Under the Gun

EDITOR'S NOTE: We intended to celebrate our second anniversary in a low key fashion. We meant simply to thank all those who have contributed over the past two years for all the hard work. It is truly deeply appreciated. Thank you. We didn't mean for there to be a theme, but having watched in complete fascination and horror the events of the O.J. Simpson tragedy, a theme suddenly developed.


Over the past two years one of the underlying issues or concepts of this publication has been to examine the blurring of the lines between public and private; reality and fiction; the media and art; news and entertainment; the effects of an overwhelming consuming consumer culture that devours anything remotely resembling critical thinking or the ability to think for yourself. This wasn't by accident, it was sort of what I tried to study in college.


My sister flew home from LA Friday evening. I went over to my parents' house for dinner and what I thought would be a quiet night of flipping between the Twins and the NBA championship. Just as the Twins were losing their grip, CBS interrupted with a special report showing a white Bronco driving down an eerily empty LA freeway followed by a convoy of police. It was a disturbing mixture of reality with the deadening effects of popular culture. It was like The Fugitive playing out on national television, only this was real in some way. You couldn't take your eyes off it yet deep down was the dread that the worst was about to play out, and the already sad situation was only going to get worse.


Sports heroes (and rock and roll stars), are myths created by the culture, held up to a hypocritical standard. They are supposed to be pure and beyond human frailties, role models that sometimes fall almost by a majority wish, and when they do, analysis and eulogies are written underlying and dissecting the meaning behind it all. The events of this particular tragedy had some familiar themes. O.J. blamed the media for creating a piranha like environment, where his image was treated unfairly by the same folks who created it. And evidence of the incredible disruptive ignorance of the media was displayed as the chase itself was underway.


Among the pearls: Dan Rather mistakenly identified a tire as O.J. in the back of the Bronco; Hugh Downs made the observation that O.J. was a relatively nonviolent football player and thus it was ironic and hard to believe that he should be guilty of such a violent crime (to which I turned to my family and remarked that O.J. was simply playing the part of the ultimate running back, running away from the opposition- sure enough Rather made the same analogy an hour later). The media stumbled upon itself to portray the sadness of the tragedy taking place while at the same time trying to beat the competition to the exclusive story. This culture cares even as it gobbles you up.


Believe it or not, this whole thing didn't happen to give people fodder to talk about. We build opinions on our celebrities based solely on media images and then act shocked when they don't live up to those manufactured images, and are amused by the mistakes, the gossip that judges them with so much scrutiny. That witty former elder statesman, now dead, Richard Nixon in his last book wrote that the media should play the part of a doctor not a proctologist.


It was positively spellbinding TV. But it seemed just like that: TV, like something that was so familiar, like some bad cop show. It was bizarre and at the same time, achingly sad. Who were the real victims? (the answer my friend is on page three). "Real" lives were at stake, and like the Roman gladiator fights, we were all their to witness the spectacle. For those of us who dove into the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan debacle with glee, the Simpson story makes that one look like a marginal screwball comedy. Already the vultures dive in: the natural solution of course has gotta be the death penalty.


So, if anything can be said for the past couple of years, it's that the number of numbing news stories continues to snowball. This place seems to be bursting at the seams. All we can promise is we'll continue to do our best to wade through it in our own ornery way.