For many years I had heard rumors. I did watch occasionally – I was aware of 9/11, for example, and I’d endured the election night coverage in 2000 and 2004 – but other than that I hadn’t watched anything regularly since 1992. I’d heard that things had gotten bad out there. Many people I knew and whose opinions I respected said that what used to be the news had deteriorated to the point where it was almost painful to watch. As I learned in the fall of 2008, that was no exaggeration.
Every morning on the Today show one of the top three stories concerned the disappearance of a little girl in Florida, an unfortunate member of the clan that appeared to be a serious contender for the title of the country’s First Family of Trash. The significance of the story baffled me. The trashy mother of the disappeared girl, aware that her daughter was missing, had apparently been out at the clubs and at parties and so on and so forth. Her trashy mother and her trashy father had lots to say about one thing and another. At one point, in fact, another child went missing in Florida – it does not seem to be uncommon there – and the trashy father managed to get on the television to talk about that situation as well. There was a boyfriend as I recall, or an ex-boyfriend, who would chime in periodically. There were lawyers and forensic experts and psychics and religious people and family therapists and as baffled as I was by the prominence of this story on the morning airwaves, I was blown away that it made the evening news, which was hosted (I will not use the term anchored) by Katie Couric.
When the body of the missing girl was found – her name was Kaylee, I believe – the networks interrupted their programming to make an announcement, and when the remains of the unfortunate child were put to rest, I recall hearing that a woman from Texas had driven to Florida to attend the funeral not just to leave some plastic shit sitting around but to “pay her respects” to the departed.
And I thought, man, this is not good.
For many years the most brazen PR whores I worked with added their voices to the chorus about the “death of print” by blaming it on the newspaper reporters. They don’t get it, they would sneer. It’s no longer about forcing the news onto people – it’s a conversation.
It sure is. It’s a conversation that we apparently cannot stop having (just writing this makes me guilty as charged, I’m afraid).
In the fall of 2008, among many other travesties that were taking place, billions of dollars were changing hands in ways that were poorly explained if explained at all, millions of jobs were evaporating and people were being thrown out of their homes. And this country, in its infinite illness, could not get enough of the Anthony family. As if on cue, as if following a script, the whole country seemed to participate in a group hug that extended from sea to shining sea. I watched with a sense of heartbroken horror, and wondered, is this what it is like to not drink a lot of beer?
This week, when the jury acquitted the semi-literate mother, MSNBC blared the non-news across the Internet with one of its red “BREAKING NEWS:” banners. Seconds – and I do mean seconds – later my Facebook page lit up like Christmas in July. People were shocked and horrified and offended and on and on. “When the justice system fails, karma will prevail,” wrote one tech PR know-it-all. “She’ll have her day in God’s court!” blathered another. I finally gave up writing responses with this: One of my adamant Christian Facebook friends wrote something vindictive about the jury, so I responded by writing that as of today, the television screen is not an extension of the court room, and for that I am thankful. Then someone else, Missy someone or another, or perhaps Mindy, wrote, below my comment: “You’re right Yvonne! She should have her tubes tied!!!”
And I thought: You shrill, officious, uninformed bitches should all have your tubes tied. But I didn’t write that, of course, because I’ve kind of given up on it.
The funny thing about it, to me, is that the only way these loud mouths could be so sure of their stance on the whole thing is if they had been there themselves – and by there I mean at the scene of the murder. But they weren’t, and that doesn’t seem to stop anyone, and I guess what that means is that we are all connected to stories that are not our own, that we all participate in lives that are not our own (because we are lonely? Desperate? Horny?) that we’re all part of the conversation launched by news outlets that are owned by pretty big, pretty powerful companies, and isn’t it interesting, really, how little we hear about what the CEO’s are taking home as thousands of people lose their jobs, and if the Anthony family foolishness is any indication, that’s a tactic that seems to work pretty well.
