Remembering the Enquirer and Generoso Pope

Tomorrow I am having lunch with a group of fellow former inmates of a journalistic insane asylum known as the National Enquirer. It will be an event similar in some ways to the reunions of survivors of wartime prison camps.

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The central figure in our memories is the late Generoso Pope, sole proprietor of a notorious tabloid newspaper - the National Enquirer - a publication that at the height of its popularity could boast of a weekly readership of seven million Americans. According to legend, Mr. Pope, the son of a legendary Italian who came to the U.S. As a penniless immigrant and rose to become a multi-millionaire publisher of the nation's largest foreign language newspaper, Il Progresso Italiano, merchant and contractor, and friend of Presidents. Generoso Pope's Godfather was gambler and Mafia kingpin Frank Costello who reportedly lent Mr. Pope the $75,000 he paid to buy the Enquirer' In the past I had called two future Presidents of the United States by their first names, as I did with presidential Cabinet members, a host of United States Senators and members of the House of Representatives. I called Generoso Pope Mr. Pope. Moreover, I am a product of an Educational system overseen by the awesome Sisters of St. Joseph, hard nosed Jesuit instructors, and the sadistic drill instructors at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island South Carolina. More fondly recalled as Marine Corps boot camp. None of these harsh environments began to match the fear and severity of life at Generoso Pope's National Enquirer. When I was there I was surrounded by refugees from Fleet Street - journalists recruited by Mr. Pope who admired the aggressive style of British newsmen which he strove to imitate at the Enquirer. I was once summoned to Mr. Pope's inner sanctums (see, he's long dead and I'm still calling him Mr. Pope) at best always an intimidating experience. I had done a story about a Brit actor who I identified as a "celebrity." Mr. Pope had never heard of him so obviously he could not possibly be a celebrity. He asked me who told me the man was a famous actor. I said that one of the British reporters had told me he was. Mr. Pope glared at me for an uncomfortable moment before telling me not to ask a Brit, but instead, a fellow American. He then hesitated a moment before saying "If you can find one out there." The Enquirer of those days was a place where legends were frequently made – tales for example of a reporter sent on a world-wide search for the best place to live on the globe. After weeks on the road, and spending large sums of Mr. Pope’s money he found the place – a tropical paradise in the Pacific Ocean but nobody from outside was allowed to so much as visit the island, so there would be no story. My favorite was the story of a Pulitzer prize winning journalist sent to shadow Jackie Onasis no matter where she went. His final moments at the Enquirer came when she unexpectedly went to the airport and boarded a plane bound for Europe. Our intrepid reporter got on the same plane sans luggage and flew off with the lady, leaving a rented car at the airport parking lot. He was subsequently fired (everybody got fired at least once - I got canned three times). He didn’t tell the Enquirer where that car, rented on an Enquirer credit card was left. So it sat there running up rental and parking fees for months, all charged to the paper. Them wuz the days.