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jYAWNbenet
for release 08-20-06
Washington DC
American Culture is obsessed by crime and criminals. We loved Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger and even Scarface. Just look at the dozens of television shows devoted to the subject.
I thought Dragnet was an egregious enough glorification of the police state, but now we have a show for every specialty in the cop shop. We have Cold Cases and district attorney shows and judge shows and detective shows. There are shows about fictional crime and fictional depictions of 'real' crimes. Then you have the 'reality' shows like Bad Boys where the gestapo is shown with its shiny black boot on the neck of the criminal meth-head trailer trash enemy of the people. And then you have the complete and utter whoredom of some of the tabloid cable shows like Nancy Grace who I suspect is really John Walsh in drag. America's Most Wanted is actually the American Idol of Crime, complete with call-in numbers. Just dial 1-800-ISNITCH.
I haven't even mentioned local news shows, where every editor worth his salt knows that something about a high speed chase shot from a helicopter stirs the blood of the viewing public. And if it bleeds it leads.
And we love our trials, oh yes we love our trials. It's an American tradition that goes back to the good old days in Salem, Mass. We have murder trials and monkey trials and treason trials and trials about what the definition of is is. We tuned in to the OJ trial so much that the ratings of Days of Our Lives dropped by thirty percent. (I just made that up. It's called a statistic.) The Ken Lay trial was truly Shakespearian--vast amounts of money and power and greed ending in death. High drama.
But what we really love are crimes and trials where sex is involved, especially sex with children. The only two appropriate subjects for poetry are sex and death. The same is true for news.
Now the Jonbenet Ramsey case pops back up in the news like a dirty penny. I thought I had mercifully seen the last of Jonbenet. But no. On Thursday night the first ten minutes of all major network news broadcasts were dedicated to the Jonbenet case. It's gonna be dejay view all over again. Expect to see all the ten thousand miles of stock footage of Jonbenet and her parents unearthed. Again and again.
And this guy that they arrested in Bangkok (I'm not even going to dignify him by mentioning his name) looks like some twisted version of Mr. Rogers. I don't trust anybody who wears his pants up to his nipples. But let him enjoy his fifteen minutes.
What astounds me is the spectacle of it all. This is a murder that occurred ten years ago. Sure, she was a cherubic little girl whose mother tricked her up to look like a hooker or a member of the Irish Travelers and her death was a tragedy and deaths mean more somehow if the deceased is a young beautiful girl. but there are people dying today. Every day our young princes and princesses are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But America loves a fairy tale. We loved Jonbenet and we loved princess Di and we loved the benighted John Kennedy Jr. Celebrity is synonymous with aristocracy.
The Poet's Eye sees how Karl Rove must love the perverse diversion represented by the Jonbenet saga. It keeps our minds off of the real problems facing our world and off the subject of the sad performance of this administration in addressing them. But she sure was cute.
When you close your eyes
You can hear the music playing
You can see her dancing underneath the spotlight
And when she sleeps she dreams she’s back in Hollywood
Back when all the world was young
She was someone’s baby doll
--Green Pat
