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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