When my first daughter was born a few years ago, I entered a celebrity news blackout, a somewhat discomfiting condition for a sociologist of celebrity. When she entered preschool, though, I resubscribed to Us Weekly and devoured its morsels like a starving man at McDonald's: Kim Kardashian and her then-boyfriend ate at Chipotle on their first date! Ashton Kutcher was mad about his neighbor's noisy construction! Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab! I felt less disconnected from others, comforted by the familiar company, a little dirtier and a little lighter.