House of Eratosthenes

Continuing the theme about how we’re “all” getting sick and tired of hearing about runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks, appropriately enough perhaps, but at the wrong time — just when it is becoming really newsworthy:

How many people really, truly, in their heart of hearts, actually want to know more about Abu Ghraib and the ongoing legal workings of Lynndie England’s trial?

I’d like to know more about Wilbanks and a lot less about Abu Ghraib. But I recognize that I’m not a representative sample. “Most” people, I suppose, are more or less equally curious about & equally saturated with both stories. And yet, the coverage of both stories has not been equal. The notion that we should “move on” from the Wilbanks affair, now that the bride has been exposed as a liar, seems to me to be kind of…pressured. Artificial. Thank goodness Jennifer is okay, but Lord knows, if she just stayed missing and nothing else happened here, we were set to hear about this day in day out, month in and month out. Now a “just another missing person” story has been transformed into a fascinating expose of a shameless sociopath, which could benefit us all. Whoops, we’re tired, nothing to see here.

The story does have a limited lifespan, but that’s because people understand the key players here are strange, superficial, probably of limited intellect and probably not the kind of people you want to study for too long. This is why there’s not much demand for a three-hour special episode of “Jerry Springer”. Strange people are like ice cream; fun to consume for, maybe, a few minutes and then after that you want to stop.

And yet, what exactly would you call Abu Ghraib?

The coverage goes on and on and on, about every little detail…save the one that is most important. The one thing that is under-reported in Abu Ghraib, that I would like to know more about, is the notion that privates and specialists were ordered to do things that may have violated international treaties, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and then plausible deniability was preserved so that the people who dirtied their hands could be blamed for everything.

So a story that makes America look bad, is overplayed, except for the part about lying.

Another story about a missing bride, was all set to be overplayed, until the story became all about lying. Now the satellite trucks are packed up & moved out.

But based on my face-to-face discussions with people…”real” people, who are much more tuned-in to what “most” people think than I can ever be…I don’t see much correlation between what people want to know about, and the decisions that these editors are making about what readers will read and what television viewers will see.

It doesn’t look like marketing research at all. Nothing grassroots about it. It looks so from-the-top-down. So forced. So phony.

In fact, the last time the elites lectured to us commoners so shamelessly about what it was we wanted to know, and what it was we didn’t want to know…the first thing I can recall is this thing about not having sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. Private matter, move on, nothing to see here. Every story is fascinating until it morphs into a story about lying.

You know what I think is happening here?

I think this country is about to become a place where the practice of lying, in any shape, form, size, intention or motive…is shunned. Where there is thought to be no acceptable excuse for telling a lie, especially to large numbers of people. Where once a person, especially a public figure, is exposed as a liar, people never, ever listen to what that person has to say, ever again.

Where, Republican or Democrat, a person caught deliberately telling a lie, is greeted with about as much widespread sympathy as…someone burning a cross on a neighbor’s lawn.

We’re teetering on the brink of “falling” into that “abyss”. What a wonderful thing that would be, to at least have some universal agreement that truth is good and lying is bad. That lies can be dangerous things, at least as dangerous as…let’s say…tobacco.

And that prospect absolutely terrifies people who are responsible for reporting the news.

How much news have we experienced in the last quarter century — especially the bad kind of news, which makes the most money for those who deliver it — resulting directly from liars being believed?

No, if you do anything at all with reporting the news, you can’t afford to work in a culture where people recognize the danger of a lie and act accordingly. News people are paid on commission. No bad news, the paychecks get smaller. People-at-large make rational, adult decisions based on trusting the trustworthy and doubting the known liars, and before you know it, there is less bad news. Anything that might possibly lead to a national dialog on the high expense of lies, and the danger to human life that results from lying, must be avoided.

Ergo. Jennifer is missing and may be dead, the masses must be “instructed” that they are fascinated with this story, even after the prospect of additional “news” within the story becomes remote. Jennifer is found and revealed to have fabricated the whole thing, you “instruct” the masses that they are fed up, exhausted, and ready to move on.

You doubt me?

How many times last year did you hear “Bush lied, people died”? A lot, right?

How many times did you hear an explanation of what, exactly, the lie was?

Whoa…crickets are chirping.

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People Stacker vs. Greyhound Hopper
Thursday, May 5th, 2005