Americans have become the quintessential spectators, and this our nation has become the unholy stage of our exploitative self-referential entertainment. The inversion and subversion of reality and the annihilation of decency are complete. From the sitcom portraying reality, to reality TV which seeks to capture reality, to the exploitation of reality itself and our joy in the suffering of others, our ravenous desire for entertainment has evolved into something truly predatory.

Our unhealthy obsession with the trial of one man, Scott Peterson, has nothing to do with the reality of his crime, nor does the truth of his innocence or guilt have any real relevance to the clamoring masses except in its capacity to entertain. This trial, like the JonBenet Ramsey case before it, reflects the total inversion of entertainment as we know it. The pre-packaged, fictional, sitcom representation of reality is gone; here you will find no actors and no sets.

We dehumanize and trivialize the reality of the situation as we watch voyeuristically. Our interest in these cases lies not in the horror of the crime itself, but rather in the unreality that we create by our denial and spectatorship. We do not care about the real people in our nation who kill and are killed; we are entertained only insofar as those involved actually resemble actors. We fictionalize these horrors in our minds, so that we may live through them and be entertained by them, free of the moral implications of reality. The closer these people seem to actors, the easier it is to deny their reality, and the easier it is to gain gratification from their suffering. Through the cult of celebrity, we cling to the exploits of the rich and famous; through these gross violations of decency perpetrated in the courts and in the media, we delight in the misery of the beautiful and successful.

There are more than 12,600 murders in our nation every year, yet we ignore all that which does not offer us a pleasurable spectacle. So long as the suffering of others does not serve our sordid, selfish interests, we conveniently ignore it. We are the roaring and bloodthirsty mass audience, the dirty and soulless spectators of modernity. Are our lives so devoid of excitement and meaning that we must indulge in the pain of others at the expense of decency? Thousands of years of technological and social advance have brought us back to the Coliseum. We passively indulge in the horrors of death, denying the humanity of those we obsess over.

Shame on the media. Shame on the spectators and voyeurs who cheapen life with their greedy, selfish obsessions.