This is a book by the mostly online comedian James Felton (I know him solely through Twitter) that details in categorical breakdown the awfulness of the British tabloid The Sun. The book uses 99 headlines and details from other articles to tell the history of the paper owned by Rupert Murdoch. Felton breaks down this history into thematic categories like “celebrity” “racism” and “misogyny” and through light and really funny analysis spells out not only the offense, but also the effect and impact of the coverage. .
In terms of who this book is for, well it gets a little more complicated. For me, an American who has very little exposure to the Sun, it’s a great look into a cultural artifact (or even touchstone) that not only do I have no real interaction with except by reference. Felton’s analysis is funny and cutting, but even by his own admission, it’s relatively surface-level. There is certainly a more intensive and incisive broader cultural analysis version of this book that Felton admits is out there, but that he’s not here to give it to you.
So for me, the casual reader (with much of that cultural analysis background Felton is not diving into in my grad school days), it’s a funny, if depressing set of analytical providing me the necessary cultural context for say, when a novel involved British tabloids, to better understand the reference points.
There’s not really a US equivalent, not one that is nation-wide, and even this week’s excoriating of the NY Post reminds us that that paper is local mostly.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52220676-sunburn?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=1cIH6cYhg4&rank=1)