The media got an early Christmas gift from Jerry Sandusky, who
fills the hideous monster vacuum that had developed after Osama Bin
Laden was slain.
How the media does love its monsters. After Bin Laden, the
monster niche was neatly filled by Dominique Strauss-Kahn (almost
forgotten now, relegated to media monster purgatory.) Prior to DSK
we had folk villain Bernie Madoff, after which Michael Vick’s head
was served to us on a platter. Prior to Vick came loony monster Mel
Gibson, preceded by Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber and, to be sure,
O.J. Simpson, a sort of monster emeritus. Qadaffi was October
monster of the month, giving way to Sandusky.
Pedophile priests were a collective monster. And let us
not forget assorted sex monsters John Edwards, Casey Anthony, and
Scott Peterson; all had their wretched moment in the sun. Rupert
Murdoch, who achieved quasi-monster status, still remains at
large.
Sandusky is almost a legend if measured by the media
monster gauge. He gained new status as our reigning national
monster thanks to saturation coverage in the New York
Times, which painted him as a sort of once-beloved Paul Bunyan
gone awry. A lead story, headlined “The Sandusky They Knew,” had a
subhead reading, “Residents of His Hometown Weigh the Charges
Against Their Memories.” Jerry, we hardly knew ye! (Meanwhile, the
fall of super-coach Joe Paterno has provided a hand-wringing
sidebar.)
Nobody can claim to be a certified national monster until
they meet certain basic requirements. Your ideal media monster
should have once been a revered citizen (Sandusky, Strauss-Kahn,
Madoff, Edwards, O.J., sundry priests), or at least the guy next
door (McVeigh, Vick, Peterson), or, at the very least, A Guy Who
Kept to Himself Nobody Really Knew Very Well (Ted Kaczynski, the
teenage Columbine shooters).
One reason TV can’t get enough of a guy like Jerry
Sandusky is that he makes television look saintly by comparison,
plus he provides a certified evil persona everyone can freely
vilify and columnists and editorial writers can crank out
fist-shaking, breast-beating, sanctimonious sermons about. One
sports writer said that Penn State should abandon its football
program — forever. Nobody so far has suggested that Pennsylvania
secede from the union, but it’s early yet. Meanwhile, how long
before Sandusky, Ohio changes its name?
The horrified media, from the National Star to
Anderson Cooper, suddenly dropped the previous week’s world-shaking
stories (“breaking news” about Kim Kardashian’s divorce, Justin
Bieber’s alleged love child, and Michael Jackson’s doctor) to
decamp on the Penn State campus, combing the streets of State
College, Pa., for the slightest whiff of a new fact about Sandusky
to justify the hot pursuit as if hunting down Adolf
Eichmann.
Meanwhile, lynch mobs are forming on radio talk shows,
where callers and hosts labor to outdo each other in expressing
their outrage and demand for swift justice, calling for as many
heads to roll as possible. One Pennsylvania man told a reporter
that hearing about Sandusky had left “a hole in his heart”
comparable to news of JFK’s assassination.
TV interviewers like Piers Morgan and Nancy Grace sputter
and froth as they refer to “horrific acts,” “egregious conduct” and
“unspeakable, repugnant behavior,” so upset they can hardly get the
words out. But, alas, they do.
Until someone more wicked comes along, Jerry Sandusky
should keep the media drooling through Thanksgiving, carving up the
latest national monster to satisfy America’s insatiable appetite.
By the way, has anyone seen Charley Sheen lately?
