The analysis that happens about a minute fifteen into this here video isn’t wrong, necessarily. It’s just infuriating that it’s coming from an ABC News reporter. It’s bad enough that someone working in TV news might be smugly mocking the Hennes’ media manipulation, given that it worked, and the person duped is the person trying to pretend like the hoax failed. And it’s bad enough that one of the examples cited as people exploiting their children for fame and publicity is the Octomom, given that the news media are the ones giving her the fame and publicity in the first place. But the really unforgivable thing is that he’s presenting as pathetic the fact that the guy was on on Wife Swap twice and wanted to get on TV again. Dude! First off, you’re on TV, so STFU. But more to the point, Wife Swap is on your fucking network, so it was the people you work for that put a crazy guy on TV twice specifically because he was crazy, and then those exact same people let you get on TV, on the same channel, and act like it was surprising or weird or sad that the crazy guy would try and get on TV again, licking your lips at the prospect of some dude getting thrown in jail because of a prank. (Of course, Bob Thompson is involved in this, and of course he doesn’t make any of these points, instead going with another round of “ha ha Americans are awful.”) There’s just no sense of cause and effect here, no acknowledgment that the media might have some culpability in this. And I understand why! Well, I mean, besides the fact that they’re pissed off at getting duped. But more broadly, they’re framing the story this way because that’s the way it’s been legitimated, why the coverage is allowed to continue: good old moral censure. Even though any member of the news media is standing on extraordinarily shaky ground in making a moral case against the Heenes, there’s no other angle for them to really take. We have decided there is something wrong about what this person did, something wrong in an important way, though I am still unclear on exactly what that is.
I don’t mean to seem obtuse here. I have read the various explanations, and though interesting, they seem incomplete, too easy, too cynical. Something about this particular moment and story has triggered an outpouring of popular condemnation. Is it just that we don’t like being tricked, that we resented putting emotional energy into the story only to find out it had been…well, inauthentic, I guess? Is that the issue? Maybe the fame thing and the concern for the children and so forth and so on all just a cover, masking the real issue: we know we shouldn’t have gotten emotionally involved in the stupid story, but we did, and Heene gives us a discrete exterior object to focus our shame on. Normally we might blame “the media” or “society” and the anger/blame would be diffuse. But here, it is centered on someone small and probably crazy and without any experience defending himself from the accumulated weight of public indignation. And that is delicious, in its way. You do not fool the American public lightly; we are honest and sincere people, or so we think, and we do not find these sorts of things to be funny. And even more than following a heart-warming emotional drama, we like seeing simple justice played out on a large stage.
2 months ago
