Dan Rather, OJ and the Culture of the Delusional Celebrity
It’s very unfair, of course, to compare Dan Rather to OJ Simpson – Simpson killed people – but both reemerged at roughly the same time and represent extraordinary examples of a kind of sociopathic behavior created in part by our culture of celebrity.
OJ, as everyone knows was a huge sports, movie and media star. Rather was an anchorman of the most celebrated sort – the one to “interview” Saddam as if representing all of us, among other flak-jacketed, high profile activities. In fact, his demise helped put a stake in the heart of that particular occupation, the television anchor a la Cronkite. The idea that one individual has that much power over the public’s view of the world now seems almost Neanderthal and certainly reactionary.
In the case of OJ, we see our television lives dominated once again by the bizarre saga of an unpunished celebrity murderer.
We have lived for some time in a society in which stardom seems to motivate people to lose contact with reality. The more attention they get – the crazier that get. And if they feel that attention diminishing, they act out to regain it. It’s like a drug – media crack cocaine.
Thus we have a Sean Penn opining on Katrina, sailing about New Orleans like some junior Ahab or Sally Fields telling us – using an obscenity of course, lest we ignore her – that the world would be different with women in control. It can be argued that OJ’s looney break-in in Vegas was, more than anything, a plea for attention.
Rather’s new lawsuit against CBS also seems, most of all, the cry of a lonely desperate man – Remember me! Remember me!
Forget the facts. It’s the attention that counts. Some of this is farce, of course. But in the case of Rather, thought control and major political manipulation could have been the result of his prevarication.
In a fascinating interview with Rather in today’s Washington Post, Howard Kurtz reveals the extent of the former anchorman’s delusions, which now approaches clinical cognitive dissonance. Rather somehow still believes he was promulgating the truth, unable to make the obvious distinction between what he “feels” to be true and an evident forged document.
Or he seems to believe that because his arguments thrash about like some pathetic wounded animal, one moment implying that CBS forced him to promote a lie and the next implying that it wasn’t a lie after all. Cognitive dissonance, indeed. That he would give an interview to Kurtz in the first place, instead of allowing his lawyers to do their work (he is destroying their case here, assuming they even had one) reveals Rather’s sad motivation all too clearly.
In a final burst of black comedy, Kurtz states that Rather ” is portraying the lawsuit as a challenge to the corrosive influence of conglomerates, including the one that paid him millions over the years.”
My intention here is not to bash Rather yet again – though he deserves it – but to emphasize that he is a creature of our culture. He is one of us. Giving celebrities so much power leads to this. This is especially dangerous in the case of news celebrities who have so much opportunity to distort reality.
CBS had an opportunity to underscore this after the fall of Rather, but chose to go the other way, elevating yet another celebrity – Katie Couric – to the outmoded anchor chair, which, thankfully, appears to be failing.
The anchorman or woman is a dinosaur that should have been extinct decades ago. This is one lawsuit in which I am rooting for both sides to lose.
PJ Media CEO Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger.
there used to be a difference between celebrity and notoriety.
the line has become blurred.
and not just in the media, but in the culture as a whole.
the media uses notoriety to break through the clutter – clutter which is the result of the proliferation of media outlets; in the old days – when there were three networks it was easier to reach a large segment of the population.
now, media outlets are more numerous and each reach a smaller and harder to reach segment.
to maximize the size of their audience – and maximize dollars – the media use scandalous stuff.
individuals like rather prove that many people have blurred the line, too.
overall, the sense of shame is disappearing – or should i say the ability to feel ashamed.
this all began in the 1960′s with the counter-culture. and it is the deliberate strategy of the postmodern left.
it is gramscian.
so-called “progressives” are really counter-culture people who want to destroy traditional culture and replace it with a PC state run by an socialist elite.
oj and rather are therefore to side of the gramscian coin:
oj – a notorious criminal exploited by the msm.
rather: a fool who no longer can feel shame.
It is dumbfounding to me that Rather is so clueless as to not realize how easy he got off. He was allowed to retire gracefully without ever admitting any actual error at all.
He used forged documents to throw an election for the President of the United States while the nation was at war. He ought to be in prison…
Can you say ‘narcissistic personality disorder’?
Rather commits a felony on air in front of 10 million people and now wants to get paid for it? Wow.
Your ‘media’ company is no longer taken seriously by professional journalists or (anyone else for that matter), hence your inclusion as ‘delusional celebrity’.
I’m glad you’re not wasting real paper on this BS.
I question whether the line between celebrity and notoriety is any more blurred today, or whether we are any more celebrity-crazed than earlier times. Consider the hoo-haa surrounding Lindberg and Valentino, or the popularity in the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma for Charles Arthur (Pretty Boy) Floyd.
Jack Okie, we may not be more celebrity crazed than we were before, but that are certainly in our faces a lot more. It’s constant.
Another aspect of the narcissism of such people is related to their actual status as mere brand names.
See Why Sean Penn is like a Feminine Hygiene Product.
i dont see how OJ’s bail was $125,000 and the 6 white folks who sexually asulted, stabbed, and tortured a black woman in west virginia, bail be set at $100,000 each…..see below
lucky # 6
Sean Penn? Yeah – he should have sat around blogging about drowning people instead of trying to save them.
I take it you don’t listen to much country music.
Roger, first you linked up OJ and 9/11. Today it’s OJ and Rather. Tomorrow could you compare OJ to Barbara Boxer, a unicorn or Nick Fifer?
rather: [spit]
oj: [spit]
msm/lsm: [spit][rech]
a challenge to the corrosive influence of conglomerates… Ah, but it was the little bloggers who have done him in.
This is especially dangerous in the case of news celebrities who have so much opportunity to distort reality.
You missed the point. They do not intentionally distort reality. Their reality is distorted by their bias without them realizing it. Rather should be pitied, and hopefully some Big Pharma conglomerates can find a cure for his delusion.
God is just. It’s going to be hysterically funny when the discovery process begins. Much of the private interactions between Dan Rather and his former employer will become public record. We should learn a lot about the echo chamber existence of the MSM elite. Rather’s lawsuit may also prove to be the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. This may finish CBS’s days as among the top three networks. It might soon be striving for the viewing numbers of the Food Channel.
It’s amazing how “progressives” are so easily manipulated by transparently phony symbolism. Sean Penn shows up in a row boat, bringing along his own media crew, and that means he really cares.
Ahmadinejad wants to place a wreath where the Twin Towers stood, and that means he’s not such a bad guy after all. He still hangs teenage gays, stones women, murders Iraqis, Israelis, and Lebanese, and pursues nukes, but the wreath shows that he’s a reasonable man we can talk to.
Liberals allow the most inhuman despots get away with unspeakable atrocities, as long as the tyrant in question periodically makes some empty gesture of peace.
That’s what “progressives” are about. Empty gestures and symbolism.
Never forget, while Sean Penn was bailing his boat (in living color pictures), the Coast Guard alone recued 33,000 people
http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,NI_1005_Mayday,00.html
But Sean Penn is a hero and very, very memorable. A veritable hero of Katrina.
Just another celebrity image in the Big Lie
Our celebrity saturated culture was predicted and analyzed by Daniel Boorstin in his book “The Image.”
et tu, Roger?
So where’d the mug shot of Rather come from? I mean, what was he arrested for?
For a truly disturbing read, check out the paranoid ramblings that pass for ‘comments’ at the WaPo.
It apparently doesn’t matter that the documents are forgeries and the contents fake. No, Dan represents the Common Man, the Little Guy being crushed by Bushitler & Cheneyburton.
There are people insisting that the documents must be real, but that Cheney somehow ‘repaired’ them at the behest of Rove. There are people who know someone who knew this man who was friends with someone else who served in the Guard and whose CO told him that he knew all about the VIP kids whose fathers managed to get them free rides.
And of course there’s the usual ‘kill the messenger’ crap aimed at Kurtz for doing the story in the first place.
I’m amazaed they’re brave enough to write this crap, considering that Rove keeps track of everyone in the country & what they say or do.