It was clear to me that we had passed some sort of milestone as a culture (or, as I prefer to think of it, an anti-culture) in January when the radio station I was listening to announced that it was interrupting its regularly scheduled broadcast to bring me a special bulletin—on the Tonya Harding affair. The words that used to presage grave international crises, wars, revolutions, and assassinations, the words whose special kick for the last forty years has come from the knowledge that they might at any time herald the imminent end of the human race now signified that somebody in Portland, Oregon, was reporting that it looked as if Jeff Gillooly was going to testify that his ex-wife, Tonya Harding, had been in on the plot to maim her skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan, from the beginning.

Big news, clearly. More than two thirds of Americans surveyed in a CBS poll professed to think that the media spent too much time on the Tonya Harding story, but that answer is likely to be an artifact, a result of the guilt people feel for taking too much interest in it. They imagine that the serious people they want to appear as in the eyes of others would think that too much time was spent on it. I am more inclined to believe in the judgment of editors and producers that this is what people wanted to hear about. CNNwas also criticized for broadcasting live the trial of