Let’s Quit All the Clowning Around With Justice, Dahling : HOWARD ROSENBERG

Send in the buffoons. . . .

Imagine it: A hypothetical black woman is arrested in a poor area for disobeying and striking a policeman. She claims the policeman was physically and verbally abusive. He denies it.

There is a trial. If convicted, the woman could go to jail. A non-conviction could be interpreted as an indictment of the policeman’s conduct.

Is the case funny? No. Do we ridicule it? No. Do we even cover it? Probably not. Minorities and the poor are generally treated differently by the media.

But what a difference a Gabor makes.

The Zsa Zsa Gabor trial was as tailor-made for the news media--television in particular--as Gabor is tailor-made for talk shows: Outrageous celebrity says outrageous things. Easily goaded. Will not shut up.

In a different way, however, some of the coverage has been just as outrageous, and also more than a bit hypocritical. Publicly, the demeanor of some of the media has been shrugs and hand-wringing: When will this absurd story ever end? However, you had the feeling that privately it was this: Please don’t let it end.

Most of all, don’t let this woman stop talking.

That was especially true on KCBS-TV Channel 2, whose numerous stories on the Gabor trial almost always have had a smirking, snickering tone, topped by a quip or raised eyebrow from an anchor that told you this was farce, a laugher, show time, and not to be taken seriously: Yes, there’s a criminal trial going on. But lighten up, it’s only Zsa Zsa, dahlings. And it’s only Beverly Hills.

At least that has been the message.

How we love our celebrities--love reading and hearing about them, love seeing them get their stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and their comeuppance on the avenue of hard knocks. The media minions understand this.

If you have watched TV stories on the Gabor trial, you have seen Gabor, before and after each session at Beverly Hills Municipal Court, being swarmed by cameras and reporters who shouted mock-serious questions and prodded her to blurt out something sensational (“You’re really comparing your trial to the Nazis in Hungary?”).

Of course, not much prodding was needed. It was like asking a hit man for a bullet, and the AK-47 of mouths complied on cue.

Yes, she was comparing her trial to Nazis in her native Hungary. Yes, she was worried about being assaulted by lesbians in jail. Yes, Paul Kramer, the Beverly Hills policeman whom she was accused of slapping, was gorgeous and dumb. Yes, yes, yes to it all.

Usually thrust at her on the run, the questions and microphones proved irresistible, as the reporters knew they would, and her replies, often tossed back on the run as if from someone trailing a feast of crumbs for the pigeons pursuing her, were deemed newsworthy merely because she said them. Zsa Zsa said what ? She’d never been better, even with Merv.

Only the dancing elephants and trapeze artists were missing.

When the defendant becomes her own circus, however, does that make the charges against her any less serious?

The charges against Gabor were: driving with an expired license, disobeying a police officer, battery on a police officer and possessing an open container of alcohol in her car. Conviction on all charges carries a maximum penalty of 18 months in jail and $3,400 in fines.

But the tone of much of the coverage did seem to diminish the weight of those charges and of Gabor’s countercharges that she was physically and verbally roughed up by Kramer. It was almost as if the bizarre presence of Gabor as the main protagonist had made the case a Hollywood fantasy from the start: It didn’t happen. Gabor was merely a harmless, babbling eccentric not to be taken seriously, and if she couldn’t be taken seriously, neither could her charges against Kramer. No one was guilty.

In feeding this aura of unreality, some of the coverage may have created an atmosphere that, in the public eye at least, almost mandated soft treatment of Gabor even if convicted.

Join us in laughing at this heroine of whimsy and in toasting her for providing us with this highly amusing interlude, the stories seemed to be saying. But when the curtain comes down, get serious. We punish criminals, not clowns.

Even when the clowns are found guilty of criminal activity.

So pat Gabor on the head and send her off to Johnny or Phil or Oprah.

And send the black woman--who hadn’t the benefit of the media playing her straight man--to jail.