Last week, NASA gave us its most supremely entertaining story since the Apollo 11 moon landing.
I’m talking, of course, about the story of “The Pampered Astronaut,” as Lisa Nowak has been dubbed. For those unaware, Nowak, a 43-year-old astronaut and mother of three, was arrested a week ago on charges of attempted murder. Her story took a turn for the shockingly bizarre when some stunning facts were revealed. First, Nowak had driven 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, Fla., to confront Colleen Shipman, who she believed was in a relationship with fellow astronaut William Oefelein. Nowak seems to have been involved in a rather one-sided “Fatal Attraction” scenario, as she herself described her relationship as being more than professional but less than romantic. Why she would go to all this trouble over such an ambiguous relationship is anyone’s guess.
Anyway, Nowak confronted Shipman in the parking lot of Orlando International Airport wearing a trenchcoat and a black wig, then attempted to pepper-spray Shipman, at which point Nowak was apprehended by police.
But it gets better. Police discovered that Nowak was in possession of a BB gun, a four-inch folding buck knife, a steel mallet, black gloves, rubber tubing, plastic garbage bags, $600 in cash and, best of all, a package of diapers.
Why diapers? So she could drive from Houston to Orlando and save time by not having to stop at a McDonalds to drop a twosie.
Well, I’d like to apologize to all of my favorite TV shows, but Lisa Nowak has single-handedly annihilated all of you in the past week. This bizarre sequence of events has got to be one of the more entertaining things to happen in quite some time, at least since that Michael Jackson court appearance when he walked with the aid of a cane due to a “spider bite.”
Seriously though, if anything, this outlandish situation has shown me once again that the lines between real life and television have become so blurred that it’s sometimes impossible to distinguish between the two.
This story is so freakishly bizarre that it almost seems like it was scripted in some way, as though all the major news channels had a pow wow and decided, “Okay, well, this “˜Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ bomb scare has played itself out … we need some new ridiculous news item to entertain people.”
In fact, the coverage of this event has been so intense that I feel so disconnected from the actual event as to believe it really is just another show. It already has a name in the media befitting of a movie title (which, remember, happened a few years ago when “The Runaway Bride” with the totally scary eyes peaced out on her wedding in Georgia), and we’ve become acquainted with the characters in much the same way.
But what does this really show about us? Well, that’s simple. Essentially, we love soft news, which any communication studies student worth his or her salt will be able to tell you with their eyes closed. Yet this sort of soft news really goes to show that now, more than ever, the vast majority of people don’t watch the news to be informed ““ we watch it to be entertained.
Look at the success of “The Daily Show” if you need further proof. Sure, it’s considered entertainment, but studies by the National Annenberg Election Survey and Julia R. Fox, a telecommunications professor at Indiana University, have shown that the program offers just as much substance in its representation of the news as actual news outlets do. In the Annenberg study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that the show actually had a better grasp on the facts behind the 2004 election than the major news outlets did. Further, Fox argues that the show may offer more humor than substance, but that regular news shows offer more hype than substance, making the two equal sources of “infotainment,” as she refers to it.
And really, that’s what the news is now ““ infotainment. With our increased apathy toward just about everything, the news outlets need some way to keep us entertained.
And what better way to do that than to jump on the craziest stories possible and give them movie-ready names?
Then again, I’m not complaining. After all, with my favorite shows delivering fairly lackluster episodes as of late, I need a “Pampered Astronaut” every now and then to keep my relationship with my TV a healthy one.
Humphrey thinks “The Pampered Astronaut” is a far better concept and title than “The Astronaut Farmer.” E-mail him at mhumphrey@media.ucla.edu or read his further musings on his new blog, “Hump Day,” at dailybruin.com.