We were reminded of that when Taylor Swift's People magazine cover prompted a rush of nonsense.
That's Taylor recreating Mia Farrow's People magazine cover from years ago.
Kurt Schlosser (NBC's Today) insisted, "People magazine is celebrating its 40th year, and to mark the occasion the iconic weekly has re-created its very first cover, which featured actress Mia Farrow, by using a new shot of singer Taylor Swift."
He can insist all he wants, that won't make it true.
The lie's pimped by People, that doesn't make it true either.
Crapapedia may be 'source' three, but it's an idiot as well:
Stolley’s almost religious determination to keep the magazine people-focused contributed significantly to its rapid early success. It is said that although Time Inc. pumped an estimated $40 million into the venture, the magazine only broke even 18 months after its debut in March 1974. Initially, the magazine was sold primarily on newsstands and in supermarkets. To get the magazine out each week, founding staff members regularly slept on the floor of their offices two or three nights each week and severely limited all non-essential outside engagements. The premiere March 4, 1974 edition featured actress Mia Farrow, then starring in the movie The Great Gatsby, on the cover. That issue also featured stories on Gloria Vanderbilt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the wives of U.S. Vietnam veterans who were Missing In Action.[5] The magazine was, apart from its cover, printed in black-and-white. The initial cover price was 35 cents.
"Only broke even 18 months after its debut"?
Only?
People's success was considered amazing. Sport's Illustrated had been the last previous weekly magazine launched in the US and, as Nora Ephron noted in her March 1975 piece for Esquire ("People Magazine," collected in Scribble, Scrabble), "Sports Illustrated lost twenty-six million in the ten years before it turned the corner, and People is expected to lose considerably less and turn the corner considerably quicker."
Poor Crapapedia and all the stupid, sexist men that blog there.
How many times can you lose your virginity?
We believe it's only once.
And we believe you can only have one first issue.
People's first issue did not feature Mia Farrow on the cover.
Nor was the March 4, 1974 issue the first issue of the magazine.
People magazine featured Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the magazine's first cover. This was in August of 1973 and the first issue was, as Nora Ephron noted, "test-marketed in seven cities."
They blew their 40th anniversay, yes, so the magazine's spinning.
But, again, a magazine only has one first issue.
People magazine, and its cronies, like Time with their celebrity profiles, have infiltrated the media and now pass for news.
If you ever doubted that you missed Anderson Cooper's garbage on 60 Minutes tonight.
Cooper fawned over the mediocre band Foo Fighters and their so-so talented leader David Ghrol. It was as if REO Speedwagon was being awarded a Grammy.
Today's modern day celebrity profile was pioneered by People and Time and, again, Nora Ephron documented the slide. This time in an Esquire essay entitled "How to Write a Newsmagazine Cover Story" which offered
1) Find a subject too much has already been written about.
2) Exaggerate the significance of the cover subject.
3) Find people who know the subject personally and whose careers are bound up with the subject's. Get these people to comment on the subject's significance.
4) Try, insofar as it is possible, to imitate the style of press releases.
5) Use statistic where ever possible. Better yet, use statistics so mind boggling that no reader will bother to do simple arithmetic to determine their impossibility.
6) Study the examples.
And that pretty much sums up Anderson Cooper's garbage which included him declaring that band "one of the last great American rock bands that consistently sell millions of albums" and to insist "Foo Fighters' sound is raw, real rock 'n' roll."
Cooper doesn't listen to rock, never has.
More importantly, millions of albums?
Maybe the new one next month will sell a million copies in the US.
But 2007's Echoes, Silecnce, Patience & Grace only went gold (half a million).
And 2011's Wasting Light also only went gold.
Foo Fighters are no longer a million selling band and haven't been for over seven years.
But it was cute of Anderson to whore for a generic, faceless band churning out useless crap.
Journalism is the real victim of today's celebrity culture.
Crapapedia listed some of the stories but ignored much. The big stories for 1974 in the Mia issue? They included a look at the Loud family.
PBS kicked off the 'reality' garbage glut with that piece of crap posing as a documentary.
And the new focus on celebrity by non-Hollywood mags demanded that celebrities like the Louds be created -- the famous for being famous.
And now they are all over the TV today.
They're losers who have no talent.
Sorry, Kim Kardashian, Cher called it correctly on you and your kind.
Cher
I
don't watch reality ! Never saw a Kardashian but these Bitches should b
Drop kicked down a freeway !Not kidding! Nos I no r this Fkn nuts
People watch these 'celebs' because they are losers, because they are train wrecks.
It makes the audience feel better about themselves.
And who wouldn't feel like a giant comparing themselves to the homophobes featured in Duck Dynasty?
Or Sons of Guns 'stars' Stephanie Hayden and Kris Ford whose latest scandal finds them arrested for child abuse.
Or there goes Honey Boo Boo, right off TLC.
Why?
Mama June's dating a convicted sex offender, a child molester, in fact.
Mama June's prince served "10 years [in prison] for forcing oral sex on an 8-year-old."
These are the non-entities that the media has elevated to celebrity status.
People like Khloe Kardashian who wants you to know she's still upset over her divorce from a failed NBA player.
She calls her mom a bitch, attacks her friends and does other nonsense on camera and that makes her a 'star'?
She's a nothing.
And she'll be remembered the same way the Loud family are today (all but gay son Lance are forgotten).
The crap is watched.
Not by large numbers.
You'll notice the broadcast networks, when they do 'reality,' make it a contest because otherwise it doesn't pull in a large enough audience.
So the crap is featured on basic cable where it's cheap to make.
'Reality' TV has ruined MTV, TLC and A&E.
A few years back, all three had strong brands.
Today, they're just known airing trash TV.
But don't just blame basic cable.
Blame the media that treats them as celebrities and chronicles their photo ops, treats them as something other than the circus freaks they are, pretend they are somehow a part of art.
Blame a media that will lie about who was on a magazine's first cover or that will lie that a band sells millions when they don't. In a world where people are famous solely for standing in front of a TV camera, truth will always be less important than spin.