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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Social Studies: Forget About Haves and Have-Nots. Think Do's And Do-Nots. (September 23, 2003) No feasible amount of cash assistance could save America's poverty problem. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: When Judges Should—and Should Not—Intervene In Elections (September 23, 2003) A 9-0 decisision to let California proceed with its recall would strike a blow against government by judiciary. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: Sticker Shock (September 23, 2003) A slim majority of Americans disapprove of authorizing $87 billion for Iraq. By William Schneider. Media: Bubble, Bubble (September 16, 2003) The Saudi tale—and lots of other emerging stories—could give the Bushies real trouble. By William Powers. Legal Affairs: Campaign Finance Reform: What the Court Should Do (September 16, 2003) There's no legitimate reason for restricting the election-related speech of ideological groups. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: The Indie Dudes (September 16, 2003) Tough-guy candidates share a libertarian distrust of government. By William Schneider. Wealth of Nations: The Prelude To Cancun Was Two Wasted Years (September 16, 2003) One has to ask whether the WTO process is any longer worth the effort. By Clive Crook. More from National Journal. |
Media 
The Schadenfreude Crash
The media thoroughly enjoyed destroying their movie, but in the breakup stories the glee is gone. by William Powers ..... For the last 18 months, there's been a bull market in schadenfreude. Remember how the media danced as the Enron boys paraded by in handcuffs? And surely you recall the spontaneous coast-to-coast celebration that broke out over the SEC's drubbing of Martha Stewart. Watching Ms. Perfect crash and burn was an experience so meaningful to some journalists, they were inspired to coin new words for it. The New York Times called it "blondenfreude," while the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette exulted, "Marthafreude: O, How We Love to Hate Her!" When the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez movie Gigli bombed over the summer, it was mass ecstasy in the media. Critics didn't just pan the movie, they tortured it with sadistic delight, threw it in the entertainment gas chamber and collapsed in hysteria as it died before their eyes. It wasn't enough to say this was a really bad flick; The Wall Street Journal called it the worst movie of this century. Watching all this unfold, you might have thought Gigli was not just a film, but a crime against humanity. The real crime, of course, was the beauty, wealth, talent, and unimaginably excellent sex life (or so we assumed) of the two stars. Not to mention the awful possibility that upon getting married they might find even greater bliss and produce beautiful, talented children and basically get a lot more good stuff out of life than the rest of us. This was what had to be stopped, and why we thoroughly enjoyed destroying Gigli. But lately, the thrill of schadenfreude is gone. The pleasure we once took from the misfortune of others has turned into a kind of shame. Partly, this has happened because Americans suddenly find themselves on the other end of schadenfreude, as Europeans and others around the globe reportedly enjoy the Bush administration's ongoing misery in Iraq. Some brainy power-elites have taken to denouncing schadenfreude. William Safire, writing from London last week, excoriated the "failuremongers" who trash the Iraq mission in the Euro-media, which he called "the Daily Schadenfreude." Others whom you might suspect of watching the Bush troubles and feeling just a tinge of the old schad are running around denying it. From an interview with Madeleine Albright in this week's Time magazine: Question: Bush's foreign policy started as "anything but Clinton" in almost every area—the Middle East, North Korea, China. Now events have pushed it back much closer to your approach. Do you ever succumb to schadenfreude? Albright: No, I'm much too kind and generous a person. True, Albright is speaking in code here, and her real meaning is almost certainly the opposite of what she says. But the point is, indulging in schadenfreude is no longer the media sport it was just a few months ago, not at the high end of the media, and not at the low end, either. For the latter, study the coverage of the Affleck-Lopez breakup. Here's another blow for the fab couple, and right on the heels of Gigli, too. You'd think we'd be loving every minute of it. But suddenly it turns out Ben and Jen are actually kind of gifted and terrific, and we find ourselves wishing them ... well. Now that the wedding is off, and it's been widely reported that Lopez was "devastated" and "in tears," media people have rediscovered her many merits. Here's the Associated Press this week on the reportedly jilted bride: "Jennifer Lopez is one of these celebrities that no matter what she does, whether her movies are good or bad, or whether critics like her album, her level of celebrity remains very, very high," said Ken Baker, West Coast executive editor of Us Weekly. The key to the Bronx-raised star's appeal is a mix of working-class grit and temperamental diva glamour, he added. "People, especially women, feel they can identify with her even though she's extremely wealthy," Baker said. "There's an authenticity to her, despite all the bling-bling. They think, 'I'd do the same thing.' " David Carr, who covers the media for The New York Times, says the schadenfreude cycle works in two directions, and what we're seeing now in the Affleck-Lopez story is a correction. "The rapidness with which they go from icons to piñatas can be breathtaking. But I think the same goes on the reverse side. Something bad happened, and we remembered we liked them in the first place.... Now we can dine out on that loss and feel sad for them." Like stock-market corrections, this one could be temporary. But if we really are moving out of a schadenfreude phase and into something else, the cultural implications could be huge. For instance, will the celeb mags and the tabloids have to stop running those embarrassing photos of celebrities at their worst—the paunches, the cellulite, the fashion don'ts? There could even be political consequences. It's been widely noted that a lot of really unfortunate things have happened on the watch of this president: 9/11, recession, Wall Street scandals, war in Iraq, the great blackout, and the list goes on. Presidents who presided over similarly bad times have often been blamed for them in the media, with a gleeful abandon that seemed a close cousin of schadenfreude. Think Jimmy Carter in 1980, or George H.W. Bush in 1992. Yet not many Americans seem to be taking pleasure from Bush's misfortunes, perhaps because they share them. And while the media are reporting on this administration's hard knocks, they show no signs of enjoying them. Not yet.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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