Most people have not spent as much time with their children as they have viewing the O.J. Simpson trial.
The books, the cassettes, the exercise video, the movie, the arguments over angel jewelry vs. No. 32, the tasteless Halloween masks, the tabloid picture of a topless prosecutor on a vacation with her husband, the Roger Williams concert for the jurors.It's time "inquiring minds" had a lobotomy.
We live in a strange society where we make documentaries of serial killers, movie idols out of organized crime members, authors out of political crooks and role models out of criminals who beat the system.
Just for one day, I urge you to drop down to your knees and pretend you are a child. Clear your mind of your experiences as an adult and the painful lessons you have learned. What do you see from this vantage point? Who gets all the attention? Good students? Eagle Scouts? A daddy who works and comes home each night? A gentle mom who can't bear to drop a lobster in boiling water?
There is scarcely a day goes by that parents aren't looking down the barrel of a weapon shooting guilt at them for not instilling values in their children.
You try instilling values in a child who sees a story of a crazy guy on the news who terrorizes a family at gunpoint and escapes to the Grand Canyon. With every day he eludes the law, he becomes more of a folk hero. People cheer him on when they are interviewed on TV. Fans wear T-shirts that encourage him to "go for it."
He would have shot his victims in a minute. But he got the attention of the media.
As parents, we are always hearing that gangs are kids desperate for attention. From whom? Their parents or a TV camera?
I don't know when crime went from being news to entertainment, but somehow it's made the tran-si-tion.
Society tends to worship at the shrine of the wrong heroes, and we pass it on to our kids. A rock singer graduates from the Betty Ford clinic and goes on every talk show to discuss his cure. An inspiration? He isn't even close to the kid in the next block battling his way back from leukemia.
A guy carries a football with amazing speed over equally amazing yardage, does some acting and a commercial for Hertz rental cars. Someone to emulate? How about the teacher who stays after school tutoring students in math so they can score big on their SATs and change the direction of their lives?
Blessed are the jurors in the Simpson trial. They are sequestered, and for a few hours every night don't have to listen or talk about it.