Keep your eyes on the road

There is a song called “Life Is A Highway.” It was originally recorded by Tom Cochrane of Red Rider and then remade by Rascal Flatts and put on the soundtrack for the movie “Cars,” which I have watched umpteen times since giving it to my son for Christmas, but that is another story.
I came in to work Monday morning and started perusing the news from around the country and world and this song came to mind.
Recently there has been a lot in the news about the death of Anna Nicole Smith and now the head-shaving antics of Britney Spears. The word “train-wreck” has been thrown around a lot, but I think of these things more as accidents on a highway, usually by people driving too fast in the fast lane.
We are the rubberneckers, compelled to slow way down and glance over, hoping for some gruesome details to share with other rubberneckers later that day.
What is so interesting about these “accidents” though? Why do we like to see the wreckage? Are we fascinated by the morbid and tragic or are we trying to find ways to avoid following the same tragic footsteps?
I’m leaning more towards morbid fascination, mainly because very few of us will have elderly princes stating that they are the true father of our recently born children.
I don’t mean to poke fun. The death of Anna Nicole is sad. She lost her son the day her daughter was born and then she died months later, leaving the little girl without a mother for the rest of her life.
Many who watched her television program would think “good riddance,” considering the fact that Anna Nicole was often incoherent and barely able to take care of herself, but a death is a death. It rarely, if ever, is something to gloat over. I say this because I know millions of people have watched Saddam’s hanging by now.
Britney’s current problems are also upsetting because she too has small children. She has been partying out of control in public, divorcing her husband and she recently shaved her head and got tattooed while presumably not of sound mind or body.
I don’t want to know these things, but I feel the need to read the stories when I see the gigantic headlines and pictures.
If life is a highway, the stories in the media are the billboards. Reading about Anna-Nicole or Britney isn’t going to help your commute or warn you about potential pitfalls, but how can you not look at something 40 feet tall and flashing?
As a member of the local media, I don’t think that we contribute to the celebrity worship culture in America, but it is big news if someone from the area crosses over into the land of Hollyweird.
Survivor contestant Paschal English and American Idol contestant Paris Bennett are hundreds of miles away from generating the type of buzz that dominates headlines around the world, but it was a big deal that Fayette County had ties to “the industry.”
Both English and Bennett have every right to be proud of their accomplishments on those programs and in their future endeavors, but it is unlikely that they will ever get the same type of national coverage again unless their lives go off the road.
Having covered and read extensively about both of these figures, I don’t think this is very likely. If English shaves his head tearfully in a hair salon and demands to get lips tattooed on his wrist, I will eat my hat.
The national and international media is another story. The stories meant for tabloid coverage often make the news section of every major newspaper in the country and often the world. Which came first though, the interest in the general public or the decision by the publishers in an attempt to sell papers?
I’m not sure of the answer, just like I’m not sure if it the chicken or the egg came first.
I would like to believe that it started with a genuine news story and that the public clamored for more shocking details and story-lines and the publishers gave it to them.
It may have all started with the case of Fatty Arbuckle, accused of the rape and murder of a young ingenue in Hollywood. The story was filled with more sordid details than you could shake a stick at and a surprising acquittal of all charges. The public ate it up and asked for seconds and the lifestyle in the Hollywood fast lane has been able to provide more than enough over the years.
Unfortunately, I can very easily see how it might be the other way around. The job of a newspaper is to get readers and sell that audience to advertisers. Lots of things can draw readers to your paper, but while wars end and the successes of sports teams ebb and flow, stories of fallen heroes and broken dreams, accidents on life’s highway, are a dime a dozen.
Whether people flock to them because they want to feel better about their own lives or feel sympathy and a connection to these people who were formerly so high above them and untouchable, the result is always the same.
Folks are almost guaranteed to slow down and take time out of their day, gawk at the accident for awhile and then move on until they get caught up in the next traffic jam.
I wish it weren’t so, but I’m guilty of it as well. When everybody else has slowed down to take a look, how can I not look over to see what was so fascinating in the first place?
Maybe next time, I’ll just focus on the road ahead of me.