Killed With Their Own Megaphone

(Please excuse the minimal links and lack of photo credits.  The soon-to-be expatriated BAG is literally in mid-relocation.)

Adnan Hajj not withstanding, why would Hezbollah -- along with other Islamist political factions in the Middle East and Asia -- need to stage photo ops when they (and their PR operatives) are using conventional savvy to run circles around the MSM?

When the history of spin is recorded, I think we will look back on these past four weeks as the official passing of the Rove era.  To the extent the "war on terror" has been the mother of all perceptual battles, the Administration (and its proxy, the American media) has finally been done in.

Looking at this latest Economist cover, I can't help but think of Karl's first post 9/11 propaganda volley, capturing Bush standing in the still-smouldering ruins of the World Trade Center with that bull horn.  Jeez, it's one thing for Hezbollah to declare outright victory.  It's another thing, though, for a prominent Western publication (right under the nose of Bush's GWOT poodle) to design, print and deliver the announcement.

What brought "us" down in the perceptual war was the usual -- cultural arrogance, and what might be called "media superiority syndrome."  It's hard to believe, but I've see very little sign that anyone -- either in the main stream press or at the White House -- has paid much attention to the media story of the decade: the explosive take off and rapid maturation of Arab media (and now, the concomitant rise in media savvy).  ("Yeah, so they got David Frost.  Big deal!" I can hear Karl muttering.)

The tendency to see Islamists as unsophisticated, even primitive third-world rabble rousers is exactly what allows someone like Ahmadinejad -- who, at some point, probably attended the GOP propaganda camp via correspondence course -- to take apart that fossil, Mike Wallace, on 60 Minutes.  If this was the low point in western Mid-East coverage, this pic is indicative of how much the Iranians, in particular, are playing with our sets.

Here's Wallace pontificating, probably confused as to when he finally gets to meet the terrorist.  The Iranian, in contrast, is relaxed, smiling, totally (Western-) friendly.  And the guy to the right?  Well, isn't that Rove's posture when he's off to the side listening to Bush?

Was the ludicrous 60 Minutes piece the low point, however, or was it actually the photo gallery in which The New York Times implied that a guy killed by an airstrike could somehow still work a rescue crew?  How could they miss this guy in the companion photos accompanying what Michelle Malkin calls "The Pieta?"

They missed him because of the assumption that guerilla war is somehow a creature apart from media war.  They missed him because of the assumption that objectifying poor Muslims in war-torn Lebanon is near as straight-forward as documenting destitute Muslims in the seductive islands of hurricane-torn Indonesia.  And, in the best Howell Raines/Jayson Blair tradition, these guys (in their Western minds) were so consumed with getting the money shot, they failed to realize that Hezbollah is not just out to humiliate Bush and Israel, but to undermine the Fourth Estate as well.

(images: credits to follow)

Comments

[Keir]

Great post. Best of luck with the move.

I think there has been notice of "the explosive take off and rapid maturation of Arab media"; otherwise, why has it been a target? Not for nothing did Alberto Gonzalez call the Geneva Conventions, which outlaw targeting television stations and so forth, "quaint".

Recently, I noticed this gem at Aljazeera. I tried to find something even remotely similar at CNN.com, but could not.

[Lightkeeper]

With all due respect to The BAG, and understanding that while reality and propoganda are sometimes mutually exclusive, in this case it seems to me as though there is at least a 50/50 mix of both. Yes, this is propoganda. But, yes, they did also 'win' the war. Whatever that means in this day and age.

Isn't it also the Fourth Estate's job to try to depict the reality on the ground?

[Stiff Mittens]

"Hezbollah is not just out to humiliate Bush and Israel, but to undermine the Fourth Estate as well."

What makes you so certain that Hezbollah is intending to undermine the Fourth Estate? They may well be achieving that end, but is it their intent or an unintended consequence of their actions? I'm not saying it is or it isn't, I'd just like to hear some specific reasoning (or see some hard evidence) to back up that statement.

[Nezua-Limón Xolografik-Jonez]

What brought "us" down in the perceptual war was the usual -- cultural arrogance, and what might be called "media superiority syndrome."

Am I missing something? "We" were in this war? "We" got brought down? You mean Israel and Lebanon, right? WE only look bad because we sat around and let it all go down in hopes enough Arabs would get killed to satisfy both Israel and Bush's crazy plans. I mean, assuming you live in the USA, as I do. I guess I don't know how America got brought down, aside from her own inaction and rapturous dreams.

Also, heh...I think the Fourth Estate destroyed itself a while ago.

[jt from BC]

My sources tell me that Hezbollah wanted Israeli overflights, incursions and kidnappings to stop. They captured Israeli soldiers for prisoner exchange purposes which was not setting an uncommon historical precedent, and wanted the remained of the occupied land to be negotiated. One tactical miscalculation led to a major Israeli response and a catastrophe. The tragedy is the loss of life on both sides. Fortunately for Israel their $1 billion will be recovered in tourism and restocking the military. For Lebanon $7 billion + in devastated infrasture and homes and an oil polluted coast line pose horrendous challenges. With the exception of Robert Fisk and a select few, its fly in and fly out, when its bang bang time. It seemed to me that CNN reporters were half the story, a perverse type of entertainment. I think Stormin Norman put the Fourth Estate in the back of the bus during Gulf 1 and most of them now seem happy to go along for the ride.

[janinsanfran]

Seems to me the Economist is practicing journalism, telling the truth.

You may not like it. Many of us may not like the results down the line. But our misgivings don't make the message of that cover false.

[George]

Am I missing something? "We" were in this war? "We" got brought down? You mean Israel and Lebanon, right? WE only look bad because we sat around and let it all go down in hopes enough Arabs would get killed to satisfy both Israel and Bush's crazy plans. I mean, assuming you live in the USA, as I do. I guess I don't know how America got brought down, aside from her own inaction and rapturous dreams.

It was our bombs that were dropped on Lebanon. Our jet fuel burned in the Israeli planes. Your tax dollars at work, ya know? So, yeah, I think "We" is appropriate.

[Chad]

Fourth generation war is primarily a war for hearts and minds. Public perception is key to the success or failure at many levels. The neo con failure has been to misunderstand the nature of the war games they decided to play. The torture, the collective punishment, the indifference to the loss of innocent life, the abandonment of values formerly held dear is the stuff that loses 4th gen wars. The inability to comprehend this is the downfall of the neo-conservative aspirations for empire and the 3rd generation military powerhouse we have. Pictures are finally coming through with the same devasting impact they had in the other big 4th gen war that the US lost, Vietnam. It should not come as a surprise that the skilled and experienced 4th genertion warriors are media manipulation masters.

[ummabdulla]

So many points here to talk about...

Hezbollah runs their own satellite TV station, Al-Manar. From what I've heard, their news has been quite accurate. Obviously, anyone who watches it knows that it's from Hezbollah, but when they reported killing so many soldiers, or hitting so many Israeli tanks, it turned out to be true. And the Israelis bombed them numerous times, trying to knock them off the air, but they stayed on.

The BAG: "The tendency to see Islamists as unsophisticated, even primitive..."

In fact, many Islamists are educated professionals, but most people wouldn't know that because members of the Western news media almost never actually interview them. Instead, they interview the secular, Western-supporting "liberals", who tell them how primitive the Islamists are.

I think there's a tendency to see the whole region as primitive, though. There are many Islamist satellite stations, for example. And people were using mobile phones years ago; several of my friends were surprised to come to the Middle East and find that everyone had mobiles, and had newer models and a better network than they could find in the U.S.

People have an idea of Al-Jazeera as having primitive, ranting programs; in fact, many of their journalists came from the BBC Arabic service and are very professional. They do interview people with a range of opinions: Islamist, secular, Communist, Israeli, American, etc., so it's not like the Sunday morning talk shows in the U.S. where both sides are almost the same.

From what I've seen, most people here do keep up with the news and know much more about what's going on in the world than the average American. The Bush administration is used to manipulating public opinion, because they're used to a public who knows (and cares) more about JonBenet or Brangelina or Brittany than they do about anything serious going on in the world - so they continue to think that all they have to do to "win hearts and minds" is to find the right public relations formula. So they create radio stations and TV stations and magazines, and send Karen Hughes around... and none of it will work, because people can see what's going on around them.

OK, let me stop before I get really wound up. ;)

[LongWinded]

Great post. Lots of interesting points.

On the broad notion of a media war, I'm in general agreement. Contra ummabdulla, Al-Manar has hardly been a reliable source for accurate information. It has, instead, carefully embroidered actual events, providing a compelling and only slightly distorted view of the conflict. It consistently outpaced other Arabic and English language networks in reporting on specific battles and clashes, although the casualty figures it gave for the Israelis were unfailingly too high, and for its own forces, too low. But as ummabdulla points out, it didn't (generally) make up battles. Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya did even better. Their broadcasts were slickly packaged, rich in visual imagery, and sprinkled with compelling commentary.

I think the underlying problem is a basic misconception of the nature of Islamism (or Islamic Fascism, or Jihadism, or whatever other term one finds least offensive or most compelling). Most pundits have portrayed Islamist thought as profoundly anti-Modern: favored terms include 'barbaric,' 'medieval,' and 'backward.' More sympathetic commentators may term such beliefs 'traditional.' Islamists themselves tend to describe their faith as 'true' or 'pure.' Perhaps the most popular term has been 'radical,' generally used to imply zealotry instead of a specific ideological position. The underlying connection among all of these terms is the notion that Islamists thought represents a return to, or a continuation of, traditional Islamic values or practices - or perhaps a reactionary stance that takes those traditional positions to a more extreme extent than was actually praticed in the past. It is a portrayal that is convenient both for the Islamists themselves, whose supposed ideological purity is a principal asset, and for the forces that oppose them.

What all of these discourses miss entirely is that Islamism is a quintessentially modern phenomenon. Like the Protestant Reformation, it is a reaction to sweeping economic and social changes, grounded in the advent of new media that enable novel forms of mass communication. It has challenged the entrenched structures of power and authority within Islam, criticizing them as insufficiently rigorous or even decadent and corrupt. Instead, power has accrued to those who have embraced the modern world and its diverse technologies, leaders like bin Laden and Nasrallah.

We tend to conflate modern technologies such as the internet and cable television, with modern beliefs such as secularism and post-nationalism. This is a mistake. It leads us into thinking it remarkable when an Islamist manipulates our media to his advantage. We find fatwahs promulgated over the internet, exclaim over the irony, and file trend stories. In fact, the beliefs that we identify as "modern" are merely those ideologies that have evolved in conjunction with modern technologies in the Western world. Islamism is the ideology that has evolved in conjunction with these technologies in the Middle East. It is as intricately bound up in modernity as any Western complex of ideas.

Bottom line: Thomas Friedman is wrong. There is nothing intrinsic to the information age that supports the spread of Western-style democracy throughout the world. In fact, based upon the experience of the last few decades, it seems that Islamism is better adapted to this strange new world in which we live - it has spread more rapidly, gained more adherents, and even succeeded in driving out western ideologies from lands in which they were previously entrenched. So far, the Western world has relied upon its inherited advantages to stem the advance of Islamism - wealth, military power, technology, and political structures. It doesn't look like a winning formula thus far. So when I look at the images you've posted, particularly the shot of Mike Wallace and Ahmadinejad, I see two competing interpretations of modernity - and I'd say that the Islamist approach is the one that most Middle Easterners are finding more appealing.

[margaret]

Back to the picture of the "pieta." How do we know whether it was staged, or whether it was a picture of a worker who had fainted in the heat or from exhaustion? And which picture of this young man was taken first? I would like to know that before I made a judgment about Hezbollah "destroying the Fourth Estate?" I agree with the poster, that it already shot itself in the foot when it sold out to the big corporations who now own it.

The Muslim world is full of genius, even on camelback, as it were, so it is very childish to suggest that people in that world are necessarily incapable of sophistication if given education opportunities. That lack for the poor is a real problem. I read, on the other end of the spectrum, that Iraq had a higher percentage of Ph.D's than this country. So, who is more sophisticated?

Just as blogging has changed the political process, the creative people of the Middle East are inventing their own processes of getting their story out. We might not like the story, but we cannot hide from it.

[Collette]

Great Post!
If these last few weeks mark the passing of the Rove era, it could be that the JonBenet coverage is a last-ditch effort to distract public attention away from the Bush Administration's losses in the Middle East.

[jt from BC]

Lightkeeper, great post can you elaborate on;

"In fact, based upon the experience of the last few decades, it seems that Islamism is better adapted to this strange new world in which we live."

If Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordon etc are unable to have governments more representative of their people, is Islamism their first or second choice in acquiring change from these dictatorial regimes which they see as colluding and supported by Western economic or strategic interests.? Iran preferred a Western style democracy in 1951 and was overthrown but not by an Islamic ideology.

[Mad_nVT]

I must have missed a piece. Why do we "know" that the Pieta guy in the photo is the same as the Michaelangelo god-guy in the next photo?

Question for ummabdulla regarding your post: "From what I've seen, most people here do keep up with the news and know much more about what's going on in the world than the average American."

How do people keep up with the news?
Is this all sectors of society?
To what extent is word-of-mouth important?

How do TV, radio, reading, preaching and word-of-mouth compare in importance?

And you mention "here". Is that just Kuwait or across larger Middle East?

Thanks.

[janinsanfran]

I thought about this all night and just had to come back to it.

Israel lost the image war the first day by its own action in bombing Lebanon's only significant civilian airport in Beirut. Every journalist with any familiarity with that part of the world had passed through there. Most had enjoyed Lebanon as a respite from the anxiety of the hot war in Iraq. (The exception would, of course, be Israel-oriented journalists.) In the eyes of those journalists, Israel responded to a border incident involving obscure non-state actors by trashing the gleaming symbol of civilian, democratic progress in Lebanon. Not surprisingly, the media was disposed to look at and report copiously the horrible damage Israel inflicted on non-combatants and civilian infrastructure.

I think they were right to do so. Sure, both sides staged events for the media. Everyone does nowadays. But Israel arrogantly indicated from the first day that its words might condemn Hezbollah, but its target was all of Lebanon -- and the reporters knew it.

[momly]

If these last few weeks mark the passing of the Rove era, it could be that the JonBenet coverage is a last-ditch effort to distract public attention away from the Bush Administration's losses in the Middle East.

It must be over then because "Rove" picked a total loser as the scape goat. Wow, is he off his game or what? Suppose Fitzgerald is still breathing down his neck?

Oh a girl can dream....

[jt from BC]

GWB: an APB/BOLO, a few ta sounds this momentous pronouncement:

"Chaos in Iraq would be unsettling"

[Cactus]

The Bag said: ". . . they failed to realize that Hezbollah is not just out to humiliate Bush and Israel, but to undermine the Fourth Estate as well." Seems to me that US corporations have pretty well done that already. Does anyone still read newspapers or watch TV news with an uncritical eye? Or have faith that what they read is both sides of a story, or even an even-handed one-sided version?

How do we (or any one else) know that the man in the 'pieta' shot is the same as the second shot. I can't see any resemblance either in face, hair, clothes or surroundings. As an aside, however. there is a 'disaster-porn' like beauty to the 'pieta' shot as there was to the first photo in the "Qana was not staged" post. Sorry, but sometimes the eye just has to see beauty to survive.

LongWinded's long post about Islamists made me wonder whereof s/he speaks with such authority. Is s/he a Muslim, or does s/he teach the history of Islam, or??? However, I think that more broadly one could posit such an argument for any fundamentalist religious sect, including those in this country. Southern baptists may have cell phones and still fire a woman teacher because the bible says women should be silent and cannot teach men.

[ummabdulla]

Mad nVT: Well, let me just speak for Kuwait, but I think a lot of this is true for other parts of the Arab world, too. (Sorry for the length, but you shouldn't have gotten me started, lol.)

For one thing, people know the rest of the world because they travel. Kuwait is small; if you drive an hour north, you're at the Iraqi border (not that you want do to that...); drive an hour south and you're at the Saudi border. Every baby has a passport, and people are amazed to hear that most Americans don't. It's very normal for people to have spent time in the West for studying, business, vacation, or medical treatment, and when they go, they usually take the family - and maybe the extended family.

Kuwaitis (and other Gulf Arabs) normally don't move to the West permanently, but many Arabs in other countries do, so they often have relatives there.

The population here is about 2.2. million, I think, of which fewer than a million are Kuwaitis. So just in running errands, you run into people from all different countries; my children, for example, have had teachers from all over the world. When I go to Islamic classes (given in English), I meet women from Southeast Asia, the Subcontinent, Africa, and the West, etc.

Of course, we get TV and movies from all over, including many from Hollywood. (Copies of movies are available as soon as they premiere anywhere - if not before.) So that teaches people a lot about Western society - not necessarily in a good way.

OK, about the actual news... from what I've seen, almost everyone reads the newspaper daily - and not just one, but usually 2 or 3 different newspapers. There are at least six daily Arabic papers that I can think of, and there are three different local English-language papers (one of which also comes with the International Herald Tribune). I used to think my husband was strange for subscribing to 2 or 3 different papers, but then they were offering a good deal on another English paper, so he got that, too; I now get two different local papers plus the International Herald Tribune - not that I have time to read them all.

There's not enough local news to fill a newspaper, so much of the news is regional and international. The first time I went back to the U.S., I was looking forward to reading my favorite local newspaper The Washington Post, and after a few days I realized that I was disppointed, because there was much less news in it than I was used to. (Maybe more inside the beltway political stuff). My newspaper here has a couple of pages of local news, and then news from everywhere else, and there aren't many advertisements. There are readers from all over the world, so there's news from all over.

Just a note: Kuwait is unusual for this region, in that the press is not controlled by the government; they are very open and often very critical of the government. In 15 years, the only story I noticed that they didn't cover was the Bahraini princess who eloped with the Marine, because they don't like to embarass another royal family in the Gulf. On the other hand, after 9/11, she left her husband and went back to Bahrain, and that story was widely ignored in the West.

How important is TV news? I think it depends on the person. The news broadcast on the state TV stations isn't worth much; it is controlled by the government. But there are tons of satellite stations available (also easily pirated), so some people will be watching sports, some movies, some Islamic material, some news... Of course, when there's something going on, people will be watching the news more.

I don't think people get much news from preaching. The sermon is once a week, it's usually not that long, and any imam who goes too far will be reprimanded. (A couple of weeks ago, one was suspended for insulting the weakness of the Arab leaders over the war in Lebanon, I think.) But even if an imam makes a fiery speech, it's probably not about something that listeners weren't aware of before. But the mosque is just one factor; there are all kinds of lectures, classes, gatherings, cassettes, etc., if you want to pass on something controversial.

Word-of-mouth is important, too. Like I said, the Kuwaiti community is fairly small, and people have large extended families and lots of social contacts. Men gather together in the evenings, women gather together, families gather all the time. Greetings are more than just "Hi"; there's a whole series of "How are you?", "What's your news?", etc. And nowadays, everyone has a mobile, so they're not only talking but sending messages all the time. And then there are chat rooms and e-mail.

[ummabdulla]

"If Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordon etc are unable to have governments more representative of their people, is Islamism their first or second choice in acquiring change from these dictatorial regimes which they see as colluding and supported by Western economic or strategic interests?"

JT, you didn't ask me, but I'd say "Islamism" (and I still don't like the term, because it's used to mean different things by different people at differnt times) would be the first choice.

The Muslim Brotherhood won a certain number of seats in Egypt last time (was it 80-something?), but from what I understand, they only put up candidates in around 100 seats, so as not to force too big of a confrontation. HAMAS won in Palestine. I have no doubt that if the Saudis were allowed to choose their government, it would be "Islamist". Same with Jordan - not that King Abdullah will let that happen anytime soon.

[jt from BC]

ummabdulla, I didn't ask you about terms because I may share a similar confusion about what the term Islamism means to Westerners and I wanted to pursue this further with Lightkeeper, but thanks for your comment, and I welcome your joining in should Lighkeeper respond.

[Rafael]

Since the time of the Romans, western powers have used or tried to use culture as a weapon. The Romans encourage the sons of Gaulish and Germanic nobility to joing the Roman Army (as auxiliaries), from the 19th century to today, Western Universities have attracted the children of the colonial elites, who where expected to be "converted" by their experience and then serve as pawns for their Imperial masters when they returned to the colonies. However, a few individuals have used these experiences not learn from the Western Powers without sacrificing their own cultural and national identities.

The best example was Ghandi, who was trained in Oxford, and used his understading of Indian and English cultures in his drive to free India from English rule. I am not surprised that others have followed this example (even if they choose violence as their primary tool). I do continue to be surprised by those in the West who can not see past their own prejudices and fall on the same traps, again and again.

[putnam]

I don't see a contradiction between the two photos at the wreckage, even assuming it's the same shirtless, thin -faced young man. He doesn't look dead in the first photo; he looks grieving. There is a pole on top of him, did he collapse while pulling away rubble? That is not inconsistent with him pointing animatedly in the second photo, in whatever order the photos were taken, and depending on timespan. Perhaps it was the rubble of his parent's home. What did he point to, what was uncovered, for whom did he grieve? There is no information from which to conclude this was faked.

[jt from BC]

Raphael, good point, but I got to thinking about some bad apples and picked this chap as # 1 of the present era. An penultimate Commander in Chief

Idi Amin (1924 – 2003) was an army officer and President of Uganda (1971 to 1979).
Amin joined the King's African Rifles (KAR) of the British colonial army as a private in 1946

"As the years went on, Amin became increasingly erratic and outspoken. He had his tunics specially lengthened so that he could wear many World War II medals, including the Military Cross and Victoria Cross. He granted himself a number of titles, including "King of Scotland". In 1977, after Britain broke diplomatic relations with his regime, Amin declared he had beaten the British and conferred on himself the decoration of CBE (Conqueror of the British Empire). Radio Uganda then read out the whole of his new title: "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Alhaji Dr Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE"[1]."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idi_Amin

[Rafael]

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

[Lightkeeper]

jt from BC,

Sorry about not getting back to you earlier, somehow I seem to have missed the conversation here.

I have been thinking about these terms and don't yet know what I think about them. ;)

However, I think certainly the correct term would implicitly impose a distinction between Islam itself and terrorism spurred on by fundamentalist religious ideology. What that term may be, I have no idea. What does Islamist mean? I have yet to be able to define it since it is used so sporadically and so differently depending on who is using it. And certainly Islamofascism is just bullshit.

Anyway I need to think about this some more.

[ummabdulla]

When I started seeing the term "Islamist", it seemed to have come out of the situation where Muslims were saying that Muslims wanted to live in an Islamic society, and other Muslims (call them non-practicing, progressive, or whatever - the kind who think that Muslim is a cultural label and that even atheists can call themselves Muslims) said, "Wait, we're Muslims, too and we want to drink gamble, eat pork, whatever...". So the name "Islamist" started being used to mean Muslims who wanted to live Islamically.

Since then, it's been used in different ways, and now it's often used to mean "terrorist".

[Max Hodges]

>>Jeez, it's one thing for Hezbollah to declare outright victory. It's another thing, though, for a prominent Western publication (right under the nose of Bush's GWOT poodle) to design, print and deliver the announcement.

Your petty magazine cover analysis can't hold a torch to the depth and insight provided in analysis provided by The Economist on these matters.

[satyagraha]

ARE ISRAELI BOMBS NOT LETHAL ? DO ENTIRE BLOCKS OF LEBANESE CITIES AND VILLAGES NOT LAY IN RUINS ? IS THE LEBANESE COASTLINE NOT BLIGHTED BY OIL ? WHAT IS THE DEATH TOLL NOW, 1000 AND RISING ?

I understand that parsing images is the specialty of The BAG, but to coldly speculate over whether or not this guy laid down for a money-shot, is to forsake any shred of human empathy which this level of destruction demands. Staged or not, these images do not change, magnify or improve the hellish results of Israel's cowardly and cruel bombing campaign.

Post an image of someone trudging away from the WTC, covered with dust, and then tell me they are mugging for the camera. And so what if they were ?

SO WHAT IF THEY WERE.

[Watcher]

The United States is less homogeneous than ever before. We are no longer merely the inheritors of the English tradition of Common Law, but also the inheritors of Talmudic and Koranic law, the Napoleonic code, the teachings of Buddha and Confucious, and a host of other beliefs carried to this country by succesive waves of immigrants. In the face of so many competing value systems, the traditional values and beliefs of the founding fathers have been lost. In the name of "diversity," ethics and what once was a common view of morality has been lost.

Empathy has been dead in America for some time now. If it is not violence, drama, sex, or trendy we don't care. Law, money, and vanity are the new religion and our consciences' are placated when we see a "heroic" act during a tragedy.