Enquiring

I’ll tell you what America is. America is a three-hundred-pound woman. This woman has two dogs, two TVs, hypochondria, and no secondary education. Also she’s broke, bored to tears, over forty (her husband was once alcoholic, unfaithful, crippled, or laid off), and yet, despite all, she still believes in life after death. Got to be. She’s the only person who’d buy National Enquirer, and National Enquirer can claim “Largest Circulation of Any Paper in America.”

20 MILLION CHURCHGOERS RISK COLDS AND FLU FROM COMMUNION WAFERS. “Drink this in remembrance of . . .” Wait, Father: you got a straw? Employees are required to wash hands before . . . NE blows hot on the fear flute. LOW BLOOD SUGAR—DISEASE THAT MANY AMERICANS DON’T KNOW THEY have. Inflation, SALT, racism, nothing ranks with just one alien lump, black blood in a stool sample, eccentric heartbeats: I mean, now you’re talking about me. The body, NE would have us suppose, is a recidivist felon. It loiters with fetid things; it will whore after death; and, man, is it fat! how to enjoy losing weight. At least one diet in every issue, plus a special feature: “Slimmer of the Month.” They, NE editors, know where you feel most vulnerable-resentful: up on his table, that stupid paper stuck to your tacky spine-flesh, underwear debagged. Disease, anyhow, is often iatrogenic. If that thought makes you nervous, gee, tough: THE TRANQUILIZER VALIUM CAUSES THE SAME SYMPTOMS THAT IT’S SUPPOSED to relieve. NE is populist, anti-authoritarian. doctors increase risk of INFECTING PATIENTS BY USING ANTIBIOTICS TO TREAT MINOR WOUNDS. Plus NE’s snide list of states where doctors earn the most. You won’t find NE on a waiting-room table, scary FILMS LIKE “JAWS” AND “THE EXORCIST” CAN CAUSE SERIOUS ILLNESS AND PSYCHIATRIC PROBLEMS. Yah. Look who’s talking.