It's immoral for stores to sell the National Enquirer.
This has been true since long before the Florida-based supermarket tabloid began churning out poisonously and deliberately false propaganda during the 2016 presidential campaign season-"Hillary (Clinton): 6 months to live!"; "Bill (Clinton) caught in teen sex ring!"; "Hillary hitman tells all!"; "Hillary and Huma (Abedin) going to jail!"; and on and on and on.
But it's especially true now that news events have shown the depths to which the Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Inc., appear to have gone to distort, mangle and conceal the truth in pursuit of political goals.
I refer specifically to the emails AMI lawyers recently wrote to Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. Those emails threatened that the Enquirer would publish embarrassing, intimate photos of Bezos if Bezos didn't retract his accusations that the tabloid's recent coverage of Bezos' marital infidelity was politically motivated. The suggestion: that AMI was going after those whom President Donald Trump considers his enemies.
"These communications cement AMI's long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism," Bezos wrote in a blog post Thursday in which he reproduced the emails.
Good for Bezos. And good for journalist Ronan Farrow, actor Terry Crews and former Associated Press investigative editor Ted Bridis, each of whom has come forward to say that they, too, have resisted AMI's efforts to extort them.
Now what about the enablers? The merchants-those who operate the estimated 40,000 supermarkets and 67,000 pharmacies in the U.S., many of which give the Enquirer pride of place in racks by the checkout counter. This sort of display is a force multiplier for the incendiary, mendacious headlines that do nearly all the political dirty work for the Enquirer and its sister publication, Globe.
Stores that would never give such prominence to, say Penthouse, fearing the wrath of parents not wishing to have their children corrupted by erotica, cheerfully contribute to the degradation of minds young and old by having them endure a gantlet of journalistic sewage just to pay for their purchases.
Stores that won't sell cigarettes because of their negative health effects proudly sell publications that are a cancer on their communities.
It's not just that the Enquirer serves malignant lies, but that its publisher acts to conceal the truth.
AMI paid for the rights to stories of two women who say they had affairs with Trump. AMI purchased the rights not to publish those stories but to bury them. It bought off a doorman at Trump World Tower to try to keep him from going public with an unsavory allegation against Trump. And it made a deal in 2005 with Bill Cosby in which Cosby agreed to an interview with the Enquirer in return for the tabloid's promise not to publish sexual assault allegations against him for two years, according to the comedian's sworn testimony in a deposition.
Yes, the Enquirer sometimes gets it right amid all the irresponsible speculation about the deaths of JonBenet Ramsey and Natalie Wood and the health of Cher, Angelina Jolie, Chevy Chase and many others who have defied the Enquirer's announcements of their imminent demises.
To accuse stores of immorality for selling the Enquirer may sound harsh. But if it's immoral to lie and to attempt blackmail, as Bezos alleges, it's immoral to facilitate the spread of lies.