A story I just read for Redivider reminded me of the car chase I watched Monday on the plane. Yes, there was a high-speed car chase, and even cooler, JetBlue's DirecTV service provided me half an hour of live coverage. Anybody else see this? If you missed it--here's the thing--you missed it. Good thing going, and then the final crash, and it's gone from the news. When I searched Monday evening for the aftermath, it wasn't even at the top of Google results for "Dallas car chase."
Granted, Bernie Madoff's 150-year sentence to prison is pretty spectacular and news-worthy. But now I get the appeal of the car chase. Forget Survivor and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition--a car chase is reality TV, full-out. My eyes were glued mid-drive; news stations have no control over what happens, no way to manipulate. Victory, however fleeting, rests on the wheels of the criminal evading the police.
So what did this chase entail (since you didn't read about it)? A routine traffic stop where the car in question kept rolling. Rumors of narcotics, which are enough, according to law, to allow police this type of pursuit. Having a burned-out taillight will not get you national exposure, because the cops can't lay chase.
Because satellite signals are spotty high above the clouds, we lost the signal just after 2:30 p.m. The chase began at one; I tuned in at two. And in those three minutes of black screen, the chase on which all my attention (and several other back-of-seat TVs I could see, plus my neighbor's curiosity) was fixed came to a halt. Ironically, it stopped because the runaway car did not. Tearing through a red light, he met with the front end of a law-abiding pickup truck.
I felt cheated of that moment to which all the build-up led: the careening helicopter shots, the narrow corridors of cars squeezed through. And then cheated once more, when the Jaws of Life came out, and the news anchor advised us it might be graphic. "We'll return later with edited video," he said, but Madoff was too hot for the story to come back. When your fifteen minutes are up--extended here to an hour and a half--the world moves on. But how cool while it's happening, right? It inspired conversations, memories of the legendary OJ chase... and then nothing else.
Update: A similar Dallas chase in July 2007 lasted an hour and was attributed to a pet-lover rushing his ailing cat to the hospital. He said he hoped the police would just quit tailing him.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
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2 comments:
I read the article about the cat guy (how could I resist?). Looks like he's on the verge of becoming an animal collector, if he isn't considered one already. This is an actual psychiatric condition in which the person collects a huge number of animals, is overly attached to all of them (so if animal control comes and tries to take a few, he doesn't want to give up a single one), yet doesn't really take good care of any of the animals (probably because he has so many). It's something we're taught to look out for from early on, because it's a serious problem both for the people and the animals involved. And now you've had your fun animal related fact for the day!
Sounds like Grey Gardens.
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