm not from around here. I --uh -- I live in Arvada.

G21 TABLOID HART means to look at the anomalies in American culture, the strange and all-too-coincidental interstices of success and destruction. Be here every week as we answer the questions enquiring minds have to ask.

Because you asked...

A reader of TABLOID HART who signs his name "Harley Ford" takes me to task over on the Message Board because(so he says) the trailer park where he lives is full of Porsches and Ferraris, and cause I've been talking more about the National Enquirer than his "library" reading of choice, the Weekly World News. Indulge me while I expand on my answer to old Harley here. Ya'll might learn something.

First of all, as anybody who has visited a supermarket in these United States must know, Tabloid Hart would be hard-pressed to miss the Weekly World News, while loitering in the check-out line behind some mental defective who can't understand that 9 ITEMS OR LESS doesn't mean the sum total of ideas who carry around in your head when you get in a damned line!

Further, I really like their "Page 5 Gal" feature. I've been trying to find a way to convince my Publisher here to emulate this sophisticated rip-off of the British tabloids.

But, frankly, I think Harley and people like him need to face the fact that for those of us in the major news media, there is a standard. Just look at those ole' boys down at the Orlando Sentinel, why don't you? They knew, like most of us in this business do, that you sure as shinola don't put on the wires that you picked up your scoop from the "Star" or the "Weekly World News" when the National Enquirer is the only tabloid that gets play for being sued all the time. Am I the only one who understands this stuff?

Weekly Celebrity Dish

Hey, Sanitation Engineers! Not tired of the dish yet? Then ya'll are cordially invited to drop on in, and join, TABLOID HART's TRAILER PARK. We have a chat room, for when all of us is loitering there together. And I especially want ya'll to check the Trailer Park Discussion Area. Have a celebrity you hate? An idea as to what we oughtah do? Come on in!

National Rifle Association spokesman and all around symbol of social tolerance and understanding Chuck Heston is back in the news this week. Chuck successfully had a hip replaced, it is reported, and is now ready to get back in the swing of things, waging a culural war against anybody who doesn't believe we have an obligation to repeat the mistakes of the past....

Meanwhile, singing sensation Toni Braxton is reported to be having NFL boyfriend troubles. Young Toni has this thing --- inexplicable for an American --- about believing that spending money, and lots of it, is a Good Thing.

Especially, if it's somebody else's money.

Boyfriend doesn't go for that. He came from some other planet where Americans believe in living within their means. The man is obviously clueless, and talking about how this might endanger his relationship with Toni. Go figure.

+++ The Previous TABLOID HART +++