Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Our Dumb Decade
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
The Onion produced Our Dumb Century, a book of fake newspapers satirizing twentieth-century US history. Every once in a while a headline heralds that some sensationalized court case is "The Trial Of The Century." The Lindbergh kidnapping, the Rosenbergs, the O.J. Simpson trial, and so on get almost identical places in this running gag.
Looks like another one is coming up: Scott Peterson will soon go on trial, because his wife Laci and their unborn child died late last year and he may have killed them. Local mass media have followed the story closely.
While I feel the same disgust and sadness with the death of Laci Peterson as I feel with any human death, I wish I weren't hearing so much about it. I dislike media attention that forces the mask of O.J. Simpson upon Scott Peterson. Some part of me is glad that domestic abuse is getting some play on the news, but I also want Scott Peterson to get a fair trial, and I don't like turning Laci Peterson into a Christ figure.
