Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 19, 1994                   TAG: 9408100034
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By JAMES DRINARD SMITH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE DANGERS OF WORSHIPPING IDOLS

I'm talking about the Nicole Simpson-Ronald Goldman tragedy. It's everywhere one looks, everywhere one goes. I went to the bank to get a check cashed, and customers and employees were glued to the television set, hanging on every interrogatory word, every expert-witness detail.

Our hearts have to go out to the wretched people whose loved ones are victims in this dreadful crime - especially the Simpson children, bereft of their mother under such terrible circumstances, and doomed to hear their father accused of the deed. There is no escape for them either, bathed as they and the dreadful event are in the merciless glare of media attention.

From noon to recess, on every major network, the pretrial hearing was broadcast in every terrible detail, and all because the man suspected of the crime could once run fast and elusively with a football. Such is one measure of the depths to which media journalism has descended, absorbed as it seems to be by responding to what it feels is the voracious and ever-increasing appetite of a public obsessed with sensation.

But we cannot blame the fourth estate entirely for honestly reflecting our own ugliness back to us. We can only question what has become of those journalistic standards that once reported the news while calling out to the best in us, instead of pandering to the worst. All three major networks suspended regular programming to broadcast the grisly event daily. And this is only the tip of the media-coverage iceberg. One must question which spectacle being held up before us is the most significant.

Nor can we blame anyone but ourselves. One can only wonder sadly by what process our national values have become so absorbed by the appearance of wealth, influence and power that we seem to automatically endow anyone possessed of those commodities with the false charisma of ``superstar'' or celebrity status.

It's haunting to hear echoed down the cycles of time the Biblical injunction against worshipping idols. We think the God-led spirits who passed those understandings on to us spoke from deep awareness of how devastating the consequences would be. We hear bemoaning of what will be the outcome of ``O.J.'s fall,'' should he be found guilty, by those who have admired him. And we remember the Psalmist who wrote, ``Put not your trust in princes, or in any child of man, for there is no help in them.''

Somehow, we must do something to restore our national perspective, before we are completely successful in teaching our children by example that this direction is a healthy road to travel. It's an appalling prospect to consider what the outcome will be if subsequent generations proceed to a greater and greater extent along this dubious path.

James Drinard Smith is rector of St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church in Roanoke.

Keywords:
POLITICS