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Thursday, April 01, 2004

Reality TV
What do corpse-mutilators in Falluja have in common with those wacky sports fans with afro wigs, placards and painted faces that you see every time they cut to commercial?

They both serve the same master--that intoxicating red light situated on top of a TV camera.

Welcome to the new age of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal. In case you forgot, that' the phenomenon whereby the light used to measure subatomic particles disrupts those very same particles. The act of observing changes the thing being observed.

It's a slim reward, but apparently a second or two on national TV is enough to motivate certain types to paint their torsos blue. I have to wonder if the same force is in effect with our insurgent friends in Iraq--would they really bother to interrupt their looting and foraging to mutilate a corpse if it weren't for the presence of TV cameras? I doubt it.
-- 'To Portray the Horror, News Media Agonize' (NY Times)

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