Please Play Dirty Laundry

Dear Programmer,

The Bill Clinton/Monica Lewisnky scandal is the biggest news item in recent history, receiving more coverage, both nationally and worldwide, than the O.J. Simpson affair. The news media, buy their own admission, are out of control, and there is a documented public backlash to the sensationalized over-reporting of the more prurient aspects of this event.

When I wrote Dirty Laundry in 1981, I thought things were bad then. Little did I realize that Western culture would escalate its feeding frenzy. The hunger of the public for the tawdry, the lascivious; the outrageous and malicious and  the rush of the news media to give it to them in abundance is indeed a cultural phenomenon. Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Evidently, time is going to prove him right. "Other people's troubles," especially if those "other people" happen to be powerful or famous already, have been elevated from simple voyeurism to blood sport-blood sport for fun and profit.

This profit-driven phenomenon has given birth to the bizarre circuses that surrounded the O.J. Simpson trial, the death of Princess Diana, and now the alleged Clinton/Lewinsky affair.

The ringmasters heretofore have been people such as Geraldo Rivera, Jenny Jones, Jerry Springer, Sally Jessy Raphael, and, of course, the publishers of the weekly tabloid newspapers.

Now, however, it seems as if everybody's in on the act--from Time magazine to The New York Times to Tom Brokaw. On almost a daily basis, reporters talk about the news media in the third person and criticize it as though they weren't a part of it. It's all getting pretty surreal.

Our cultural dirty laundry is piling up everywhere and the song, "Dirty Laundry", is more relevant now than ever. It's a hit all over again. Please put it in rotation now and watch what happens.

Don Henley
 

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