One depends upon a tabloid like The National Enquirer, whether surreptitiously in the supermarket checkout line, or luxuriantly and unapologetically over a nice bowl of soup, to be sleazy in its journalistic style, juicy in its revelations, skewering in its attitudes toward celebrities' privileges, and worshipful toward their diets, addictions, recoveries, charitable activities, and alien visitations. It is therefore disappointing to find that The National Enquirer: Thirty Years of Unforgettable Images, the photograph collection recently published by Disney-owned Talk Miramax books, has been considerably sanitized for its appearance on coffee tables.

"It's amazing how you always manage to work anal intercourse into the conversation," Debbie, the colorful waitress-with-a-heart-of-gold and suffocatingly supportive mother of one of the central characters on Showtime's Queer as Folk (premiering December 3), says to her son and his friends. Indeed, the first few of the 22 episodes of the show--an American adaptation of last year's controversial hit British series--feature references not just to anal intercourse, but also to rimming, nipple play, "dykes going down on each other," the protein content of semen, a porn movie called Schindler's Fist, Internet strippers, "a guy with Brazilian beach parasites in his ass," tops and bottoms, erections, and butt plugs.