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CounterPunch
March 15,
2003
Tender Teen
of Distraction
Elizabeth Smart:
the Face of War?
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
If Elizabeth Smart didn't exist, the prestige
media would have been well-advised to invent her. Her kidnapping
occupied the media through the long summer months of 2002, just
the sort of lurid spectacle needed to distract Americans from
the stock market's swoon and the deepening public realization
that nothing major was planned to combat corporate malfeasance.
A nation came to cherish Amber Alerts as it was turned against
unremarkable figures like Richard Ricci and Bret Michael Edmunds;
sorry men by most accounts, convicted of a crime it turned out
they didn't commit after all, mocked as their health deteriorated
as a result of what essentially was media persecution.
Innocent after all. The lingering shots
of the Smart girl's icy stare are all over cable again, on what
Fox news calls a "glorious day for the American people".
Once again, Elizabeth Smart has materialized from the ether.
Nine months after her disappearance, the Smart girl has been
found.
Good thing it was a slow news day. Good
thing Pat Buchanan hadn't just let loose with a 5000 word volley
explaining who is getting us into an unwinnable war for the hearts
and souls of oil fields. Good thing we don't have to waste verbiage
discussing trivia like Rumsfeld saying the US military doesn't
need the help of underequipped British troops after all. The
little girl is back, as suddenly and inexplicably as a menu special
at a fast food restaurant.
The little girl is back, to distract
us from disaster, to let us know that We Are All Americans Again.
That we all stand tall and proud behind John Walsh -- to do otherwise
would be un-American, and uncharitable to kidnapped white girls
everywhere.
Because Elizabeth Smart is a humdinger
of a consensus builder. Who wouldn't give up his civil liberties
so that that precious young lady could play her harp again? Certainly,
"Hispanic men in late-model pick-up trucks" won't mind
answering questions for a few hours, if it helps to find her.
And if those trucks need to be searched, or seized, and if those
folks being questioned turn out to be evildoers of another stripe,
then all the better.
But never mind what used to be the Bill
of Rights. The parchment's words have been bleached with white-out;
replaced with a tri-color sticker that reads SANITIZED FOR YOUR
PROTECTION. It's not really that important what the Elizabeth
Smart case has already wrought, so much as what is to come in
the wake of her reappearance.
It's no coincidence that police at all
levels in the handling of the case have given credit to the media
for the matter's felicitous resolution. The declared success
in this case will lead to more successes to come. Interested
in hearing how much aid the US government is pledging to Cameroon?
Don't expect any insight on cable; Elizabeth Smart is found.
Are the rogues in DC about to raise the debt ceiling yet again?
Big deal; the next girl is missing, and this one did some modeling.
Isn't she precious? What was that about Richard Perle again?
Never mind, never mind. The public airwaves
are pits of despair, run by a cabal interested in marketing the
rankest forms of irrelevance to the American people as news.
Nine months of the Elizabeth Smart show undoubtedly have taught
them both what is working for them already and how to refine
their techniques. Expect more pretty girls to turn up missing,
and expect those moderates in the media who laugh at the impending
slaughter in Southwest Asia to show us their tender sides once
again. And that, in a nutshell, is the true nature of the Elizabeth
Smart tragedy. She is a Barbie-doll totem, constructed out of
air to distract us from what looks like nothing less than a full-on
national collapse.
Anthony Gancarski is a regular CounterPunch columnist. Email:
ANTHONY.GANCARSKI@ATTBI.COM
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