Scandal at the checkout
This being my 100th post since starting this blog, I was thinking of what to write as I stood in line at the drugstore checkout. Then my eyes lighted on the array of weekly celebrity tabloids that are standard fare at most checkouts. And one stood out: Kennedy: HIS FINAL DAYS, screamed the headline in The Globe.
What a ghoulish headline! It reminded me of the tabloids of my youth that used to be so popular in Canada. We called them “scandal sheets” but thousands of Canadians devoured the likes of Hush and Flash every week, thirsty for gossip they couldn’t find in the mainstream press.
The rags presented themselves as fearless crusaders for the public good. Mostly, they were filled with juvenile, unsophisticated diatribes on cases before the police courts, or run-ins that customers had with the management of Eaton’s department stores. The Eatons were always a favorite target.
Papers like these, including the notorious Justice Weekly, bit the dust in the 1960s and 70s as Canadians’ reading habits became more sophisticated, and mainstream papers started covering scandalous stories they’d previously ignored.
But they did do some good. Flash, put out by the former pulp publisher Lou Ruby, was the only paper willing to expose the corrupt Vancouver Police Department. Crusading reporter Ray Munro had been let go by the Vancouver Province after it refused to touch his copy. Flash carried Munro’s stories, with the result that Police Chief Walter Mulligan was forced to resign and two detectives shot themselves. One of them died.
These papers made much of the trials of men charged with homosexual crimes. Justice Weekly reported how the Toronto police department had two officers prowling the bushes of High Park, on the lookout for men making out. It referred to the old “knot hole” technique said to have been used by some men to otbain relief.
In revealing the police repression of gay men, the papers probably contributed to the public toleration that allowed then Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau to remove homosexual activity from the Criminal Code.
The granddaddy of the papers was Hush. It was started in the 1920s by Strathearn Boyd Thomson as a stock market tip sheet. In a replay of the old “horsewhip the editor” plot, Thomson was beaten up by three men, including a couple of prominent Forest Hill individuals, while enjoying an afternoon at the races. They didn’t like something he’d written. They beat the assault charges laid by Thomson, but later had to pay him off in a civil settlement.
The scandal sheets were often in trouble with the authorities. The Attorney General of Ontario once got an injunction shutting Flash down.The paper escaped oblivion only by promising to be more sedate in the future.
Today’s only equivalent of the scandal sheets is the satirical magazine Frank. It struggles from issue to issue, but still manages to insult more politicians, pr types and corporate moguls than ever felt the darts of the likes of Hush.
Ironically, one of the most successful of the scandal sheets, the Montreal-based Midnight, lives on today in the Globe mentioned above. Joe Azaria started this paper with $14 and a $1000 bank loan when the Gazette turned him down for a job. Many of his stories were simply made up, such as the one headlined, Hitler’s Daughter Found Wed to Rabbi’s Son.
Azaria went after the American market and eventually sold the paper to a U.S. publisher.
Lou Ruby shut down Flash when he realized it could no longer match the daily diet of scandal that mainstream newspapers came forth with in the 1970s. His son, Clayton Ruby, is today a prominent Toronto lawyer.
By the way, for anyone interested in the future of media, here’s a tip. The biggest selling magazines are the celebrity weeklies like the Globe that adorn supermarket and drug store checkouts. Depressing, no?
