The most trusted people in America

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Partner and I subscribe to quite a few peculiar periodicals: Consumer Reports, Conde Nast Traveler, the Vegetarian Times, Mother Jones.

But I do believe that Reader’s Digest is the most peculiar of all.

Decades ago, I loved Reader’s Digest. My sister Susan used to renew my subscription year after year as a birthday gift, and I loved it. I actually learned from it. I remember whole chunks of things I read in it. My god, back in the 1960s, they did a summary version of “The Naked Ape”!

Times have changed. It’s a conservative publication now. They print 100% American articles about Our Troops, and Everyday Heroes, and What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You.

Recently they did an article on the Most Trusted People in America. O dear god, such a list they did! Evidently Tom Hanks is the most trusted man in America. Why, for god’s sake? I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice man, and he’s been in some good movies (and some stinkers, like “Joe and the Volcano”). But “trusted”? For Jesus’s sake, why?

Also, evidently, we trust Alex Trebek, who recites trivia answers that he receives through an earpiece. Also Sandra Bullock, who is the female Tom Hanks. Also (most confusingly) several Nobel Prize-winners, two chemists and an economist, of whom I’ve never heard. How did they even get on the list?

The ridiculousness continues. Tony Dungy. Johnny Depp. Tim Tebow!

All of these rate above Barack Obama, by the way.

What is this “trust,” anyway? I actually read the article twice, to make sure I was extracting all of the vital information. It appears to have something to do with making us feel good, and making our brains release oxytocin. Evidently Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock make us release gallons of oxytocin.

What rubbish!

Get this, from the article:

“The real winners aren’t here. We removed the three top answers: ‘my doctor,’ ‘my child’s teacher,’ and ‘my spiritual advisor’ – from our results, to make the list more universal.”

Tom Hanks is universal? Tony Dungy is universal?

We have left Earth and entered a parallel dimension, in which Tony Dungy is more important than anyone you might know in your private life.

I suppose you’d better get used to it. Reader’s Digest says so, so it must be true.

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Salt, and MSG, and lead: Joe Jackson sings "Everything Gives You Cancer"

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I read lots of different publications. I read Reader’s Digest, which is very cheerful, but is also very conservative. I also read Mother Jones, which is unashamedly liberal. I read the Atlantic, and New York Magazine, and the Financial Times . . .

 

 

Well, I tell you, it’s exhausting.

 

 

It’s especially exhausting to figure out their takes on various issues.

 

 

Salt, for example. Reader’s Digest recently excerpted an article from the New York Times (!) which showed that maybe salt isn’t as bad as we’ve been bad as we’ve been led to believe.

 

 

To be sure: any nutrient, in excess, is bad for you. But how much is too much much? We’ve been told over the last few decades that we eat too much salt, and it’s killing us: hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease.

 

 

Except maybe the research studies aren’t supportive of this.

 

 

O dear!

 

 

Monosodium glutamate? Also not necessarily a killer, according to a British book I read recently. (Of course, they said that salt was the real villain.)

 

 

And a recent article in Mother Jones found widespread lead poisoning in urban areas, which seemed to correlate to areas of elevated crime, etc.

 

 

Sing it, Joe Jackson!

 

 

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