174 lines
5.8 KiB
Plaintext
174 lines
5.8 KiB
Plaintext
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oOOOO OOOO. OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" .OOOOOO OOOOOo OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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OOOO oOOOOOOO OOOOOOO. OOOO oOOOO
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OOOO .OOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOo OOOO OOOO"
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OOOO oOOOO OOOO OOOO "OOOO. OOOO OOOOo .OOOO'
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OOOO .OOOO" OOOO OOOO OOOOoOOOO "OOOO. oOOOO
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OOOO oOOOOOOO..OOOO OOOO "OOOOOOO OOOOoOOOO"
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OOOO .OOOO"""OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOO "OOOOOOO'
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OOOO oOOOO ""OOOO OOOO "OOOO OOOOOO
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|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
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| There Ain't No Justice |
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| #47 |
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- Reflections on the Evening News -
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by Kel'anth
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[If I misquote any non-journalistically employed person in this file, I
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apologize. To the newshounds, I make no apologies.]
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It's on again, the Ten O'Clock News on 11. This Friday, November 6 of 1992.
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I sit on the couch, absorbing the troubles of the world into myself, like a
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sponge dipped in corrosive acid.
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"...carjacking..."
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The anchorwoman, announcing the story. Her voice carries that "anchorperson
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lilt." She's mildly interested. Nothing more. Coldly professional.
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"...has this message..."
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Cut to the husband of the woman who was driving the car when it was taken.
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"...just stay strong..."
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He's crying. Grown man. "Reduced" to tears, despite a lifetime of
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indoctrination, of training to be a macho-chistic man. Cut to his son.
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"I WANT MY MOM TO COME HOME!"
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Tears flow freely from the boy, like a mountain spring, a clear fountain of
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pure emotion. Pure pain. It flows through the airwaves. I drink of the
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pain, and it burns. Why can't people live together, without hate, without
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killing...
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"...another man was arrested in a similar incident..."
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Lilt. Professionalism. Artificial and cold and hard.
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"In Detroit...police officers beat a man to death with a flashlight..."
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That half-smile. That voice. Detatched. Congenially discussing cold-blooded
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murder. Inhuman.
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"...the mother of the victim wants justice."
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Cut to the mother, now.
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"...they should get the electric chair..."
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Cut back to studio. Perfect hair, lineless faces. Artificial. Mannikins.
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Dolls.
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"...a message about AIDS..."
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Interview. Cut to a boy in his teens, in a hospital bed. His eyes are half-
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closed from the effort of existence. Tubes up his nose, needles in his
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veins. An oxygen mask covers his mouth. He is nearly dead, slowly being
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strangled by a form of pneumonia affecting almost exclusively those with
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AIDS, which he got from a blood transfusion.
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"...cannot breathe without this oxygen mask..."
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Reporter. She asks questions, in her best studio voice. He answers, gasping
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for breath. Describes a near-death experience.
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"...the oxygen mask can't come off for long. The inteview is hard..."
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She continues to pose questions. Emotion rolls off her like water off a
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duck's back. Beads like rain on a well-waxed car.
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"I want kids my age to know...this is what AIDS is...they always see kids
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with AIDS when they're healthy...they don't see this..."
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Soon the interview is over. Cut back to the anchors.
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"What a brave young boy."
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The anchor speaks with a mockery of sympathy, an unbelievably thin film of
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false compassion. He'd never make an actor. Perhaps that's why the bastard
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became an anchor.
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The anchorwoman answers him in kind. A plastic woman with a plastic face. A
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plastic man with plastic hair. Plastic people wearing plastic frowns of
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concern, with all the human feeling of Mr. Potatohead.
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I feel insulted for the boy's sake. The medium demeans the message. Plastic
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people can't deliver a meaningful message without somehow flattening out
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the emotion.
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Here somes a good one. The end of the world.
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"...a one in 10,000 chance that on it's next pass, the comet will hit
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Earth..."
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Her voice breaks into a half-chuckle at one point.
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"...in the year 2136..."
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Sensationalism. Typical. And before the news they had made it sound as if
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the thing were coming tomorrow. Also typical.
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"...no, not flakes from the comet..."
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The weather. Snow flurries. It's all a joke.
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I sop up pain, over a TV camera.
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They work in and around it. They ignore it.
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Callouses. Plastic shell.
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You can tell what's inside a hard shell. The way to do it has been known
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beyond memory.
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You tap on the outside. Then you listen. You hear what you cannot see.
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Every night, a hammer taps on the shells of the anchorpeople.
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The hammer is life. The hammer is the story. It is the people they
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interview, the pain those people feel.
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I listened this night.
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You should listen too. Turn on the news tonight. See if you hear what I
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heard.
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"Tonk, tonk."
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Hollow.
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