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A
few years ago, on a trip through his childhood  neighborhood
in Chicago, my father told me the story of how he heard
the news of President Kennedy's assassination. It had been
the middle of lunch on November 22nd, 1963, when one of
my father's fourth-grade classmates came out of the three-story
apartment building that he lived in, which was located adjacent
to the school. The boy carried a hand-written sign reading:
PRESIDENT KENNEDY HAS BEEN SHOT. My father and his friends
looked at each other across the schoolyard in astonishment
as the fatal news sunk in. The boy, an averaged-sized kid
with short, curly hair by the name of Harvey Burns, instantly
received much attention from his peers. They wanted to know
the who, what, when, where, why, and how of what happened.
And Harvey was happy to oblige. This was because he had
immersed himself in a guilty pleasure of our information
age: being the bearer of bad news.
Now,
Harvey was not a bad guy. He was smart and well-liked, and
was not the kind of fourth-grader who would normally be
accused of bloodlust. However, he had a tender, sickening
spot in his heart for watching people receive bad news.
Harvey's Freudian subconscious liked to see the reactions
of disgust that accompanied the gruesome information. And
it has become increasingly apparent to me that, sadly, so
do we.
Last
July, shortly after the JFK Jr. airplane crash, Chicago
Tribune columnist Mary Schmich penned a piece concerning
the public grieving process that she had witnessed in the
hours and days after the national treasure met his death
off of Martha's Vineyard. Schmich detailed how she had observed
strangers bearing the bad news of the crash in public places
such as bars and restaurants. She detailed one case where
a man received a call on his cell phone concerning the crash
and quickly announced to an entire room full of people whom
he did not know that the George editor had died. Some might
say that the man was just doing what he felt was right:
informing people of major news. But Schmich reasoned otherwise.
She
felt that the man's action was a natural impulse; that the
man, like Harvey Burns, felt not only a need, but comfort,
in becoming a messenger of the morbid to people that he
did not even know.
President
Kennedy and his son's deaths are just two examples of this
phenomenon. Worldwide, tragedies such as the death of Princess
Diana and the Egypt Air crash meet with large-scale international
grieving processes that are furthered by the press, who
use clips of flower memorials and crying adults as a boost
to increase ratings. The old adage that people like to be
miserable together is certainly true. The press' continuing
tactic of creating Grief Television, rather than reporting
the facts, has lead to a society in which people are more
interested in being swept up in the sadness of it all than
knowing the truth.
High
school, I have found, is the perfect microcosm for society's
fascination with this morbid phenomenon. Like their adult
counterparts, each teenager has his or her own values system.
However, in the face of a tragedy, a communal sentiment
of sharing grief emerges.
On
Friday, October 22, 1999, I heard the news of a tragic car
accident involving two seniors at my school. I, along with
the rest of my fellow students, was horrified. It is truly
fascinating to watch 1600 teenagers, who have trained themselves
to completely control their emotions, react to the possibility
of losing people they all know.
I
was in Mrs. Kaelin's room, getting extra help in preparation
for a Math Analysis test the next Monday, when I heard the
news of the crash. Soon afterward, I decided to follow the
swarm of people who were making their way toward the football
field to find out just what was going on. A few minutes
later I was looking out over the field from a spot against
a rail on the second-floor staircase of the main building.
Dozens of other students piled around me, all wondering
what was happening and craning their necks for a better
look. As the noises of ambulances, fire engines, police
sirens, and helicopter propellers created a backdrop of
complete havoc, the rumors began to emerge. Names of possible
victims and hypothesizes of what may have happened to them
were thrown through the air like the streamers in the gym
at the fall sports pep rally only half an hour beforehand.
One sophomore girl told her friend that the combination
of stretchers, slow movement, and the ABC News helicopter
buzzing overhead were signs of the worst possibility regarding
the victims' fate. Her friend disagreed. Wild assumptions
of life and death were passed through the staircase crowd
with lightening speed, none of them true.
Amid
the rampant rumor, one senior jogged toward the staircase
crowd from the faculty parking lot. Upon seeing the dozens
of anxious, information-quenched faces piled onto the stairs,
he let us all know that he knew what had happened. Our interest
was easily piqued and a few people asked the senior for
details. He happily obliged with facts that, as the truth
of the tragedy came to light later in the day, were accurate.
Within
seconds, the senior became a Paul Revere of sorts, bearing
the bad news. He watched as our faces grew painful with
the news that he gave us and then moved on to a new group
of students. Those who he had told in turn told others.
And it spread. These students, nurtured by Grief Television
and a media obsessed with sharing sadness for profit, simply
could not help but become givers and receivers of information,
morbid messengers who felt the need to share their common
anguish with others. They, like almost any adult in a similar
situation, turned into Harvey Burns.
Copyright © 2000 Gary
Baum All Rights Reserved
Gary
Baum is sixteen-years-old and currently attends Calabasas
High School in Southern California. He writes a weekly
manifesto on media, politics, and culture on the Internet
and is currently the Editor-In-Chief of his high school
newspaper, the Calabasas Courier.
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