Little Delving
Beyond Here There Be Dragons
One Potato, Two Potato
Apr 18, 2007 06:20 PM Filed in:
Day To Day
Hello,
tater.
It’s been a strange week here, and so I thought I’d sit down and have a bit of a chat with you. I’ll just pretend that your smiling face is there across the table from me and that all is well in the world. I like your smile, tater. It can do that for me. So I guess the obvious place to start is Virginia Tech, isn’t it? It’s not everyday here in the U.S. that we get a monster on a rampage who manages to kill some 30 people and then himself. It’s all anybody can seem to talk about, and it certainly is all any of the media outlets seem to know is going on in the world this week. It’s a tragedy for sure. There is no denying that. My heart goes out to the families and the friends of all those lost in the senseless killings. Life is a beautiful thing, but it can also be brutal and unpredictable. It can be short. Best not ever take it for granted. But there is something about all of this that is disturbing me greatly, something besides the tragedy itself.
I am disturbed by America’s knee jerk and total obsession with any instant media blitz of whatever event they decide to pick up as the story du jour. A few weeks ago it was Anna Nicole Smith and the bizarre, self-inflicted misery and tragedy of her life and the lives of those around her. It was tragic, yes, and it was sad. I agree whole heartedly. But it was of no importance to this country or to the world at large, and yet the media obsessed over her and her progeny and her lovers and her mother even, and so too did America obsess. All for a woman who made a series of very bad choices in her life and who eventually paid the consequences for those decisions.
For a couple of weeks there was nothing on TV but Anna, Anna in the mornings, Anna in the evenings, and more Anna late at night. Anna was inescapable. It was a cheap and tawdry story that was given the royal media treatment. It was served up to us like a heaping mound of contaminated dog food, and America gobbled it up in big greedy, gluttonous, slobbering mouthfuls. We gorged until it was gone.
And so now a few weeks later along come the shootings at Virginia Tech, and I swear I can hear the whooping and hollering of the media kings. Their cheering rings to the heavens, and there is much rejoicing. Once again the TV and the radio are humming, swelling their programming with a limb chilling, mind numbing, rising tide of cold and calculated emotional coverage of yet another American tragedy. And Americans line up to be part of the show. There are hours after hours of pointless, clueless, and meritless interviews with a series of people who know nothing, but who can’t seem to stop talking about what they do not know. It’s horrible, it’s awful, it’s tragic, and it’s heart breaking, and we know all of this because they can’t stop telling us, shoving all the darkest of the superlatives down our throats, handful after handful, hour after hour. And we sit there, we take it all in like a goose whose liver is being fattened up as foie gras, a dainty morsel served up for the guiltless pleasure of who?
I wonder about that.
And meanwhile there are events happening all around the world everyday that make the carnage at Virginia Tech look like child’s play. Really there is. Everyday. Think Darfur. Think Rwanda. Think Iraq. Hell, just think.
What is it about us, about Americans, that allows us to obsess and cry out in despair over every American tragedy no matter how large or small, and yet remain impervious to the daily deluge of tragedy that washes over us from all over the globe? What is it about us that allows something like the sad tale of Anna to become a national media storm for weeks and yet which resists even the most cursory acknowledgement and consideration of the ongoing genocide in Darfur? I wonder about that.
Yes, I know that what happened at Virginia Tech is a truly sad and a truly tragic event. It is. I believe that. But I also believe it is no more or less tragic than the latest car bomb in Iraq that killed 5 or 10 or 20 or 80 people. Which bombing is that, you ask? I don’t know, take your pick. They happen everyday. Everyday. Think about that.
Just one of those bombings, one, if it happened anywhere here in America, would get more media coverage than all of the Iraq car bombings combined, all of them, times 10. I am certain of it. That one bombing would become the juiciest of stories, the creme de la creme. That single bombing would get the media Royal Treatment. A suicide car bombing in San Diego that kills 50 people, can you imagine it? Or in Kansas City? Can you visualize it? Can you see and hear the Perfect Storm of media coverage something like that would create? I know you can because I can too.
And yet that story is happening everyday, many times a day even, all around the globe while here we watch Anna, no wait, Anna was last week. This week we watch Virginia Tech. And we wring our hands, and we cry out, and we label a disturbed and probably very sad and a very hurt and angry young man, a monster. A monster. Yeah, America eats that stuff up.
Have you ever heard of Hal Hartley? He’s an interesting guy who makes interesting, quirky little films which seem to miss as much as they hit, but you know, when they hit, they really hit. No Such Thing is one of those little films. It’s a monster movie. Really, a real monster who lives in Iceland. He’s been around since the earliest times of man, and he has a drinking problem. Hey, who wouldn’t after seeing all the things that he would have seen? Think about it. Well, circumstances are such in Hartley’s tale that this monster comes out of hiding and ventures into New York City only to find out that nobody really cares all that much, and he’s good for maybe an evening or so's worth of news. That’s it. He’s a real monster, sure, but compared to the things that humanity is up to and the monsters that we are continually creating he’s pretty much irrelevant, a tiny news bite at best, quickly chewed up and then spat out. How sad is that? And so he returns to Iceland to die, and it gets me every time when his one friend, a young woman named Beatrice, played by the wonderful Sarah Polley, tries to cheer him up by telling him,
"I’m scared of you."
"Yeah?" he asks.
"Yeah." she says, as she leans against him and lays her head on his shoulder.
One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
five potato, six potato, seven potato more.
Icha bacha, soda cracker,
Icha bacha boo.
Icha bacha, soda cracker, out goes Y-O-U!
And so it goes these days. Real stories, sad and tragic stories, significant stories, from all around the globe are tossed out wiley-niley like old spuds, tossed in favor of the next Anna or the next Virginia Tech or the next Britney for that matter, and before long it all begins to blur together. These Perfect Storm stories scarf up the lion's share of media coverage, no matter their merit. Celebrity substance abuse and visits to rehab, paternity disputes and overdoses, random shootings at a college, and hour upon hour of cathartic but clueless reaction, it’s all treated the same way. It’s all weighed equally upon the media scale of news worthiness, and so it all becomes fodder for the hyped-up media machine.
And I think it's possible that, in the end, our sense of moral outrage, our shock, and our concern for one or for the other of these manufactured media events seems to all just run together, so much so that I wonder if we as a nation can even tell the difference anymore between news and titillation? Judging by the way most of these big news stories are covered on TV, it certainly seems as if the media has forgotten how to make that distinction.
And it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore which news cast you listen to because the reporters all seem driven to out do each other by dishing out more adjectives than the next guy, more superlatives, the darker the better, to explain to us the hyper-emotional response that we as a nation ought to be feeling as we listen to hour after hour of coverage of whatever event of the day they deem worthy of their attention. And if it's worthy of their attention then it must be worthy of ours, all of ours.
One potato, two potato.
Yep, tater, it’s been a strange week. I sure wish you were here to talk with about it. Talking is a good thing. But you’re there, and I’m here, so writing will have to do, writing and thinking because it’s all part of something I’m wondering about these days. I’m wondering and I’m hoping. I’m hoping I’m not the only one wondering.
Later, tater.
All my love,
JB
It’s been a strange week here, and so I thought I’d sit down and have a bit of a chat with you. I’ll just pretend that your smiling face is there across the table from me and that all is well in the world. I like your smile, tater. It can do that for me. So I guess the obvious place to start is Virginia Tech, isn’t it? It’s not everyday here in the U.S. that we get a monster on a rampage who manages to kill some 30 people and then himself. It’s all anybody can seem to talk about, and it certainly is all any of the media outlets seem to know is going on in the world this week. It’s a tragedy for sure. There is no denying that. My heart goes out to the families and the friends of all those lost in the senseless killings. Life is a beautiful thing, but it can also be brutal and unpredictable. It can be short. Best not ever take it for granted. But there is something about all of this that is disturbing me greatly, something besides the tragedy itself.
I am disturbed by America’s knee jerk and total obsession with any instant media blitz of whatever event they decide to pick up as the story du jour. A few weeks ago it was Anna Nicole Smith and the bizarre, self-inflicted misery and tragedy of her life and the lives of those around her. It was tragic, yes, and it was sad. I agree whole heartedly. But it was of no importance to this country or to the world at large, and yet the media obsessed over her and her progeny and her lovers and her mother even, and so too did America obsess. All for a woman who made a series of very bad choices in her life and who eventually paid the consequences for those decisions.
For a couple of weeks there was nothing on TV but Anna, Anna in the mornings, Anna in the evenings, and more Anna late at night. Anna was inescapable. It was a cheap and tawdry story that was given the royal media treatment. It was served up to us like a heaping mound of contaminated dog food, and America gobbled it up in big greedy, gluttonous, slobbering mouthfuls. We gorged until it was gone.
And so now a few weeks later along come the shootings at Virginia Tech, and I swear I can hear the whooping and hollering of the media kings. Their cheering rings to the heavens, and there is much rejoicing. Once again the TV and the radio are humming, swelling their programming with a limb chilling, mind numbing, rising tide of cold and calculated emotional coverage of yet another American tragedy. And Americans line up to be part of the show. There are hours after hours of pointless, clueless, and meritless interviews with a series of people who know nothing, but who can’t seem to stop talking about what they do not know. It’s horrible, it’s awful, it’s tragic, and it’s heart breaking, and we know all of this because they can’t stop telling us, shoving all the darkest of the superlatives down our throats, handful after handful, hour after hour. And we sit there, we take it all in like a goose whose liver is being fattened up as foie gras, a dainty morsel served up for the guiltless pleasure of who?
I wonder about that.
And meanwhile there are events happening all around the world everyday that make the carnage at Virginia Tech look like child’s play. Really there is. Everyday. Think Darfur. Think Rwanda. Think Iraq. Hell, just think.
What is it about us, about Americans, that allows us to obsess and cry out in despair over every American tragedy no matter how large or small, and yet remain impervious to the daily deluge of tragedy that washes over us from all over the globe? What is it about us that allows something like the sad tale of Anna to become a national media storm for weeks and yet which resists even the most cursory acknowledgement and consideration of the ongoing genocide in Darfur? I wonder about that.
Yes, I know that what happened at Virginia Tech is a truly sad and a truly tragic event. It is. I believe that. But I also believe it is no more or less tragic than the latest car bomb in Iraq that killed 5 or 10 or 20 or 80 people. Which bombing is that, you ask? I don’t know, take your pick. They happen everyday. Everyday. Think about that.
Just one of those bombings, one, if it happened anywhere here in America, would get more media coverage than all of the Iraq car bombings combined, all of them, times 10. I am certain of it. That one bombing would become the juiciest of stories, the creme de la creme. That single bombing would get the media Royal Treatment. A suicide car bombing in San Diego that kills 50 people, can you imagine it? Or in Kansas City? Can you visualize it? Can you see and hear the Perfect Storm of media coverage something like that would create? I know you can because I can too.
And yet that story is happening everyday, many times a day even, all around the globe while here we watch Anna, no wait, Anna was last week. This week we watch Virginia Tech. And we wring our hands, and we cry out, and we label a disturbed and probably very sad and a very hurt and angry young man, a monster. A monster. Yeah, America eats that stuff up.
Have you ever heard of Hal Hartley? He’s an interesting guy who makes interesting, quirky little films which seem to miss as much as they hit, but you know, when they hit, they really hit. No Such Thing is one of those little films. It’s a monster movie. Really, a real monster who lives in Iceland. He’s been around since the earliest times of man, and he has a drinking problem. Hey, who wouldn’t after seeing all the things that he would have seen? Think about it. Well, circumstances are such in Hartley’s tale that this monster comes out of hiding and ventures into New York City only to find out that nobody really cares all that much, and he’s good for maybe an evening or so's worth of news. That’s it. He’s a real monster, sure, but compared to the things that humanity is up to and the monsters that we are continually creating he’s pretty much irrelevant, a tiny news bite at best, quickly chewed up and then spat out. How sad is that? And so he returns to Iceland to die, and it gets me every time when his one friend, a young woman named Beatrice, played by the wonderful Sarah Polley, tries to cheer him up by telling him,
"I’m scared of you."
"Yeah?" he asks.
"Yeah." she says, as she leans against him and lays her head on his shoulder.
One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
five potato, six potato, seven potato more.
Icha bacha, soda cracker,
Icha bacha boo.
Icha bacha, soda cracker, out goes Y-O-U!
And so it goes these days. Real stories, sad and tragic stories, significant stories, from all around the globe are tossed out wiley-niley like old spuds, tossed in favor of the next Anna or the next Virginia Tech or the next Britney for that matter, and before long it all begins to blur together. These Perfect Storm stories scarf up the lion's share of media coverage, no matter their merit. Celebrity substance abuse and visits to rehab, paternity disputes and overdoses, random shootings at a college, and hour upon hour of cathartic but clueless reaction, it’s all treated the same way. It’s all weighed equally upon the media scale of news worthiness, and so it all becomes fodder for the hyped-up media machine.
And I think it's possible that, in the end, our sense of moral outrage, our shock, and our concern for one or for the other of these manufactured media events seems to all just run together, so much so that I wonder if we as a nation can even tell the difference anymore between news and titillation? Judging by the way most of these big news stories are covered on TV, it certainly seems as if the media has forgotten how to make that distinction.
And it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore which news cast you listen to because the reporters all seem driven to out do each other by dishing out more adjectives than the next guy, more superlatives, the darker the better, to explain to us the hyper-emotional response that we as a nation ought to be feeling as we listen to hour after hour of coverage of whatever event of the day they deem worthy of their attention. And if it's worthy of their attention then it must be worthy of ours, all of ours.
One potato, two potato.
Yep, tater, it’s been a strange week. I sure wish you were here to talk with about it. Talking is a good thing. But you’re there, and I’m here, so writing will have to do, writing and thinking because it’s all part of something I’m wondering about these days. I’m wondering and I’m hoping. I’m hoping I’m not the only one wondering.
Later, tater.
All my love,
JB