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| All Laci, All the Time |
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| what the hell is this about? |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, April 23, 2003. Ominous rumblings of thunder this morning. Good to hear, for the most part. The neighbor of a cousin of someone who once might have seen Laci Peterson at a Wal-Mart years ago was interviewed on television this morning. The neighbor convulsed in tears at the thought of the poor, heroic mother and her horrid, murdering husband and wasn’t it so awful? She then moved on to drawing moving conclusions about life in general, children – of course – and abortion and the plight of women in a patriarchal environment. Then she had to run to catch Regis. Elsewhere, Fox News was holding detailed analysis of what Jeff Peterson should do when his parole appeal is denied for the second time in about a quarter century. There was a round table of financial experts and literary agents and corrections officers who provided expert testimony as to how he should diversify his holdings in Snicker bars and cigarettes and investigate growth items like illegal drugs. Laci Peterson’s parents gave their fifteenth tearful and sincere press conference in which the son-in-law they once defended is now revealed to have been a slug all along because parents, especially mothers, know these things and are only concerned with their children, don’t you know. Jeff Peterson’s mother was asked to comment on Laci’s mother’s outfit. Mrs. Peterson thought she looked like a tramp just like her daughter. CBS broke into a Presidential news conference with Laci’s mother’s reaction in slow motion to the comment. Fox offered both mothers a million dollars if they’d stalk each other nude with knives on a deserted island for an eight week run summer replacement series hosted by Paula Jones to be called “Yo Mama.” NBC ran an unscientific poll – based upon calls to 2500 people in seven countries - to find out if we thought the massage therapist with whom Jeff Peterson had an affair was a babe and cuter than Laci before she was pregnant. This was compared to a previous unscientific poll – based upon Australians signaling by semaphore to Air Force satellites - in which they thought Jeff Peterson was the kind of guy they’d like to have over to watch American Idol and drink beer. CNN has just announced a one hour special on the life of Connor Peterson hosted by Paula Zahn featuring interviews with those who knew him best. I'm there, although the Discovery Channel has already announced a simultaneous special on Murders of San Francisco. I mention all this because now that shock and awe has faded and now that they’re not bombing Iraq anymore, it’s pretty obvious that you need to catch up on what the next big thing in American media is. It’s this, apparently. A pedestrian murder by a man of his pregnant wife on Christmas Day. Grisly and awful, it remains true that if it was a normal Christmas week, he wasn’t the only murderer of a pregnant woman. Perhaps his wasn’t the vilest act of the Holiday Season. In fact, it’s unlikely. Who knows why this murder – if indeed it is – is holding America Hostage. Or not. I mean, there hasn’t been a trial yet. But this has been OJ, Monica, and Waco rolled into one by the amount of stupid, pointless, coverage of a statistical non-event, however horrible. Really, given that we’re losing our Bill of Rights, our wallets and our minds as the Bushies confront their ignorance of a non-Texan Baptist world, why is the Media doping on this? Guilt over Jon Bonet? Boredom? Of course, we keep giving them ratings…… I myself have passing guilt of another sort. There have been those who have contended that the Media is a conservative lackey and its job is to stroke the public’s ignorance with sex and hysteria when liberty is being removed and public harm done by those in power. One guy in particular. I forget his name, some MIT pedagogue. I thought him wrong about Iraq and his cultural equivalencies but Chomsky is so clearly correct about this, this willing blather of stupidity by those always salivating to dramatize their first amendment heroism that it needs to be hit on, hard, again and again. Especially when our media idiots give such a complete example of their real service to their actual masters. Dark -Your cynical and sardonic wit is a hoot. |
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