Coverage a Senseless Tragedy in Itself

If you dare to raise questions about any of this, you’re immediately branded a heartless, soulless, mindless cretin. However . . .

Now that John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife and sister-in-law have been buried at sea on live television--delivered there Thursday like heads of state and eulogized by somber celebrity anchors against a medley of chopper pictures from the heavens and file footage of a toddling John-John--doesn’t this set a precedent?

The thunderous homage to the late Princess Diana notwithstanding, these are really uncharted waters.

It’s a grim thought, and of course, here’s hoping it doesn’t happen. But holy hypothetical! What if Ron Reagan Jr.--son and namesake of another beloved president--should die as prematurely as John F. Kennedy Jr., and his family would want to have him buried at sea too?

Would this spectacle recur? Would we go through this again . . . and again, with the cameras, commentators and choppers on call as the occasion demands? Or would the media say no, because the Reagan family’s record of suffering doesn’t match the Kennedys?

In other words, this is all a bit crazy and hysterical, don’t you think? To say nothing of manipulative.

Television had already explored to the hilt the Kennedys’ perilous, oft-lethal encounters with flying. Now, on to something else.

The sea.

“And John Kennedy Jr. goes down to the sea for the last time,” concluded a Thursday profile on CNN set to melancholy music. To music.

Because their staffs have to shut their yaps once in a while, some of the networks on Thursday also reran an audiotape of John F. Kennedy Sr.’s monologue about humankind coming from the sea and “going back from whence we came.” In case you didn’t catch the irony--the adult son’s death and burial now giving meaning to the father’s words--MSNBC delivered it with a sledgehammer by simultaneously showing grainy footage of 2-year-old John-John at the wheel of a boat.

If only some of these TV people would go back from whence they came, for this was one more cheap emotional whirlpool in a sea of them.

Moments later, ever-present New York Daily News columnist Mike Barnicle, a neighbor and friend of the Kennedys--as many reporting and commenting on this story on TV appear to be--said he was sure that JFK Jr.’s uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, the senator from Massachusetts, could “hear his family’s history on the wind.” That is if he could hear anything above the roar of inflated rhetoric.

And you wonder why they call the Kennedys mythic.

The facts are that John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, died tragically, delivering an unthinkable blow to their families and causing much of the nation to feel very sad about the loss of this trio of beautiful, accomplished 30-somethings.

It’s the shameless litter of the surrounding coverage that’s so maddening.

That includes TV reporters repeatedly asking the obligatory question: “Who will carry the Kennedy banner now?” As if JFK Jr. had done that. And as if his uncle’s senatorial career were chopped liver.

It also includes TV dwelling on long lines of bouquet-bearing mourners sadly queuing up in long lines outside Kennedy’s residence in New York’s TriBeCa district. As if they represented mainstream America.

On Thursday, CNN read the signs some had brought with them, including: “John-John, God has voted you president in heaven.” Now there’s perspective.

You look at these long faces and see, in essence, the same worshipful pilgrims who travel annually to Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis to tearfully light candles on the anniversary of his death. The same ones who continue to hang out at the graves of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. The ones who stand outside and shout at stars arriving for the Emmy and Oscar ceremonies. The ones who because of some internal void find meaning and personal expression only through the lives of celebrities, instead of living fully themselves.

If Kennedy was as grounded and straight-thinking as many now say he was, he would have despised all of this. That includes the relentless fawning over his image.

CNN’s star reporter, Christiane Amanpour, who also works for CBS, was on “60 Minutes” Sunday, being interviewed by Mike Wallace about her close friendship with JFK Jr. since college. And her easy, relaxed way of recalling him as someone she adored, without elevating him to divinity, was not only full of intimate insights, but also departed refreshingly from the swollen verbiage of many other newscasters.

Yet her appearance also symbolized a media phenomenon of the last couple of decades that may explain some of TV’s detail-by-detail obsession with JFK Jr. as a person who transcends his family’s long litany of personal tragedies dating to World War II. One that transcends, also, the high ratings that this coverage is drawing.

Publishers and network owners have always rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty. But now, through television, has come the wealthy celebrity journalist, the Diane Sawyers, Barbara Walters, Tom Brokaws, Peter Jennings, Dan Rathers and Mike Wallaces, who find themselves covering the same VIPs they live near, socialize with and bump into at swank restaurants. In effect, they’re reporting on themselves, royalty covering royalty.

It happens even on the lower rungs, indicated by Thursday’s introduction granted Jonathan Alter, the Newsweek writer who also works for NBC and MSNBC: “You’re a journalist, but you also have friends in the Kennedy family.”

Meanwhile, the burial of the plane victims and journalistic standards continued.

“When you think of how much the Kennedy family loves the water,” a CNN anchor said gravely, “it all makes sense.” Actually, none of it makes sense.