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Saturday, July 24, 2004
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COULD THEY ACTUALLY BE THIS STUPID?
That the mainstream media have been shockingly full of self-importance for centuries is hardly a surprise. Ordinarily, there is a difference between stupidity and arrogance. But the major media are doing their level best to bridge that devide.
They are attempting to do so in this article. The AP report is a litany of bitching that they can't get every last digngleberry nugget of a celebrity criminal case before it falls free in open court. It goes on to argue that there is a seperate standard of justice for celebrities.
It is, of course, utter bullshit.
America is celebrated the world over for two things, freedom and monumental celebrity fuck-ups. To get anywhere close to finding the total lack of life skills found in Hollywood, you could only really go to the British Royal Family or the upper echelons of Nazi Germany. Hollywood is place where dysfunction is not only tolerated, it's actually rewarded. While this is fun to watch, there are some Constitutional issues to consider.
America is one of the few places in the world where virtually anyone can be a celebrity by virtue of, lets say, getting trapped in a fucking well when you're 18 months old. It is also the only place in the world where everybody wants to be a celebrity. These days, the fastest way to become a celebrity, albeit a temporary one, is to get on the jury of a high profile case. No fewer than four of OJ Simpson's jurors wrote a book. This is to say nothing of the innumberable number of books written by the lawyers involved. Consequently, everyone in the country wants to get on such a jury.
This poses enough of a problem, already. Add to that the salacious details surrounding a case like Michael Jackson's or Kobe Bryant's. As it is, being a celebrity, in and of itself, poses a legal risk. False accusations are not uncommon. People will allege nasty things against the famous in the hope of a payday. Much was made of the fact that, in his hayday, David Lee Roth took out paternity insurance from Lloyd's of London. Not enough was made of the fact that he needed it.
I'm hardly a starfucker. Even the most casual of my readers will notice that I've said borderline libelous things about famous people of every stripe here and I'm proud of each and every one of them. My attitude has always been that if you can't deal with assholes like me taking shots at you, you should have stuck to waitressing or pumping gas. But when we're talking about people's very freedom, it changes matters. There's a definite line for me.
Most people don't have such a line. Whether they're resentful of people who have it better than they do, or just want a taste of it themselves, some people will do anything to get on one of those juries just to make a name for themselves. And no one should pretend that it's any different than that. Maybe, just maybe, between specious allegations and craven, greedy jurors, celebreties need just a little more protection than the rest of us do. By the way, in most cases, the allegations are enough to destroy the livliehood of the accused. All one need do is look at the sad saga of Fatty Arbuckle. It took no fewer than three trials to vindicate him, and he was professionally annhiliated.
The most annoying perception about the cases mentioned in the AP article is that the gag orders cited are there to protect the celebrity. They're there to protect the accusers. In Jackson's case, the victim is a child and, in such cases, details are rarely revealed. And in Kobe Bryant's case, the rape shield law (which itself is dubious in this case) applies. Well, sort of.
I also find it extraorinarily interesting that American lawyers are complaining about a lack of access to the facts. They really have no idea what they're talking about. As I noted in my piece about the lesbian divorce case yesterday, I live in a country where publication bans are increasingly routine. In Canada, if a publication ban is ordered, it is entirely within the judge's discretion if the facts ever come out. This is almost never the case in the United States.
My sister was the victim in a stalking case. And for nearly a year, I was legally prohibited from writing about it in this space by a publication ban. Had I have violated that ban, a mistrial could have been declared and I would have been jailed for upwards of two years. That ban was in effect for a full year. In February of 2002, I spent a week on a jury in a nickle a dime criminal case. As a matter of Canadian law, if I were to write about our deliberations in any way, I could also be jailed for two years in federal prison. I think that I might know just a little bit more about the limitations of journalistic freedoms than those quoted. Mine have been limited at least twice in the last two and a half years. If I were a bigoted shithead, Nazi, they'd be limited a whole lot more, too. If I were to write that say, the Holocaust is an invention of the Jewish lobby, blacks are inferior to whites, or that there is an ongoing Scottish-Protestant conspiracy to control the banks, I would be in violation of Canada's "hate-speech" law and could also be jailed for two years.
I think the motives behind the complaintaints in this article are a whole lot shallower than they would have you believe. It's hardly a secret that there's a maxim in the news business that reads, "be first or be dead. You can find out if you were actually right later. Just be first." The news business is precisely that, a business. Circulation and profits are really all that matters. But when you're discussing the criminal justice system, you're dealing with people's reputations and livliehoods, if not their actual lives.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for pissing on someone when they're down. I'd just like to know as a reasonable certainty that they deserve it first.
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