Gossip is expensive

No, I'm not talking about a certain publisher having a hissy fit over authors publicly complaining about their policies. [I'll save that rant for another time]

I'm talking about gossip rags - those newspaper print magazines that you see in the foodstore and the drug store by the checkout counter claiming Elvis has landed in someone's back yard, or the president secretly confessed to having a Martian love child...or the ones of a slightly higher caliber that show blurry candid shots of celebrities looking almost like normal people sporting bad hair and cellulite with captions like: Mega-star admits to wild night with hamsters; Pop princess intends to marry mountain gorilla; raid on brothel snares televangelist [oh wait, that one's usually true]....

Anyway, the other night I went to Walgreens to pick up some magazines to keep me occupied during the long wait while my Dad had surgery. [He's doing okay.]

I was appalled at how much these toss away magazines cost! They want $4.00 an issue! I thought gossip was cheap. After all, most of it is made up, the photos are retouched, computer generated, airbrushed - the stuff the regular magazines won't buy from the papparazzi. The articles consist of a few lines of inflammatory prose aimed at churning up the ire of celebrities and fans alike. You know, lawsuit fodder.

I don't normally buy them, which was why I figured $10 would get me half a dozen or so that I could peruse during the mind numbing hours spent in the CSICU waiting room. Nah. Two of them cost me over $8.00. I couldn't believe it.

Junk food is usually cheap so people will be more tempted to buy it than healthy food. Shouldn't junk journalism be cheap too?