Shadowland: Pulp Fact

Take a quick walk down memory lane, or the Rue Morgue, as it were: Susan Smith drowning her two sons in South Carolina—then pleading on television for their return; Gianni Versace shot down in Miami's South Beach; the Ramsey case. And then there was the death of Princess Diana : a royal soap opera that culminated in a tragic car crash cum conspiracy. In the same journalistic vein, but mercifully without bloodshed, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton turned a tawdry tryst into an affair of state. Do you remember the summer of 2001? The press was obsessed with the question of whether Congressman Gary Condit murdered his intern, Chandra Levy. Obsessed, that is, right up to September 2001.

What was happening elsewhere was, well, a lot. In the genocides of Rwanda and Bosnia, how many children with smiles every bit as warm and guileless as JonBenet Ramsey's were slaughtered by machete and hand grenade, sniper rifle and mortar shell? How many children died from AIDS in Africa or were orphaned by it? While the United States debated the true significance of that stain on the dress lovingly preserved by former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the Taliban were taking over Afghanistan and their ally Osama bin Laden was declaring war on the Western world.

Real dangers affecting the real lives of Americans were growing day by day, but stories about them seemed so distant, required so much thought, involved so many unpronounceable names, that they got little space, had little impact.

And then, yes, suddenly on September 11, 2001, nobody much cared about Gary Condit and Chandra Levy any more. (The case was never solved. Condit left the Hill, and later bought an ice-cream franchise in Arizona. As for O. J., after he was acquitted of criminal charges he eventually won custody of his children.) True crime still lingered, of course. The Laci Petersen case was a constant counterpoint to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. But the police-blotter monopoly was broken.

There is a temptation, if you’re one of the reporters out in the field covering the slaughter of innocents, the rise of tyrants, the approach of wars, the carnage in the streets, the futility of the aftermath, to blame the public for its ignorance and the owners of media empires for playing to it. But I think that’s a mistake.

Those of us left abroad trying to tell the United States about the world—and there are far fewer now than 10 years ago—have failed to make the lives of people in Lebanon and Israel, say, or Afghanistan, or Colombia, or Congo or Indonesia, as vivid in the minds of American readers and viewers as the case of JonBenet Ramsey. Our subjects are for the most part so alien-seeming, and so far beyond hope, perhaps, no matter how bright the eyes, how warm the smiles.