Attention Must Be Paid

Oh wait, that’s the catch phrase from Death of a Salesman, not to mention the headline to every one of Arthur Miller’s obits. But Mickey Kaus notes that People magazine (which had then only recently been spun-off from the march of Time) paid little attention in 1977 to Elvis’s death–exactly two paragraphs’ worth in the issue that followed his demise. (Or return to the mothership, depending upon your personal epistemological beliefs in the after-Elvis-world):

Elvis was no longer a big deal in some circles, but he was in other, well-populated sectors. This scenario–the media elites not caring about Elvis, but then why are all those people going to Memphis?–reinforces the point that the culture of celebrity is an organic, populist (and pre-Diana) phenomenon and not a recent, top-down corporate trick.

Some things never change: as I wrote back in 2004, the elite media also paid short shrift to a quite similar outpouring of grief after Dale Earnhardt’s death in a Nascar accident in early 2001, from what must be something of a shared fan base, and both being considerably drawn from those living in what we now call the Red States.

But then, that will happen when you have a one-size-fits-all legacy media attempting to cover an increasingly diverse country primarily from offices in New York and L.A. (And as can be seen by the above two examples, failing pretty badly.)