Daily Lobo columnist
While April 19, 1995 started off as an ordinary day, it didn’t stay that way for very long. Just after 9 a.m., the nation was rocked to the core of its collective consciousness by a tragedy of unspeakable proportions.
A massive bomb made from a deadly mixture of fertilizer and fuel was placed inside a rental truck, parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City and blew the building to smithereens.
A CNN news report commented, “A stunned nation watched as the bodies of men, women and children were pulled from the rubble for nearly two weeks. When the smoke cleared and the exhausted rescue workers packed up and left, 168 people were dead in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.”
About an hour and a half after the explosion, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer pulled over a man called Timothy McVeigh for driving without a tag on his vehicle. Just before he was going to be released on April 21, McVeigh was recognized as being a suspect and was charged with the bombing.
Now, more than six years later, McVeigh is going to pay the ultimate price for his horrible crime when he dies next month by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terra Haute, Ind. McVeigh’s execution will be viewed in person by 10 victims’ representatives and shown on closed-circuit television in Oklahoma City to the survivors and relatives of the 168 victims who choose to attend.
It appears that many of the survivors and some of the relatives of those killed feel they need to see McVeigh’s execution in order to bring “closure” to this terrible catastrophe. But will watching McVeigh take his last few gasping breaths as the chemicals from an injection’s poisonous cocktail take effect on his vital organs really help the victims’ emotional state? And if it does help bring closure, should it?
While I have tremendous sympathy for those affected by McVeigh’s horrific actions and make no claim to understand even a portion of the terrible agony that survivors and relatives have endured, I am deeply troubled by this desire to watch someone die.
Do I think McVeigh should die? Absolutely! But if those wanting to watch the execution are looking to the event to fill the gaping void left in their lives by the untimely departure of loved ones, they need to look to elsewhere.
Now, I have no sympathy at all with the Internet operator of voyeuristic Web sites who has been asking permission to Web cast the McVeigh execution. According to Reuters, a lawyer for the Tampa, Fla.-based Entertainment Network told a federal court, “The public has the right to know what happens in the execution and (the company) has the right to communicate it to the public.”
This public spirited company, which has said that it would charge $1.95 per viewer but donate the proceeds to bombing victims and their families, is the same outfit that operates VoyeurDorm.com, a Web site with 55 cameras zooming in on the activities of college coeds and DudeDorm.com which gives its viewers the skinny on 14 gay and straight male college students.
This has nothing at all to do with the public’s “right to know.” It’s just another example of our ongoing voyeuristic delight of glorying in another’s misfortunes. And if you doubt what I say, think about the O.J. Simpson trial and Jerry Springer.
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When CNN and others showed the Simpson trial, ratings increased. When it showed other things, ratings trailed off. Everybody was complaining about the seemingly endless coverage of “The Juice,” but ratings don’t lie and networks weren’t showing Simpson from a feeling, public responsibility or to get warm and fuzzy feelings in their corporate heart.
Who do you know who’s willing to admit that they watch the Jerry Springer Show — at least regularly? But millions of Americans do, because if they didn’t, the ratings wouldn’t be there, the advertisers wouldn’t keep pumping money into his show and he’d no longer be syndicated.
We need to admit that our basic human nature loves sleaze and misfortune, and the more junk we feed that nature, the more it wants. It’s time we put a stop to it, and the furor surrounding the McVeigh execution would be a great time for us to start reassessing our media diet as well as our interpretation of the First Amendment.
