Supermarket Tabloids and UFOs

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by X. Sharks DeSpot

The supermarket tabloids comprise a strange part of the American popular culture and ideology. They sell many millions yet are universally decried as lies. They have an army of readers but are treated always with contempt. They are not kept by libraries and not indexed by the Reader’s Guide To Periodical Literature. These tabloids, however, reflect the view of the majority and are about as “sensationalistic” as the New York Times. To prove this, examine as an example a tabloid favorite: Unidentified Flying Objects. First, an Unidentified Flying Object is just that: an object sighted in the sky which has not been identified. Problems arise when UFOs are thought of as “flying saucers.” A flying saucer, obviously, is a space ship from another world. From the outset, this prejudice makes the situation regarding UFO reports tricky.

A medical student reports seeing an unidentified flying object and the Air Force left it 4 “unsolved” in its study. The authors of a “debunking” book solemnly say the witness was under stress and probably hallucinated the UFO. If the same student had reported a World War 2 fighter plane had swept down and buzzed his car on the same road, how would the report have been received? First, it would have been handed over to the Federal Aeronautics Board, who would have dispatched an investigator to nearby airfields in search of an antique airplane that flew too low. The pilot would have been fined and his license revoked. If, after having failed to find a World War 2 fighter plane, the worst that might have happened is that the witness would be accused of lying, or at best, having panicked and misidentified a modern piper cub aircraft.

The medical student was attacked because he saw the “wrong” thing. If he had seen an airplane, even an improbable one, no one would have given it a second thought. If one day you look up and see an object shooting through the sky that you cannot identify, consider the wide variety of possibilities. It could be an airplane seen from the wrong angle. It could be a hoax. It could be an angel from God. It could even be a living creature of some sort, floating around in the atmosphere. But all these interesting ideas are not usually even considered. Unfortunately, in the popular mind, there exist only three points of view. These points of view include:

1. There are no such things as UFOs
2. There may be UFOs
3. There are UFOs.

What people actually mean, however, is:

1. There are no alien beings in space ships
2. There may be alien beings in space ships
3. The aliens are here, now, spying on us from the sky above.

The first point of view, of course, is almost an official one. It is generally accepted that anyone who believes this has no business working for the Air Force or have any other responsible position. This is the sincere belief of the people who run the country on a daily basis. Newspaper editors obviously believe this. They accept the view of the U.S. Air Force, which concluded in 1949 that it’s all nonsense and has since produced such boring studies as Projects Blue Book and the Condon Report to protect the “official” point of view.
For some supermarket tabloids, however, this point of view does not exist. Sure the cool-headed edi-tors and clever businessmen who print trash about UFOs “know better.” But how often does anyone want to read about that? It doesn’t sell magazines to report that “we are alone.” Does the Committee For The Scientific Investigation of the Paranormal ever say anything sexy? Of course not. Dull men who say they represent “science” already proved their point back in 1947. That date, 1947, is significant. In 1947, when the era of UFOs began, the Readers Guide listed “flying saucers” under “hallucinations” in its pages. The common point of view was restricted redly to just that. The scientific community has never really moved beyond that. The issue never became “there may be UFOs, what’s out there?” but “don’t go feed¬ing the public’s head with a lot of nonsense.” Al¬though two groups emerged that held the other points of view: people curious in the subject; and those like George Adamski who held regular conversations with people from Venus, the “hallucination” definition. Contrary to popular belief, it reflects the view of the National Enquirer and of every single newspaper and news magazine in the country right now.

If someone sees a glowing object in the night sky, he can usually report it to a sympathetic editor who will take him seriously and send a reporter to check out the story. An exciting UFO story! Just the thing to fill up pages between the shoe and car ads! Of course, part of the game is to refuse to do any background research, regard it as a “silly season” item, and yield to the “official” point of view that there is nothing there.

Supermarket tabloids, however, come in two varieties. One is the group of nearly identical tabloids that focus on celebrities like Cher, Elizabeth Taylor and the Kennedy clan. The National Enquirer, Star, News Extra，Globe，and National Examiner appear in the wire racks near the cash register each week and often sell out completely. The second group focuses on obviously false stories about people with eyes in the back of their heads, or babies born with tattoos of the solar system on their backs. These include the black-and-white Weekly World News and the color- covered Sun tabloid. The difference between these and the other five is obvious. None of the articles deal with living celebrities, aside from a centerfold of trivia. Men in South Africa using barbed-wire hula hoops, for example. Or man undergoes sex operation to get a higher pension check in Ghana. Or a child is born with a pacemaker already installed in its chest somewhere in England.

It would seem that this is where the point of view that aliens have landed has found a home. One would think that here, at least, someone would interview people who have met “them,” present photographs of evidence, express some interesting opinions. But here, alas, things are strange.

The front page of the Weekly World News for Au-gust 6,1991 reads: “Horse Born With Human Face!” It’s a dull article about some scientists in Amsterdam having done gene splicing to create a human faced horse. Aside from the headline, the story might as well be about a new form of corn starch or a diabetes treatment.

Now, allegedly beneath Dulce, New Mexico a massive underground base exists run jointly by the U.S. government and alien beings. Here, nightmarish experiments have created half-man, half-lizard creatures begging for help, or apparently many people believe this. According to author John Keel,a community of about 2000 UFO buffs fully believe that the U.S. government has such a base. That is a major portion of the Sun and Weekly World News audience. To people who have never heard of this underground base, it’s just a silly, fake story. For those who believe in the base and its monstrous creations, an article in the supermarket tabloids provides more evidence.

The writers write articles meant to appeal to both audiences. The “Horse Born With Human face” article will please both, as will the August 6,1991 Sun article, “First Photo Ever of America’s Captured UFO.” To quote it: “Arrangement was made to trade the UFO for alien rights to land in certain locations of Earth.” In it, General Norman Schwarzkopf is glorified between hints of the nightmare. It also provides more evidence to believers that aliens are landing near Dulce, New Mexico.

The editors of the Sun and the Weekly World News specifically ask that its articles about UFOs be written this way. They have two audiences to please: one amused by “fake” stories that nevertheless reaffirm ideas like General Schwarzkopf being an admirable figure, and another to have their worst fears confirmed by the “true” stories. Those tabloids which should break out of the mold set in 1947, of focusing on the question of Unidentified Flying Objects as alien space ships, instead perpetuate the “official” point of view by exploiting the other two for the sake of making money. Serious discussion about the issue, of course, is subsumed in the general lack of credibility. It is time for that to change.

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