As re-invented by Generoso Pope in 1952, and then again in 1968, the National Enquirer became the archetype and model of the "supermarket tabloids" of the 1980s and 1990s. The Enquirer, with regular sales in excess of four million copies, has the largest circulation of any weekly serial publication in the United States. In the late 1990s it was owned by MacFadden Holdings, Inc., which also publishes the tabloids the Weekly World News and the Star (while the other three principal tabloids—the Globe, the Sun, and the National Examiner —are all owned by Globe Communications). Although, in fact, the Star's coverage led the tabloid pack in some of the sex-and-politics scandals of the 1990s, it was the National Enquirer's photo spread of the Gary Hart/Donna Rice embroglio (June 2, 1987) which shaped all future coverage. To talk about the National Enquirer is to talk about American...