In 1975, the American humourist Nora Ephron compared People magazine, invented the previous year, to a potato chip. It is empty calories, she said. I think she meant it’s a takeoff mag: you could read the entire thing in the time between finding your seat and the plane taking off.

Thus, I was fascinated this month to sit next to a woman on an Air Canada flight who took a full hour to read an issue of People magazine in which “Kenny Chesney” gives his side of the story. I thought perhaps she was a new Canadian perfecting her English but this was not the case because I asked her why we were watching a movie in which a man held down by steel handcuffs was having ants injected into his eyeballs. “I have no idea what that movie is,” she said in perfect English.

Furthermore, she purposefully took her People mag off the plane with her so I didn’t have the chance to ask her the important question: What is wrong with you? Nothing takes four hours in this life, not sex, not my slim new paperback How to Read Marx (that takes six, clearly should have stuck with the uncondensed version) and certainly not Kenny Chesney’s explanation.

Of what, Kenny? Who are you? Who cares if Renee Zellwegger dumped you shortly after your marriage, citing “fraud”? Why are cranky-looking African children being forced to pose with “Jessicasimpson” in a sidebar next to Kenny and the U.S.A.’s stupidest looking couple who just won a $340 million lottery? Yes, that’s how big payouts have to be before they’ll get America’s attention.

Since winning, this hopeless family has bought a Humvee that they can’t drive. Dad has to heal from breaking his pelvis after falling off a roof which worsened his diabetes, especially after cataract surgery and another fall that broke his shoulder and he had to moonlight to pay his medical bills, but the family lists what they’ll buy — another SUV, two houses, trip round the world, Tiffany bracelet and a manicure. They offer not one cent for charity or even medical insurance for their neighbours in the trailer park.

Why is everyone in People magazine always smiling? Not counting ads, there were 176 People smiling and 58 People not smiling. The non-smilers were stars caught unawares or with their back turned, stars deliberately looking sultry or their kitten just died, People standing behind stars at a ballgame, actors fired from Desperate Housewives/in erotic movie clinches/inflated by 200 pounds to test public’s reaction to fat People/playing Harry Potter/admitting eating disorder, children who were dying/denied medical insurance on technicality after hideous burns/forced to pose doing homework with star parents, Jackie Kennedy marrying Ari Onassis, a heroic cocker spaniel named Honey, and a suicidally depressed man whose lottery win had turned real bad.

Sometimes Kenny C. is smiling, sometimes not, depending on his side of the story which is that he is not gay but sounds like he might be which is not good for country singers but his family loves him “no matter what” but won’t explain why he has to make a point of saying this.

Next there are 91 full pages of ads. The only person not smiling is a guy with Hepatitis C but that may be because he has read the possible side-effects of the drug Big Pharma I is recommending.

All the other sick People are happy and shiny. One sexy, smiling lady has found a new herpes simplex remedy. Is it safe if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding? Big Pharma II’s website says it has no idea! They never checked for that. But you is one hot lady.

If you have an overactive bladder, as the grinning white ladies don’t anymore, that might be due to hallucinations, one of Big Pharma III’s drug side-effects the ad doesn’t mention. Don’t get pregnant. Once again they didn’t check. If I were you, I’d just buy Depends.

The psoriasis drug ad on page 97 wants to clear up “misconceptions” from its TV ads. The drug is neither “cure” nor “breakthrough.” You might even want to take another drug, or no medication at all, Big Pharma IV says. Side-effects may include death and tuberculosis. So why is that guy smiling and listening to his I-Pod? He appears to be sweating and leaning on a cow. Their car is parked way over by the highway and his girlfriend is looking for help. They look desperate.

Like most black People, 50 Cent is not smiling. A feature on Chicago’s pregnant teens shows scenes of fear and shame. Lashawn Lindsey, 18 months, is the most depressed looking baby I’ve ever seen. At least someone’s being realistic.

Steve Madden isn’t. Just out of jail and still shaved, the fraud and shoe designer is grinning like a bald kneecap. Gimme a People headline! “Jail over, a designer steps up.” Other People would just shut up at this point. But in PeopleSpeak, he’s “chastened by a 31-month prison stint” during which he wasn’t allowed to wear slippers in the shower. His family is very much behind him, just like Kenny’s.

It’s a fascinating interview that digs deep. Madden “wasn’t that interested in shoes while [he] was away.” His new fiancée, who looks like a guy in a wig, visited him in prison but he wants to emphasize that there was no sexual intimacy, just a kiss over a filthy phone receiver, I guess. Now Madden’s going stiletto over stacked heel, if you’re interested.

As for reporting, People praises the captain of a cruise ship attacked by pirates off the coast of starving Somalia, while failing to ask him why he had sailed 151 vacationers into a notoriously dangerous area banned to tourists. “Afterwards the crew brought refreshments to the shaken but remarkably calm passengers, many of whom were still wearing pyjamas.” So that’s okay then.

I refuse to discuss the “foodvertorial” pages. You can’t make me.

Ephron noted that People mag boasted of its “human element.” Her complaint was that the human element always seemed to be the lowest form of human, while ignoring the reasons why this was so. “People is the future, and it works, and that makes me grouchiest of all” was how she ended her column. How did she know that journalism and literacy would disappear as People flourished? Rupert Murdoch was a nobody then. Ephron was married to Carl Bernstein (she outed Deep Throat in her novel Heartburn, by the way) who cheated on her when she was pregnant and is now a nobody. Bob Woodward is a patsy to the powerful. How did Ephron know all this would come to pass?

So, in the second review of People magazine in 31 years, I say Ephron was dead-on and yet too kind. I say People is a shameless, tasteless, sick, distorted vision of modern America, the magazine equivalent of a vat of worm castings.

And I still don’t know what’s wrong with Kenny.