Robert (gurdonark) wrote,
Robert
gurdonark

America is an Episode of Court TV

When I was a very young lawyer, Catherine Crier was a very young judge in Dallas County. She was a very good judge, who was intellectual and yet had a good, if firm, judicial temperament. She seemed to choose to frost her hair out of a curious desire to look *older* than she was (my memory is she was 29 or so, but I am not sure on that), which struck me as understandable and yet odd. Trial judges serve an important function, but they are not media darlings. Yet Judge Crier seemed to end up in fashion shots in magazines and the like. It was little surprise when she was snapped up by a cable network as a news commentator. Last time I saw her, she was passing her judgments on talk shows on Court TV.

Today the authorities seem to believe, without quite saying so, that they have caught a sniper who shot several people seemingly at random in VA and MD. My local AOL news service screens have due coverage of this momentous event.

Yet, already, the news articles seem to be shifting their focus. You see, the actress Wynonna Ryder is being placed on trial in a five thousand dollar shoplifting case in Los Angeles. The nation turns its lonely eyes to Wynonna, because our attention span for snipers is momentarily sated, and we have celebrities to try.

I do not have an opinion as to Ms. Ryder's guilt or innocence, as my opinions about Ms. Ryder pretty much stop with how cool her makeup was as a young teen in Beetlejuice. But I do have an opinion about our crime-as-entertainment culture, and what it feeds and what it means.
Subscribe

  • Al Stewart Friday

    Friday night we drove to Dallas to see the Al Stewart concert. We arrived early enough to be able to park in its 8 dollar parking lot. The Grenada…

  • Change of Weather

    After a day or two of record high temperatures, we got some chilly, breezy and wet weather. Tonight after work we go to the Grenada Theater. I hope…

  • Paging Spencer Atwill

    I had a dream in which I was driving on a superhighway in the American South. I stopped when I saw some boxes off the road. They turned out to be…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

  • 5 comments