Playing in the People's Court

Periodization is a sport which pundits fancy playing. But perhaps now it is time to periodize the self-aggrandizing pundits of television news. The initial feeding frenzy of the O.J. Simpson "case" having subsided for the moment, our collective decency can dare to re-assert itself. The O.J. Simpson imbroglio marks the final evaporation of that always-gossamer line between (what has been charitably called) "television news" and televisual entertainment.

The network filth-mongers themselves haven't realized the extent of their degradation just yet; they are too busy grappling with a present dilemma precipitated by the profusion of grotes-queries. The next courtroom appearance for O.J. happens to coincide exactly with that of the infamous Menendez brothers. The latter celebrities are to undergo a ritual which the Simpson case has elevated from legalistic obscurity to event of national import: the "pre-trial" hearing. Why waste time on self-examination when the really crucial question is yet to be decided: Which freak gets top billing in the rogue's gallery?

My guess is that the indomitable Simpson case will prevail. After all, it has enjoyed the highest media saturation of any story since the Gulf War, and that affair involved over a half-million good guys, a pretty formidable villain (complete with evil, soup-strainer moustache and ominous-sounding name) and the deaths of more than 100,000 of the bad guy's under-lings. So death for death, the Simpson case is probably the most potent media monopolizer the world has ever known.

Every one of the evening network "news" magazines presented a segment concerning "the latest on the O.J. Simpson case" for not just one but two weeks running. That's like hitting a grand slam on two consecutive at-bats, and doesn't even count the several prime-time specials specifically devoted to the Simpson case.

No one can in good conscience call the whole spectacle anything other than entertainment, pure, simple and a little bit gruesome. One wouldn't be surprised to see "Jake and the Fat Man" heading up the prosecutorial team, with Perry Mason and Ben Matlock collaborating on the defense. Much of America, I'm sure, was half-stunned that no one broke down and confessed on the stand within the first few minutes of hearings.

As for real news, 500,000 people were in the process of getting hacked to death in Rwanda, sparking the largest refugee exodus in recent memory. Though several local television news outlets felt compelled to send crews to cover the Simpson "story," not a single televised report came out of Rwanda until a French Antenna 2 crew followed the French military in. A lot of death, sure, but no sex or intrigue or mystery.

Such priorities wouldn't be so offensive, if the television news pack admitted that they were nothing more than ordinary Hollywood purveyors of prurience. The cascade of innuendo, inaccurate reports, relentlessly rebroadcast melodramatic tapes are "news" in the way that "America's Most Wanted" is "news". It deals with things that seem to have happened. If only ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox would admit that this is what they now mean by news, the rest of us could resign ourselves to the fact that there aren't 11 news programs in prime time, but 11 cousins of "America's Most Wanted." Instead, the TV news has embarked on a pitiful rear-guard action designed to defend their privileged "news" status, without giving up a single minute of the O.J. saga.

"We have brought the issue of domestic violence to the fore," they piously pontificate. As if that we the motivation; a string of women who had restraining orders against ex-husbands were killed over the last year in Boston. Did that merit any televised specials? Tens of thousands of Americans are murdered annually. Some of them did useful things with their lives. None of them have been eulogized like Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman--the one a promiscuous tippler who puttered around in Ferraris without having contributed anything significant to society, whose lifetime occupation was that of silicon-impregnated consort to a brutish gladiator and rental car shill, the other a member of that most dispensible of species--the "aspiring actor/model". Are these two typical of murder victims? Is their loss the greatest tragedy on planet Earth this year, worthy of the global mourning that Rwanda cannot buy at the price of a half-million lives?

The media quickly tried to justify their continuing coverage of the pre-trial hearing: "we are giving Americans a glimpse at their criminal justice system." So this is a typical pre-trial hearing? It is a gnarled mutation of the American criminal justice system, distorted by the same television "news" organizations that purport to reveal the true system to Americans. In a perfunctory attempt to separate themselves from other televisual entertainment, the TV news media has pounced on these grave issues with a cynical ferocity that could be well described as vulturine, if such a characterization did not insult a species which actually performs an ultimately useful function in nature.

The pretense is nowhere more pitiful than right here in Boston. WBZ touts its "news" with a commercial featuring "anchor" Jack Williams pounding the mean streets, digging up leads, performing traditionally reporterly duties. The commercial is, of course, completely staged. Williams rarely leaves the studio (and never without a full entourage of producers, assistants, writers, etc.); his main talent is the ability to read large electronic type fluently and the cluck his tongue, shake his head or giggle at the appropriate times. Williams, like his fellow "news" people, should take a cue from the old Tylenol ad, and open the broadcast with a little bit of truth: "I'm not a reporter, but I play one on TV."

In the end, the media may have performed a real service in their intoxicated obsession with the Simpson affair. Not exposing what they glibly call "the tragedy of" domestic violence," or farcically label "the reality of the American criminal justice system," they exposed themselves--what we mistakenly call "news", but should henceforth realize is merely entertainment.