Word: jonestown
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...jungle of Guyana. In the 11 days since that terrifying event, those deaths (no one will ever really be sure whether they were all suicides, or whether some drank the poison at gunpoint) have stolen the world's attention away from less exotic, less titillating news. In short, the Jonestown affair has become the most publicized spot-news event since Richard Nixon's resignation, with every form of media jumping on each set of gruesome revelations and/or body counts, screaming them out to a public drooling for more, repulsed and fascinated at the same time. Indeed, the publicity surrounding...
...PARTICULARLY interesting facet of the Jonestown affair is that it involved many of the vague, somehow threatening phenomena and mindsets that characterize fringe groups in America today. The very embodiment of this, of course, was the Rev. Jim Jones, a peculiarly American product. So many details of his bizarre life have emerged in the past week that most people are probably tired of him already, but for others the fascination, albeit morbid, remains. Here was a man who managed to combine and warp good impulses by way of a twisted psyche...
...breakdown of values that could alienate nearly 1000 people so completely that they would follow a madman to their graves. Something is lacking, something America either could not supply or those unfortunates were incapable of receiving. In addition to this perceived societal lapse, there is the uncomfortable confluence at Jonestown and its aftermath of several things that typify the culture, or lack thereof, of America...
MOST NOTICEABLE is the ridiculous position of the media in the whole affair. Television cameras have provided us with a grotesquely complete portrait of all events pre-and post-suicide in Jonestown and anywhere else the People's Temple has left its mark; in fact, the only thing missing was the main event. Nothing could be errier than watching the films broadcast last Wednesday night by NBC, when they showed the tapes Don Harris would have broadcast had he made it back alive. Therein American viewers, waiting to see Johnny Carson, were treated to the sight of a now-dead...
...sheep out there and a lot of wolves to lead them. Moonies stalk the streets, even hold semi-respectable conventions; they and countless other groups offer an identity to people alienated by a society that doesn't give a good god damn about them. And Jonestown or not, upcoming FBI investigation or not, these cults will continue to flourish...