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Coming
Soon: Your Own Truman Show
By Bill Warner
It's
over. The right to privacy is gone, if it ever existed at all (ask
Robert Bork). As part of our current national psychosis, we have
collectively decided to toss the right to privacy out the window.
We now live in a culture that is so celebrity-dazed and media-crazed
that no one can reasonably expect the simple right to be let alone
to long endure. We willingly invade our own privacy every day.
What do I mean by this? Well, look at how our culture has changed
to accommodate the mass media. Many apparently well-meaning Americans
(many of whom look as though they may possess common sense) are
undyingly, eagerly willing to participate in media interviews or
even hold press conferences for themselves. Such appearances are
common, no matter how sad or pathetic the events that spur the media
into action.
Say someone's 12-year-old son was kidnapped and raped by a pack
of drug-crazed Hell's Angels and then sold to a tribe of Berbers
to be a goat tender for the rest of his life. No problem. The media
will fly to the afflicted family like a flock of starlings to a
newly seeded lawn, thrusting their microphones in the parents' faces
and asking, "How do you feel?" "What will you do
next?" "Does your son like goats?" "What do
you think about the Hell's Angels?"
Tears will, rightly, flow. Cameras will zoom in for close-ups. Then
you will learn more about these people than you would ever care
to know. What surprises me is that people participate in such interviews
willingly. When I first began noticing this phenomenon, I thought
it was happening because the victim's parents or the survivors or
relatives felt obligated to talk with the media. You know, out of
some perverse sense of responsibility to be available and to contribute
to a true, nationwide understanding of the latest so-called "tragedy"
(and by the way, these are not tragedies, no matter how sad or moving
they may be). But having watched so many inane interviewers ask
the victim, the survivors or the victim's relatives the same set
of tear-jerking, privacy-invading questions, I now conclude that
people participate in these maudlin interviews because they want
to.
The new American Dream is to get on TV, by any means possible. This
usually involves the loss of all personal dignity and family privacy.
These people want to see themselves on television. They want to
be TV stars, if only for 5 minutes, or 20 seconds (no demand for
the full 15 minutes of fame that Andy Warhol prophesied for us).
They want to become "popular," like Fred Goldman, father
of poor Ron, who was killed with Nicole Simpson.
They want to see themselves taking part in the national "reality":
If it appears on TV, it must be real, and if it didn't appear on
TV, then it never happened. Those who rushed out to highway overpasses
during OJ's slow speed "chase" to wave at OJ and AC, and
to make certain their friends saw these images, were engaged in
the classic enactment of this dream.
These are the same people who take their video cameras along wherever
they go so they can tape experiences, rather than actually have
them. To this mindset, watching the video record of something is
more real than the original experience itself. Some people do this
with cameras, others with video recorders.
Want another example? Think back to early days of the Clinton/Lewinsky
matter. Remember the pathetic press conference that Monica's high-school
drama teacher staged, along with his unsuspecting wife, in which
the teacher explained that he and Monica had an affair? This invasion
of privacy was not driven by media news hounds, it was set up and
conducted by this poor zhlub of a teacher to, well, what was the
purpose? The guy somehow thought he could capitalize upon Lewinsky's
plight and ride the hem of her dress to (temporary) notoriety.
David Brinkley once asked in a developing tawdry moment (it may
have been during the Gary Hart "scandal" with Donna Rice
and the Monkey Business, or when a nine-months' pregnant Demi Moore
appeared stark naked on the cover of Vanity Fair) whether it is
possible for someone to invade his or her own privacy? The answer
is clearly yes, and Americans do it deliberately every day to help
them achieve starring roles in the ongoing television record of
our culture's decline.
If you value your privacy and don't want to be part of the unfolding
media freak show, there is a simple way to secure your and your
family's privacy: Don't talk with the media, or feel obligated to
do so, if you, your family, or friends are involved in the kind
of bloody or maudlin event that makes it into the nightly news.
In talking with the media, you are only abetting the invasion of
your privacy. You have no obligation whatsoever to talk with the
press or the broadcast media.
However, if you think about the fates of many of the privacy self-invaders,
they do sometimes seem subject to a kind of cosmic justice. After
all, Gary Hart was forced to shut down his '88 election campaign.
Demi Moore has acted in a string of movie dogs including Striptease,
Disclosure, and G.I. Jane, and until very recently she had to live
with Bruce Willis. But the best comeuppance I've heard about recently
came to the woman who decided to allow the birth of her baby to
be televised via the Internet. She claimed she was doing it as an
"educational process" (for those ignorant of the way they
came into this world and who have never taken a biology or health
class, one guesses). Elizabeth (she would never give her last name
because of her need for anonymity) is now suspected of being the
Elizabeth Ann Oliver who wrote $359.49 in worthless checks in 1989.
Oh, and Ms. Oliver's husband, Gilberto, also has an arrest record.
The best example I have ever seen of how to avoid getting caught
up in a media blitz came from Johnny Cash's father. Reporters had
flocked to the old boy's home (where Johnny was holed up) to ask
questions about something or other from Johnny's personal life (likely
involving a relapse into drug use), and they tried to talk to the
old man. His reply was, "I got nothin' to say. And get your
butt off of my property." And then he chased the reporters
away.
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