The scary circus

Yesterday afternoon, when I heard about the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, the first thing that popped into my head was that it was propitious timing for Mark Sanford. Finally, the pundits of the broadcast journalists' 24 hour news cycle would move on.

As I watched the news over the past few days, I was repulsed by the glee with which what should have been very personal pain was being exploited. I understand that his being MIA from his duties as governor is newsworthy, even important. I also understand that the discovery that it was related to an adulterous relationship had to be reported. What I saw on TV though was something else. It was the transformation of something newsworthy into circus entertainment. The fact that this was done by making public stolen private emails, and no one seemed to give a damn about the privacy issues, horrified me.

It was heartening to see that at least one other person noticed. From Lee Siegel blogging in The Daily Beast:

"Why the total silence with regard to the violation of Sanford’s privacy? Surely it has to do with our new Twitter and Facebook culture. Private life has been turned into public performance; people retail their privacy to win popularity, acclaim, and perhaps commercial profit. The media’s uncritical euphoria over social networks—look how Twitter is liberating Iran and China!—is turning the invasion of privacy into a cultural style. Yet this contemporary dream of freedom looks a lot like a previous generation’s nightmare of surveillance."