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.
