Headline: HOW WE TURNED PEEPING TOM
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Fri., June 24, 1994
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 5C, Edition: FIVE STAR

SO WHAT WERE WE last week? Voyeurs or mere news consumers who wanted to be kept up to date?
  
Americans scrambled to their radios and TV sets last Friday night, the minute they heard that O.J. Simpson was trying to flee justice. Sensing the public's interest, the stations quickly switched to the slow-motion "chase, " often abandoning their regular programming. KMOX radio - the voice of the baseball Cardinals - interrupted the ballgame. NBC interrupted the National Basketball Association playoffs, later showing the game and the chase simultaneously, in split-screen fashion. The situation was given the kind of coverage reserved for, say, the death of a sitting president.
  
We rushed to our sets and stayed glued, especially after hearing that Simpson had a gun and was threatening to kill himself. Like moviegoers, we watched the footage from helicopters as Simpson traveled from Orange County, California to his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.
  
For those who live in LA, there was a special treat. They could - and did - line the freeways and watch as this drama unfolded before them. Countless Angelenos took to the sides of freeways to watch the former rent-a-car spokesman or cheer him on.

What is it that makes so many of us eager to see tragedy? Why do some of us get adrenalin rushes at such occasions?
  
Some of it, I suppose, can be attributed to human nature. Indeed, some of the same people who are shaking their heads now and feeling superior to those who lined those LA freeways are the ones who cause traffic tie-ups whenever there's a major car accident on the other side of the highway by rubbernecking to see every gruesome detail.

More than 13 years ago, I was sent to Kansas City to cover the Hyatt Regency tragedy, in which the skywalks of that hotel collapsed at a Friday night tea dance, killing 114 people and injuring 200.
  
I got to Kansas City in the middle of the night, and what shocked me, perhaps even as much as the deaths and injuries, was the gawkers. Hundreds of them lined Kansas City's McGee Street to watch the dead and the injured being taken out of the hotel's lobby. Some of them brought binoculars; others brought cameras.
  
When I asked one woman why she had come, she told me: "This is exciting. It's tragic, too, but it's the kind of thing I'll probably never see again in my whole life. I just wanted to see."

The same was the case with Simpson. Many of those watching the tragedy "just wanted to see."
  
You could almost hear an announcer: "Will O.J. kill himself? Will the police shoot at him? Or will he somehow get away from the officers now hot in pursuit? Tune in tomorrow, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel . . . ."

Try as we might to excuse ourselves from our shameless viewing of the unraveling of Simpson, most of us were voyeurs. We wanted every tidbit of Simpson information, and the news media provided.
  
Those who were later critical of the media and of the public who watched the Simpson saga reminded me of people who say that they never watch television; or if they do, only PBS.
  
I suspect that even the most highbrow and intellectual among us were riveted to the set last Friday night.

Simpson's the hot topic right now. He made the covers of Time and Newsweek this week; his was the lead story for several days in newspapers across the country; his football cards - and even those of his best friend, former teammate Al Cowlings - began to command top prices.
  
Three paperback books about Simpson are expected to reach stores within two weeks. And, just as one can sense when a storm is coming on, I feel a made-for-TV movie coming on.

Like it or not, we're human, and we're fascinated by everything about Simpson these days.
   In my own newsroom this week, whenever Simpson appeared in the courtroom, my colleagues and I gathered around the set to watch. Then we'd comment: "He looks so thin, " "Did you see those circles around his eyes?" "I wonder if he's on a food strike?"
  
And we're newspeople, folks who aren't usually moved by this sort of thing.

No, when it comes to O.J. Simpson, most Americans have gone beyond being mere consumers of the news to becoming electronic Peeping Toms.
  
And we just can't help ourselves.


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