Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 2, 1994 TAG: 9403040024
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We have long identified that story with Horatio Alger, whose 135 novels (selling more than 200 million copies) imprinted it on the American mind. It went like this:
I am poor but ambitious - Tattered Tom, Ragged Dick or Lightning Luke. I work hard, live clean, tell the truth, and know that virtue is its own reward. I help myself by helping others. When I find a lost wallet, I return it to Rich Man (or Woman) and get my reward - a shiny dime. Instead of spending it, I put it aside to buy medicine for my sick Mother. By pluck and luck I work myself up the ladder, marry well and become a Rich Man myself. All the world loves a winner.
Tonya's not one of them. Instead of helping others, she seems to have been somehow involved, or at least aware of, a plot to break her skating rival Nancy Kerrigan's leg. In any case, she admittedly lied in the telling. To the endless questions by a curious nation, she gave the answer on her T-shirt: NO COMMENT.
Tonya assured us she was going for the gold. Instead of getting the gold - or even the silver or bronze - she broke down on the ice as if (wrote George Vecsey in The New York Times) ``from collective national disbelief, betrayed by her laces. Harding personified our worst nightmare, the Old Broken Shoelace Dream.'' She showed no grace in defeat. Our last view of her was in tears, peering down from a booth to where a triumphant Nancy Kerrigan skated. Tonya was crying, vomiting and hooked up to a breathing machine.
Andy Warhol said one day everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Tonya's 15 minutes were over. She was no longer the person of the moment, and the reporters and TV crews quickly left. No more nightly updates on all three networks, no more rallies with posters and flowers. Her ``fame'' had gone with the wind.
One cannot gloat over anyone's misfortune, and I do not intend to be Tonya Harding's judge or jury. But I do blame the media for creating a pseudo-event, exploiting it, and then forcing it down our throats.
A pseudo-event is manufactured news, staged not to inform but to entrap. It is the way our media managers spoon-feed a news-hungry nation, and make mountains out of molehills. It is the quickie, to titillate but not educate; tabloid journalism and ratings-dominated television.
In this instance, CBS seems most culpable. Having sponsored the American television coverage, they were determined to increase interest and suspense - via Tonya Harding. They pulled out every stop. They not only gave Tonya far more time than she deserved, they sent her over to Norway with CBS' Connie Chung, presumably to catch every word, every sigh. The climax would be an ``in-depth interview'' in which Tonya would tell all - on CBS. It was the TV Parody of the Year. When the interview was actually held, Tonya was so offended by the questions that she took off her microphone and left the studio. Finally even poor Tonya was fed up. Who looked more ridiculous - Tonya or Connie?
We have a long history of pseudo-events and manufactured tear-jerkers. Do you remember how we stopped the world to get little Jessica out of the well? Why Lenny Skutnik was a major American hero? How President Bush wanted to amend the Constitution when a post-hippie named Johnson burned an American flag in Texas? How we agonized over whether Liz Taylor should marry for the sixth (or was it the seventh) time? And how we just had to know how Oprah Winfrey lost 60 pounds - and if she could keep it off? Pseudo-events all.
Our media manipulators even try to elevate pseudo-events into crises, using catch sound bites, clever editing, virtual reality, smoke and mirrors. But these clever people don't deserve all the blame. What they create we choose to accept. We both demand and enjoy pseudo-events. Like the victims in Plato's caves, we prefer the shadows to reality. They are much easier to cope with than real crises, such as health care, crime, homelessness, Bosnia, the Middle East, North Korea's nuclear bomb.
One recalls the foolish shepherd who cried ``Wolf, Wolf'' so often that when a real wolf finally came, no one heeded his cries. Or the hero in Anton Chekhov's short story ``The Hollow.''
``Anisim brought me some good and bad rubles. I hid one packet and mixed the rest with my own. Now I can't make out which is real money and which is counterfeit. It seems they are all false coins.''
Whether or not Tonya was a ``false coin,'' the way in which her case was handled tended not only to bring final humiliation to her, but to make America's role in the world Olympics a sort of soap opera. Of course, the world took note. We should take note too.
There is enough real news, and enough real crises, to occupy and engage us all. If we claim we are the leader of the free world, the only remaining superpower, we should act responsibly. Every effort should be made to separate fact from fiction, pride from prejudice, hype from happening. Separating such things, and acting as if we are responsible world leaders, is a major challenge as we prepare to enter the 21st century.
\ Marshall Fishwick is professor of humanities and communication studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB