"Who reads this junk?" -- people ask about tabloid newspapers -- while reading them.
Getting a chance to ogle tabloids is one of the few redeeming features of waiting in a supermarket checkout line. You might not be caught dead buying one of those rags, but when you're standing in line with the tabloid rack in front of you, it's impossible not to read headlines. Some are pretty far-fetched, but the more outlandish, the more entertaining.
At times, their faulty, yet sensational logic is oddly persuasive. Take the supposed camera shyness of Elvis and Bigfoot, for instance, and the fact that they're never spotted in the same place at the same time. Could they be one and the same in disguise? That would explain a lot of the tabloid madness, wouldn't it?
It makes you wonder what sort of people buy those publications and how they possibly could find such bizarre stories plausible.
Maybe somebody like Emily Braxton, whose real-life lawsuit against Oprah Winfrey, George and Laura Bush and a trio of doctors is every bit as imaginative as the typical tabloid truth-stretcher.
Braxton claims that the TV talk show diva, the ex-president, his wife and the three Charleston physicians implanted a camera inside of her body as part of a scheme to reincarnate her.
We're not making this up. According to the complaint she filed in Kanawha Circuit Court, Braxton believes the defendants are using the implanted camera to monitor her around the clock. She is representing herself and seeking $50 billion in damages.
Perhaps Emily Braxton wants to provide copy for the tabloids, in which case she is to be pitied. Her suit, however, is ridiculous and should not clog up the courts and harass defendants.
Even the tabloids are held accountable for their whoppers on occasion. Plaintiffs should be, too.
