Mid year review for 2011, part four: The most popular celebrities

Here are the ten most popular celebrities in terms of appearance on the covers of The Only Ten Magazines That Matter since this blog started in January 2010.

1. Jennifer Aniston (97)
2. Sandra Bullock (90)
3. BrAngelina (88)
4. Kim Kardashian (82)
5. Kourtney Kardashian (61)
6. Wills'N'Kate (59)
7. Kendra Wilkinson (52)
8. Barack Obama (49)
9. Jesse James (47)
10. Angelina Jolie (46)

Both Angelina Jolie and Barack Obama are new to the top ten since the last three month review, a change I correctly predicted. The only person knocking on the door at the moment is Oprah Winfrey, and if things go as they have been going, Angelina will pass Jesse James for the ninth spot, then Oprah will knock Jesse out of the Top Ten. Kourtney and Kendra are fading from view, and while Wills'N'Kate will continue to climb, I have no idea who else beyond Oprah might break into this list by the end of the year.

2011 list
1. Jennifer Aniston 2011 (34)
2. Wills'N'Kate 2011 (30)
3. Kim Kardashian (29)
4. BrAngelina 2011 (27)
5. Sandra Bullock 2011 (21)
6. Barack Obama 2011 (19)
7-9. Bachelor Brad (17)
7-9. Elizabeth Taylor 2011 (17)
7-9. Kendra Wilkinson 2011 (17)
10. Leah Messer 2011 (16)

Three months ago, I correctly predicted Ryan Reynolds would fade from view, but I incorrectly guessed that we had seen something close to the last from Bachelor Brad and Miss Elizabeth Taylor. I'm going to double down on my earlier incorrect predictions and say Brad and Liz will be out of the top ten by the end of September, and add another guess that Kendra is about to fade. I can't be sure who will overtake them, but right now it looks like a swarm of Teen Moms, more's the pity.

Notice that Kim Kardashian is the only sister in the top ten for this year. Her upcoming wedding has turned Kourtney and Khloe into ghosts, and the TV show is going to start focusing on the underage sisters. I'm the last person to judge what will work on reality TV, but this might be a bridge too far.

One can always hope.

The next review will come about Labor Day. You can still check in every day here at It's News 2 Them™ for the latest in supermarket gossip.

Mid year review for 2011, part three: Naughty vs. Nice numbers

The percentages of nice stories to mean ones actually improved in several magazines since the last count three months ago, but the basic standings remain the same. Here the Only Ten Magazines are ranked from nicest to meanest, with the most recent percentages and what those percentages were at the end of March. (Both the current numbers and the March numbers are based on starting dates of January 2010.)

1. OK! 68% unchanged
2. People 65% up from 61%
3. Us Weekly 53% up from 50%
4. Weekly Life & Style 51% up from 50%
5. In Touch 34% unchanged
6. Sun 28% up from 23%
7. Star 22% unchanged
8. Examiner 15% unchanged
9. Globe 11% up from 10%
10. Enquirer 10% unchanged
    
    

Mid year review for 2011, part two: Birth predictions.

While the main gossip rags that predict deaths are just the Three Wicked Step Sisters, the Enquirer, Globe and low rent Examiner, a whole slew of the mags will tell their readers some celebrity is pregnant. The common thread is how unreliable these stories are.

The way I count these predictions is to go back six to nine months and list all the Bun In The Oven Alerts. That means this review is dealing with stories from October, November and December of 2010. Here are the stories that actually panned out.

Mariah Carey
Pink
Natalie Portman

Here are the stories that were so much balloon juice.

Angelina Jolie
Khloe Kardashian (twice)
Kim Kardashian
Kourtney Kardashian (three times)
Beyoncé Knowles
Kate Middleton
Elin Nordegren
Willow Palin
LeAnn Rimes
Jessica Simpson
Carrie Underwood
Kendra Wilkinson
Trisha Yearwood

Three true stories, sixteen lies. Batting average of .158, not as stinky as the death predictions, but still AMAZINGLY unreliable.

This underscores the reason I started this blog in the first place. If the supermarket rags are this bad at stuff that can be verified or proven false, imagine how bad they are at the stuff that just remains rumor.

Mid year review for 2011, part one: Death predictions.

So far in 2011, the vultures of the tabloids, which usually means the Enquirer, Globe and low rent Examiner, have given death predictions for a total of 30 celebrities, three of whom have died in these past six months, Miss Elizabeth Taylor, James Arness and Peter Falk. That works out to a batting average of .100, which is pretty darn sad no matter how you slice it.

The overall record since the beginning of 2010 is 10 correct predictions out of 84, a slightly better but still stinky .119. Of course, if they just stop predicting and wait, their batting average will eventually be 1.000. That's how this game works. But it's not in their nature not to speculate on life and death, no matter how bad they suck at it.

Here are the new names added to the list since January that are still alive.

Larry Fortensky
Roy Clark
George Jones
Donna Fargo
Miss Kitty Wells
Dick Van Dyke
Nancy Reagan
Steve Jobs
Regis Philbin
Paula Deen
John Edwards
Chuck Berry
Miss Angela Lansbury
Miss Maureen O'Hara
Jack Klugman
Amber Portwood

Here are the people who have been mentioned since January, but are repeat customers from 2010, excluding Miss Elizabeth Taylor, who was pegged for death six times in the month before the end.

Miss Aretha Franklin x2
Miss Doris Day x2
Bob Barker x2
Billy Graham
Jerry Lee Lewis
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Whitney Houston
Charlie Sheen
Bill Clinton
James Garner
Miss Loretta Lynn

Best wishes to the people on the list, their family and friends, and double best wishes to the special ladies, Miss Loretta Lynn, Miss Kitty Wells, Miss Aretha Franklin, Miss Angela Lansbury, Miss Doris Day, and Miss Maureen O'Hara.

Three month review for Spring 2011, part four: The most popular celebrities of 2011.

The top ten most popular celebrities since the beginning of the blog and the top ten of 2011 (including ties, if necessary) are published in the right hand column of the blog. There are several names that show up on both lists: BrAngelina, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Aniston, Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, Kendra Wilkinson and Wills'N'Kate. At the moment, the one fading star on the all time list is Jesse James, who has had only three mentions in the first three months of 2011. As the Royal Wedding draws near, it's almost certain Wills'N'Kate will pass him and he will fall to position #8 on the list. The other people who could slip into the top ten all time over the next few months are Angelina Jolie as a solo gossip target and Barack Hussein Obama.

Among the 2011 Top Ten, it seems doubtful Ryan Reynolds will stay on the list much longer, and almost a certainty Miss Elizabeth Taylor will not be on the list within a few weeks. I thought Bachelor Brad would have started to fade by now, but no such luck. Just outside the Top Ten are Scarlett Johansson, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and a whole slew of Teen Moms.

Notice that the two biggest hot messes in Hollywood today, Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen, do not have that much of a draw on the supermarket rag covers week in and week out. There will be flashes of each of them being newsworthy, followed by weeks of being ignored. There are three Teen Moms who each get about twice the coverage Lindsay Lohan has had this year. I assume this is true because they are easier targets and the show has publicists who are glad to get any mention in the supermarket rags, good or bad.

Of course, actual gossip worthy news can change the whole landscape, but it is interesting to see how the supermarket rags have several fixed points of interest, a few real celebrities and a slew of people from just a handful of reality TV shows.

The next review will be at the end of June.

Three month review for Spring 2011, part three: The naughty to nice continuum

Here are the rankings for The Only Ten Magazines That Matter from meanest to nicest since the beginning of 2010. The headlines are split into negative, positive and neutral and each rag is given a percentage of positive stories.

The Three Wicked Step Sisters
National Enquirer 9.7%
Globe 10.2%
Examiner 15.2%

There was a time when you could throw a blanket over the Three Wicked Step Sister tabloids, their relative meanness percentages were so close to one another. But the low rent Examiner is now the place that publishes anything positive about the Royals, so they are getting a little less mean, while the Enquirer can go weeks without a single nice word about any human being written on their cover. The Flagship is so bad that a best and worst beach bodies story, which should count as neutral, actually had no positive pictures at all, everyone was too fat, scary skinny or over-muscled.

Another example of the dominance of nasty stories in these three magazines is that the winner of Meanest Story of the Week has come from the Three Wicked Step Sisters a total of 38 times, while all the other seven magazines combined have won the award less than ten times combined.

The rest of the AMI kennel
Star 22.0%
Sun 22.8%

The Sun is completely made-up crap, either predictions of the End of the World or terror attacks or goofy stuff from the Weekly World News. The Star is slightly meaner than a magazine that says everyone is going to die on a regular basis.

Think about that for a minute.

Editor's note: The Sun is almost never in the running for Meanest Story of the Week because it is completely made-up crap. I do have some standards.

The meanest of the rest
In Touch 34.4%

Of the five magazines not owned by American Media, Inc. (AMI), In Touch runs the most negative stories on their cover, about two mean stories for every nice one. It's not even close to the Enquirer's track record of ten mean stories for every positive one, but the rest of the pack tend to put a more positive spin on the cover.

The fair and balanced
Weekly Life & Style 49.0%
Us Weekly 49.7%

One mean story matching one nice story, or very close to it.

The Gold Standard
People 60.8%

People tends to be positive at about a 3 to 2 clip. They have won the Meanest Story of the Week award once by asking if Lindsay Lohan was beyond hope.

Pollyanna
OK! 68.4%

The nicest magazine by far, but they make stuff up a lot. I consider any headline that a celebrity is pregnant or getting married a positive story, and OK! runs a lot of such stories that just aren't true. So far, OK! has never won a Meanest Story of the Week competition.

Three month review for Spring 2011, part two: Birth predictions.

Unlike death predictions, saying some woman is pregnant has no promise that it must come true eventually. Let's look at the pregnancy rumors in the supermarket rags from six to nine months ago, July through September 2011, all of which should be verifiable by now.

The actually pregnant: Kelly Preston and Christina Applegate have already given birth. Mariah Carey has confirmed she is expecting twins soon. Even though the Three Wicked Step Sisters made all kinds of wild claims about Preston's pregnancy, let's count this as three correct.

The not pregnant: Kim Kardashian, Chelsea Clinton, Katie Holmes, Carrie Underwood, Ellen DeGeneres, Kourtney Kardashian, Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie. Let's stipulate that Ellen's pregnancy was a silly story from a psychic and Katie has been called pregnant when she played a pregnant Jackie Kennedy in a mini-series, but when the tally is taken, it's three right and eight wrong for a .273 batting average. If this were hitting a major league baseball, that wouldn't be so bad, but this is about journalism, when you are really expected to bat 1.000 or have a damn good reason why not.

Tomorrow: popularity and the naughty vs. nice tally.

Three month review for Spring 2011, part one: Death predictions.

Since the beginning of the year, two celebrities who had been marked for death in the tabloids actually died. The first was Anne Francis, who died on January 3 this year. The low rent Examiner told us she was dying in June last year.

The other celebrity who died in the last three months after multiple predictions of her death going back at least fifty years was Miss Elizabeth Taylor. Most of the death predictions in the tabloids either say "xxx dying!" or "zzz's Brave Last Days!" but give no date as to when we can expect the inevitable. The Globe said in February that Miss Taylor's birthday last month would be her last, and with this they got the first correct expiration date.

And now the not so good news for the tabloids.

Six new names have been added to the list since the beginning of the year: Chuck Berry, James Arness, Steve Jobs, Nancy Reagan and Regis Philbin. This brings the number of people on the tabloid death watch who are still alive to 63, while 8 have died after being marked for death. This makes the tabloid batting average a pathetic .113.

And then there are the predictions with expiration dates. Since the beginning of the year, Michael Douglas, Bill Clinton and Steve Jobs have all survived past some tabloid prediction of their imminent demise. Others who have survived through such dire warnings last year are Dick Clark, who is still alive, and Elizabeth Edwards, who died two months after the "six months to live" date given to her by the Enquirer.

As my good friend Padre Mickey reminds us, if you say "xxx is dying!", you will eventually be correct. But if you read it in a tabloid, especially in the Three Wicked Step Sisters, the Enquirer, Globe and the low rent Examiner, don't hold your breath waiting for it.

Holding your breath that long can kill you. You can look it up.