Thursday, January 22, 1998
A little moral outrage goes a long way toward change
SIMPSON: Media circus can be tamed by stopping glamorization of
wrongs
The topic is "Consequences: How the little things we do (or
conversely the little things we don’t do) often yield the greatest
effects." Two recent and unrelated events remind me of a probably
apocryphal story I read somewhere about a guy who endlessly
procrastinated tuning-up his sputtering, back-firing automobile.
One day, finally, it broke down. The story would end here if not
for the fact that the car decided to stop running in the middle of
a railroad crossing. Moments later, a freight train came ’round the
proverbial bend and conducted a test of Newtonian dynamics
vis-a-vis two objects occupying the same space at the same time.
The train won; but, the victory was Pyrrhic. In the process of
rendering the automobile virtually unrecognizable, the train
derailed. The collision sparked a forest fire which eventually
spread to and consumed a nearby village, the very same village
wherein the negligent motorist lived.
To make matters worse, hundreds of thousands of gallons of
chemicals spilled from the train’s tanker cars into a stream
running alongside the tracks. The local water supply was poisoned.
The lake into which the stream fed was so badly contaminated by the
spill that virtually every living organism in it died. The local
fishing industry was devastated. Need I add that our errant
motorist was, by trade, a fisherman?
For all I know this cautionary tale is entirely fabricated. Be
that as it may, it does give rise to some interesting questions.
Would the installation of a new set of spark plugs or the
quarter-turn of a little adjustment screw on the carburetor have
saved a town, a forest, an industry, a car, a freight train and a
whole lot of fish from ruin? One has to wonder.
Let’s cut a little closer to the bone: What if Rodney King had
just pulled over and gotten his ticket like the rest of us do? What
if someone with the authority to scrub a launch had been more
concerned about the effect that cold weather might have on the
integrity of Challenger’s booster engine o-rings? What if someone –
anyone, for God’s sake – had possessed the presence of mind or
common decency to warn the St. Mary’s students that the route their
bus would travel that day was frequented by rapist bandits? What if
Nicole had a concealed but readily accessible hollow-point laden
snub-nosed .357 Magnum on her person when her assassin revealed his
intentions? One has to wonder.
Playing the cause-and-effect game leads, invariably, to a single
conclusion: don’t get out of bed. If you stay in bed, you’re far
less likely to get blind-sided by the Bruin Express as you head
into Murphy with one of those ubiquitous Atmo-Sci late-drop
petitions.
If you stay in bed, you won’t have to contend with a
goatee-sporting, hideous athletic sunglasses wearing, wanna-be
hominid in a pick-up truck with West Virginia plates sizing you up
in the crosswalk like you’re some kind of flesh pinata ripe for
spillage.
On the other hand, if you stay in bed, you run the risk of
catching the leading edge of your upstairs neighbor’s 475-pound
Ikea home entertainment unit right in the sternum as it plunges
through the ceiling at thirty-two feet per second squared at the
urging of a rogue fourth-anniversary Northridge aftershock.
Unfortunately, short of sleeping under Kevlar bed sheets and
rigging our ceilings with steel nets of the type used on aircraft
carriers for preventing fighter jets and whatnot from plunging into
the ocean, venturing outside from time to time is a necessity.
After all, someone needs to buy Lotto tickets. Someone needs to
keep the people who own Adidas, Guess?, Nautica and a thousand
other silly corporations fat and happy. Somebody’s got to pay for
Tommy Hilfiger’s next facial, mani/pedi, seaweed mask, and Dead Sea
salt scrub. And worst of all, somebody has to buy the most recent
edition of "Esquire" magazine, the one with the absolutely,
positively, 100 percent liable, convict on the cover.
In the first paragraph I mentioned two events as the inspiration
for my column this week. The first of those events is O.J.’s
appearance on and in this month’s edition of "Esquire." I am
tempted to launch into an ad hominem diatribe against "Esquire" for
making money off a guy who was found liable for two deaths. The
word "blood money" comes to mind. (By the way, I really hate this
gawky semantic tango I have to do around words like "murder," and
"guilty." I thinks it’s comical, in an asinine way, when I hear
people argue that being found "liable" for two "deaths" somehow has
less of a tarnishing effect on one’s reputation than being found
"guilty" of "murder.")
"Esquire" magazine – our champion when we’re faced with such
dire issues as how to get the best shine on our brogues, how to
make the perfect martini, and how to endure the travails of
fedora/homburg/boater shopping – wants your money and they put O.J.
on their cover to get it. If they thought it wouldn’t sell faster
than condoms at a Bacchanal they wouldn’t do it.
What hath "Esquire" wrought on us? Frankly, I can’t tell you. I
don’t know and I won’t find out because I am loath to see any
dollar of mine feed that gruesome machine that turns a profit by
glamorizing a mur- … (Oops! Sorry.) … by glamorizing a mur- …
(oh, vomit) … I mean by glamorizing a m-m-man who was found
liable for the deaths of two innocent people. What other articles
do they have in there: Damian "Football" Williams on how best to
cave in a man’s skull with a cinder block? Lawrence Powell on
baton-swinging techniques? Jeffrey Dahmer’s best-kept kitchen
secrets?
Some may self-servingly argue the legitimacy of publishing an
interview with O.J. on the grounds that it is "news" and therefore
somehow deserving our attention and scrutiny. If that happens to be
your opinion, Mr./Ms. News Hound, then I will ask you this: What
the hell is going on in Algeria? Surely, the systematic massacre of
thousands is more newsworthy than O.J. griping about the loss of
his Bentley.
Anyone who makes the far-fetched claim that the O.J. interview
is "newsworthy" because it presents an opportunity to examine
contemporary social mores is probably that same person who impedes
the flow of traffic to gawk at roadkill on the pretense that it’s
an opportunity to study mammalian anatomy.
FYI: the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial and related events
whored out to the public by the media never was and never will be,
by respectable journalistic standards, "news." The whole sordid
affair with which O.J.’s name is now indelibly associated was
little more than a grotesque orgy of media sensationalism. The
eunuchs at our local television stations responsible for fouling
our airwaves with this offal disguised as news should be force fed
a puree consisting of Faye Resnick’s liposuction effluent, Kato
Kalin’s dander, and Mark Furhman’s ear wax. Every minute that pap
was on the air, meaningful, relevant, informative stuff wasn’t.
Obnoxious pieces on post-chase Ford Bronco’s sales, psychics trying
to read the dog’s mind, and Judge Ito’s marriage displaced
meaningful pieces on non-trivial matters like Federal limits on
abortion protests, the appointment of Steven Breyer to the Supreme
Court, an IRA-sponsored cease fire, Aristide’s return to Haiti, the
Israeli/Jordanian peace treaty, GOP landslides in the House and
Senate, and a national crimewave of assaults on abortion clinics.
Those are just a few of the events over-looked or under-reported by
our local media in the months following O.J.’s arrest.
If you disagree with me on this point, that is to say, if you
think the O.J. story merited the thousands upon thousands of hours
of coverage it garnered, then answer this question: Who was the
last person to be executed in California? Here’s a hint: he was
convicted of killing fourteen boys and young men. Buzz. Oh, I’m
sorry, time’s up. The answer is: William Bonin, the only person
executed in California in 1996. Surely, if a double murder is news,
then a double-septuple murder is, or should be, bigger news. But I
doubt most of us know where Bonin lived, what he drove, what brand
of shoes he wore, the names of his victims and how they died, the
names of the attorneys involved, who presided over the case,
etc.
The reason you don’t know jack about William Bonin is because
our local media wanks didn’t want to bother you with the story.
They didn’t want to distract you from O.J. They didn’t want to stem
the brisk flow of money pouring into their coffers everyday. More
than anything else, they didn’t want you to change the channel. The
media phenomenon associated with the murder, the investigation, and
the trials was purely and merely a spectacle of the highest order,
pushed on us for one reason and one reason only: money.
It sickens me that so many people made so much money off of the
savage murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. I
personally know someone who boasts making over a million dollars
from their deaths. An attorney? No. A publisher? No. He’s just a
guy who rents pro video gear to foreign news crews. Camp O.J.
rented his entire stock of equipment 24/7 for three years. Now, I
don’t necessarily begrudge the guy for making a living, but I have
to wonder if he doesn’t suffer an occasional wakeful moment in the
middle of the night to ponder the cause and effect relationship
between what happened that bloody night in Brentwood and the new
Hummer he has parked in the new garage of the new house he just
bought in an upscale zip code. I have to wonder how he would
respond if some almighty force were to approach him with the
following proposal: "I’ll bring them back to life, but you’ll have
to give it all back." For a lot of people that would be a tough
call.
The other event that inspired this article is Daniel Inlender’s
column appearing in last Tuesday’s Daily Bruin. Mr. Inlender
pooh-poohs those who buy self-help books, eat healthy diets and
won’t purchase the products of oppressed people. He attributes such
misguided activities to our mere "lust for novelty and
convenience." His clairvoyant powers reveal your and my weaknesses;
he graces us with his wisdom by explaining how our acts of social
and environmental consciousness, trivial as they might be, are
little more than thinly veiled attempts to stifle our "nagging
consciences." Mr. Inlender concludes his well-meaning, if not
poorly articulated, commentary by suggesting that the little
things, like doing business with socially responsible companies and
contributing resources to organizations involved in socially
responsible activities, aren’t enough. He wants us to do more, but
fails to mention exactly what he has in mind for us.
Well, allow me to pick up where Mr. Inlender left off. I started
this column with a message about how little things we do can make a
big difference. Allow me to suggest a little something you can do
that is socially responsible, free and effortless. If you think
that there is something utterly morally corrupt about "Esquire’s"
glamorization of a man who was found liable for the deaths of two
people, if you’re tired of rank spectacle being passed off as
legitimate news, and if you want to encourage other publications to
think twice about lining their pockets with blood money, then
boycott "Esquire" magazine. If you really want to make your point,
send them an e-mail telling them why ([email protected]). I did,
but, as of this writing have yet to receive any response. No doubt
the weasels at "Esquire" and their 5-billion-dollar media behemoth
parent company are otherwise engaged in the time-consuming process
of trying to wipe the blood off of their profits.