Tabloid Tuesday: Natalee Holloway was Pregnant, Angelina and More

This Week In Tabloid Tuesday:  Natalee was pregnant, Renee takes Kenny back, Paris moves in on Mary-Kate’s guy, inside the wedding of Brad and Angelina, Jessica Simpson files for divorce, 2005 in review, and much, much more.

Well, after looking over the cover stories of the tabs, Tabloid Tuesday is not quite sure what the week’s big story is.  Judging from the size of the headlines, it’s whether the missing teen in Aruba was pregnant, or Angelina and Brad got married or Jessica is surviving her heartbreak.

Let’s start with Jessica.  US WEEKLY runs a giant photo of Jessica (thank you!) with the headline JESSICA FILES FOR DIVORCE … SURVIVING HEARTBREAK … STRESS TAKES ITS TOLL AS JESSICA SUFFERS A SECRET ILLNESS & TEARFULLY MEETS WITH NICK ONE LAST TIME. PLUS: ASHLEE HOSPITALIZED.  Regular readers of Tabloid Tuesday already knew that Jessica filed for divorce and that Ashlee was hospitalized – told you last week – and then told you that the tabs would certainly make a big deal of out of an old story… we love to be right!

This Week In Tabloid Tuesday: Natalee, Angie, Renee, More, More, More

Anyway, that’s a lot of words on their front page so we took a look inside to see what the BIG headline was all about.  There are SIX (count’em – 6) pages about this heart-wrenching tragedy (gag!) We already knew that Jessica filed for divorce and that the divorce papers were public record – so the tiny extract from the papers that US WEEKLY shows us is a big YAWN. But what about that secret illness?

Now THIS is a tabloid jewel.  According to US WEEKLY “the looming divorce (and the months leading up to the announcement) has caused the singer to develop chronic stomach ulcers.”  According to the US WEEKLY source “”The stomach pain is enough that she sometimes hasn’t been able to eat…. It’s definitely stress related.”  Now here’s the good part – in the same article, the tab says it contacted TWO doctors who “say that while ulcers are often quite painful, they are not caused by stress (though they can be acerbated by it).  So, tell us again, how the stress of the divorce gave her ulcers? 

Tabloid Tuesday apologizes to its readers, but we just couldn’t go on reading the story after that… if you’re still interested, you’ll have to proceed at your own risk.

IN TOUCH couldn’t resist putting Jessica on the cover again with the headline TEARFUL LAST MEETING… WHY JESSICA FILED FOR DIVORSE SO SOON!   If you really want to know the answer to that question, too bad!  The closest there is to an answer in the story is that, according to a friend of Jessica’s “If they let it go on and on, it would get nastier.” 

But the REALLY BIG headline on this week’s IN TOUCH is EXCLUSIVE…INSIDE THEIR WEDDING!  ALL THE DETAILS – THE RINGS, THE NEW HOME AND BRAD’S BIG REGRET.  Is it possible that we all missed something here?  Did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie get married and no one knows about it except IN TOUCH?  You can bet we flipped open to the table of contents to find the story…. Let’s see…. Yup, there’s two photos of the happy couple – the story is on page 16 … but the caption in the table of contents says WEDDING OF THE YEAR… WHEN BRAD AND ANGELINA TIE THE KNOT, IT’S A MOMUMENTAL EVENT!  PLUS, JEN’S NEW STRESS.

Wait a minute!  WHEN they tie the knot?  You mean they’re not married?  What about “Inside Their Wedding!  All the Details…”?  Just to make sure, and with fear & trepidation, we turned to page 16….and sure enough, the headline across two pages announces:  WEDDING PREPARATIONS!  We have to confess we fell for the oldest trick in the tabloid world – the headline that promises everything and delivers nothing.

When we picked up the ENQUIRER it was deja’ vu all over again… there was the headline BRAD AND ANGELINA … MARRIAGE AND BABY!  ALL THE DETAILS!  But the ENQUIRER had a photo of the two of them getting married – Angelina in a wedding dress, bouquet and veil, brad with a flower in his lapel.  Not twice in one week!  We quickly found the story inside the ENQUIRER – and our heart sunk!  Fooled again – twice in one week.  Although the headline inside screams MR. & MRS. PITT! The story is they’re still planning the wedding details, even though “The Tomb Raider beauty is said to be more than two months pregnant and Brad is “overjoyed.””

Our faith was shaken – if you can’t trust the tabloids, who can you trust?

With some hesitation, we picked up STAR.  A quick scan of the cover eased our fears – no story on the Brad and Angelina wedding.  Instead, this week STAR tell us that PARIS FEARS FOR SKINNY NICOLE! And TOM TELLS STAR HIS HOT WEDDING NEWS! But the BIG story for STAR this week is 2005 … WHOA!  WHAT A YEAR!  THE HIGHS AND LOWS IN PHOTOS.

Tabloid Tuesday desperately wanted to look inside to see what Tom Cruise told STAR but we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it.  If you want to read about it, you’ll have to do it on your own – we can’t take another disappointment.

However…. No matter how much it hurts, our job is let you know what the tabs are saying on the front page.  We couldn’t just ignore the GIANT headlines in the ENQUIRER that announced NATALEE WAS PREGNANT … ARUBA COPS PROBE NEW DNA EVIDENCE … LETTER REVEALS A SHOCKING CONFESSION.  Do we dare look inside and read the story?  Alas, we must.

The headline over the story on the inside screams out NATALEE PREGNANCY SHOCKER.  The first paragraph of the story says “Forensic experts are investigating a letter reportedly written by Natalee Holloway from a secret hiding place, confessing that she ran off in Aruba out of shame that she was pregnant.” 

That was the last straw!  “Reportedly written” and “from a secret hiding place” was as far as we could get.  Tabloid Tuesday was finished.  Done.  What was happening to the tabloids?  We were so dismayed that we didn’t even read about EXCLUSIVE!  RENEE TAKES KENNY BACK! … or …REVEALED!  SECRETS STARS TOOK TO THE GRAVE…  we just gathered up STAR, ENQUIRER, US WEEKLY and IN TOUCH and piled them up in a corner to gather dust.

But wait a minute – something’s missing?  My God, there’s no Britney Spears story on the cover of ANY of the tabs.  What in the hell is going on?  This too much.  We have to turn out the light and sit in the dark and contemplate what this all means.  No Britney?  That’s just wrong.

MEN.COM WORST OF THE WEEK: 

IN TOUCH (followed closely by the ENQUIRER).  Not only did Brad and Angelina NOT get married, the promised details are, at best, vague and few and far between.  Shame, shame, shame on IN TOUCH.  We hope you got a lot of coal in your Christmas stocking.

MEN.COM BEST OF THE WEEK: 

STAR.  The headline for their year-in-review was clever, but they almost lost out by calling this a COLLECTOR’S EDITION … for future reference – 12 pages does not a collector’s edition make.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY HAVE TO BUY ONLY ONE TABLOID THIS WEEK: 

DON’T!  Start a savings plan, go to a movie, donate the money to charity… you’ll get more bang for your buck$ on just about anything other than this week’s tabs.

Names You’ll Be Hearing This Week: 

Paris Hilton and Mary-Kate fighting over the same guy, Jessica Simpson files for divorce, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are still together, so are Brad and Angelina, Britney and Kevin are still together as well, Gwen Stefani is pregnant, Christina Aguilera and Jordan Bratman got married, so did Matt Damon and Luciana Bozan, and Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards are on a second honeymoon.

Tabloid Tuesday is a weekly feature of Men.Com.

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