Next time you visit your grandparents, show up with a quizzical look and an issue of National Informer.
The adult tabloid National Informer is in full bloom in this issue published today in 1972. By now they’re up to volume 22, issue 20, which is simply amazing considering virtually nobody remembers this paper (or at least, nobody admits remembering it). But that’s one reason Pulp Intl. exists—to bring near-forgotten publications like Informer back to the light to embarrass an entire generation now pretending to be upstanding senior citizens, as well as to teach a new generation about vintage sexual aids like the Black Bomber, the Universal Rectal Unit, the Vibrating Funky Finger and, grandmother’s favorite little helper, the P.S.G. Pumpometer. Now that we’ve done our job, we gotta run. We’re late for band practice. We know—you had no idea we were in a band. That’s because we just formed it. Just this instant. You didn’t seriously think we’d let a name like Vibrating Funky Finger go to waste, did you? Next stop—top of the charts!
Walking on air, fairest of the fair, there she is… Miss Nude America.
Our copies of National Informer span a time during which the paper was transitioning from typical tabloid to sex magazine. In our issues from 1966 to 1968, you get alarmist political journalism, which by the 1970s becomes drooling quasi-smut, as we see in this issue that first hit newsstands today in 1972. Of course, this shift from commie-baiting to masturbating meant abandoning a rightward leaning readership for a leftward leaning one. Clearly the move was meant to boost readership, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t Informer’s fault, though. All the old school tabloids were taking a beating. Even the venerable National Police Gazette, which had begun publishing lifetimes earlier, in 1845, died during the seventies. But Informer had a shorter history, a smaller audience, and a lower budget. In a tabloid sea where old battleships like Gazette and Confidential couldn’t turn quickly when the weather changed, Informer was a mere speedboat. Turn it did, and quite easily. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy had obliterated America's already battered pubic hair barrier in 1971 and Informer followed in its wake. But more explicitness did not bring more readership, as far as we can tell. National Informer and its sister publication National Informer Weekly Reader were dead by 1974.
Freakies and beasties and bushies! Oh my! Linguistically, American tabloids are home to some truly fascinating diminutions of the English language. This cover of National Informer from today in 1969 introduces us to the word “freakies”, and inside the issue we are treated to various hubbies, lezzies, beasties, teenies, prosties and girlies. We also get the slightly more esoteric “bushies” for pubic hair. But interestingly, women’s breasts are referred to as “titters”. Go and figure. Moving ahead, you get a typical slate of sexually suggestive articles, but Informer outdoes itself by offering up a two page spread on how to enlarge the adolescent penis. Are they kidding? Not so much. The article is a primer for parents who are concerned that their kids’ equipment is deficient. They warn that permanent dysfunction could result when these boys have their first sexual experiences and realize they’re hanging light. We submit that permanent dysfunction could result from a kid having his unit examined by his dad. Finally, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention The (not so) Amazing Criswell, who offers up another slate of prognostications. He starts with a few obvious predictions he probably got from watching the news (“I predict that the new automobiles will be smaller and less in power…”), then floats off into the ether, telling us that women will soon own 90% of wealth in America and will be able to buy and sell men freely for profit. Could such a world possibly look like this? Then we're all for it.
National Informer offered readers sexual advice. Our advice—don’t listen. The cheapie newspaper National Informer, of which you see a September 1971 cover above, began as a rightward leaning tabloid of the post-pulp era that later increasingly tried to distinguish itself by posturing as a repository of sexual advice. In this issue its articles manage to confirm readers' suspicions about the new decade's loose morals and construct stimulating sexual fantasies. For example, the “deaf and dumb sexpot” in panel five is an archetype of the sexually available woman, but sadly she’s French, thus accessible only to those evil socialists across the sea. Just can’t win, right? But even as these and other articles offer up sex with a hint of political division, the photo captions suggest that the editors perhaps didn’t take their own content seriously. In panel three, a subhead reads: Some wives turn to lezzies when they’re turned off on hubbies. In panel eight, in the story Commies Oppose Sexy-Looking Frauleins, a caption under a nude photo of a blonde deadpans: Commies don’t like stuff like this. And in the report on How You Can Replace Sexual Ignorance with Sex Know-How, the caption under a nude couple explains: Breast sucking is great, with proper know-how. In our view, there’s no way the editors couldn’t have been chuckling when they wrote those lines. Certainly, the presence of the crackpot psychic The Amazing Criswell (in panel five) doesn’t lend any credibility to the proceedings, especially when he predicts that astronauts will find cockroaches living on the Moon. So was National Informer taken seriously by its readers, or was it all just low comedy? At this point we don’t know. But as we mentioned in an earlier post, we have a collection of Informers, so as we continue to share them, you can decide for yourselves.
That this tabloid is really bad, but you better get used to seeing it. In the same way a donut is just a delivery system for sugar, certain tabloids were simply delivery systems for softcore smut. Some, like National Informer Weekly Reader, were so brazen about it you can’t help but laugh. For instance, on the cover of this issue published today in 1972, you see young Cindy (no last name), who wants to be an astronaut. Her story, written by Durr T. Olman, is completely straight-faced all the way until the last paragraph, when it ends with this gem of a quote: “By the time they (Women’s Lib) get around to making them accept female astronauts, I hope to have my education completed so I can qualify. Already I know the alphabet, I can write my name, and do addiction and subtraction!” Cue the rimshot and muted trumpet: waah waah waah. This tabloid is bad. And we don’t mean bad as in good. Even the naked women can’t save it, mainly because after the first few pages they disappear. But guess what? We bought twelve—yes twelve—of these puppies. So get used to National Informer Weekly Reader and its parent publication National Informer, because you’ll be seeing a lot more of them.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1926—Aimee Semple McPherson Disappears
In the U.S., Canadian born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach, California in the middle of the afternoon. She is initially thought to have drowned, but on June 23, McPherson stumbles out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people named Steve and Mexicali Rose. However, it soon becomes clear that McPherson's tale is fabricated, though to this day the reasons behind it remain unknown. 1964—Mods and Rockers Jailed After Riots
In Britain, scores of youths are jailed following a weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers in Brighton and other south coast resorts. Mods listened to ska music and The Who, wore suits and rode Italian scooters, while Rockers listened to Elvis and Gene Vincent, and rode motorcycles. These differences triggered the violence. 1974—Police Raid SLA Headquarters
In the U.S., Los Angeles police raid the headquarters of the revolutionary group the Symbionese Liberation Army, resulting in the deaths of six members. The SLA had gained international notoriety by kidnapping nineteen-year old media heiress Patty Hearst from her Berkeley, California apartment, an act which precipitated her participation in an armed bank robbery. 1978—Charlie Chaplin's Missing Body Is Found
Eleven weeks after it was disinterred and stolen from a grave in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland, Charlie Chaplin's corpse is found by police. Two men—Roman Wardas, a 24-year-old Pole, and Gantscho Ganev, a 38-year-old Bulgarian—are convicted in December of stealing the coffin and trying to extort £400,000 from the Chaplin family. 1918—U.S. Congress Passes the Sedition Act
In the U.S., Congress passes a set of amendments to the Espionage Act called the Sedition Act, which makes "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces, as well as language that causes foreigners to view the American government or its institutions with contempt, an imprisonable offense. The Act specifically applies only during times of war, but later is pushed by politicians as a possible peacetime law, specifically to prevent political uprisings in African-American communities. But the Act is never extended and is repealed entirely in 1920.
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