Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The killing of Dr. George Tiller

We find ourselves swimming in media these days.

Andy Warhol was right. Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. That’s why we have Paris Hilton. And Kim Kardashian. And reality TV.

Now I suppose we are supposed to care about Jon and Kate Gosselin. I have to admit I could care less. I just wish they would go away. But I’m not naïve enough to believe that’s going to happen anytime soon. They’re
15 minutes is not up just yet. That’s because their ratings are up – way up.

No less than an authority than the “Octomom,” Nadya Suleman, is now weighing in on the parenting skills of the Gosselins. By the way, Suleman is now in line for a spot on a reality TV show of her own. I don’t know if she’s going to have hired actors doing all the work for her on that front, much as she now does at home, as well. You can’t make this stuff up.

But you can put it on TV. Or the Internet. And if you can squeeze it into 140 characters or less, it might end up on Twitter.

Someone once said television caters to the lowest common denominator.
The question then becomes, how low can we go?

I have no idea, other than this. I don’t think we’ve hit the bottom yet.
Not by a long shot.

But there are consequences to our 24-hour media world. There is a cost to being constantly plugged in.

Media outlets, this one included, now realize that while it is nice to literally have no limits to what you can put out for public consumption, the bottom line is that you have to fill up those airwaves.

Talk radio gets shriller. TV becomes more base. Newspapers veer form reporting to opinionating. I do it every day in this blog. I’m not saying it’s right. I just wonder where we’re headed, and if it’s possible to unplug from all this media, and the consequences when you don’t.

I’ll admit that some of this self-examination comes on the heels of something that happened on Sunday.

A man who opposed abortion, who professed to be “pro-life,” shot and killed a doctor who legally provided late-term abortions.

I’m not about to get into an argument about abortion. I’ll just say that I’m personally opposed. At the same time, I realize that legal abortion is the law of the land.

We just went through this argument with the visit of President Barack Obama to the Unversity of Notre Dame. The school came under withering criticism from those who believe they should not have offered that platform to the president, based on his pro-choice beliefs.

I disagreed with that position. If that makes me a bad Catholic, so be it.

I’m even more troubled by the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Our media world, saturated with cable TV, talk radio, newspaper columns, blogs and Web sites, have been filled with references to the doctor as a “mass murderer.”

He legally provided late-term abortions for women. Again I’m not here to argue the circumstances involving those abortions, and the grounds under which the women chose to abort their pregnancy and Tiller performed the procedure.

I’m worried about the heated rhetoric that surrounds this kind of issue, and the blow-torch effect the media can have in further heating up an already simmering passion.

The truth is I don’t know what was going through the head of Scott Roeder when he walked into a church in Wichita, Kan., and gunned down Dr. Tiller.

I’m still trying to get past someone who opposed abortion as murder gunning down another human being in cold blood.

And what – if any – role out media-saturated world played in that fateful decision.

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