Please note that by "much modern media" I refer mainly to that plethora of magazines one inevitably encounters near cash registers, although since joining AOL, Time has added a crossword puzzle, begun shipping out about 30 "special issues" a year no one bothers to open, repeatedly plays modern Nostradamus and tells us what it guesses the world will be like when we're dead and gone and even its potentially interesting stories are destroyed by bad writing and worse editorial decisions like "Let's put this all in the first person present active (if that is a tense... fortunately my educators didn't put much stock in them and since I don't believe in Time, I know that particular ignorance sometimes shows in my writing.

Nor do I speak of Rolling Stone which recently ran a cover story entitled "Can a Boy Scout be Gay?" Of course a Boy Scout can be gay. Wasn't Jann Wiener a Boy Scout once? Statistically I'm sure there are lots of gay scouts, and gay scout leaders... it's them Born Again Quote Christian Endquote pedophiles the BSA ought to and does worry about. Gay Scouts? Heck, I remember my summer at Boy Scout Camp... Ted the Gay Scout First Class was probably the most popular guy there after lights out (although until he got that Martial Arts Merit Badge he used to get the shit kicked out of him every day, but what do you expect when you stick a bunch of adolescents surging with testosterone in the woods?) Again, stupid article (unless he has to stop to bugger some guy as he's helping an old lady cross the street, any guy can be a Scout), but not what I'm talking about.

No, I mean the kind of sensationalist headlines that tempt otherwise sane people to plunk down $3 to read about "Drew Barrymore's pistol packing mama," or "The Ugly Truth about Whitney Houston's Battle with Drugs." You've seen them (unless you're blind, in which case, stop reading this drivel! Go buy a dog, get on with life!)

Always some outlandish headline... "Ricky Martin's Night with 10 Women"; "What Really Goes on in Howard Stern's Bachelor Apartment"; "New, Sure Fire Weight Loss Miracle!"

Respectively, these turn out to be Ricky's lunch with Mom and her friends (tuna sandwiches, iced tea), nothing at all except an alarm jangling at 4 a.m. and "Celery and Carrot Sticks."

As for Drew's pistol packing Mom (Jade), well, I could never find that story in the magazine, but am guessing it was a 3 paragraph blurb about her getting some summer stock work in a lip synch rendition of "Annie Get Your Gun." The "Ugly Truth about Whitney" must be she used all her drugs before anyone could catch her because the 10 paragraph piece had nothing at all about her alleged addiction (except to her drunken brawler of a has been husband).

What really bothers me is that while I have subscriptions (gifts) to Time and Rolling Stone I actually bought these other magazines, although admittedly i was hoping the Jade article had a nude picture of Drew and I could care less about Ricky or Whitney or Howard Stern's personal life.

The scary thing is a bunch of people are either as dumb as me and buy this crap anyway or (worse?) they care about it and (horror of horrors) they think the magazines in question do not have exaggerated headlines.

Now you might think: "Boy, was that ever a crappy review. You'd think ol' BDH was running on 5 hours sleep and had wasted an afternoon waiting for the cable company to come upgrade his converter and the people to move the wreckage of his past off the spacious patio of the Condo of the Turn of the Century (as promised by the Nazi Regime he heads up).

No, let's pretend I'm a lot more clever than that and wanted to run a for shit review to drive home the point about the shoddiness of some of today's worst journalistic efforts.

Yeah. i like that much better.