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From: Jasper
Date: 3/6/03
Time: 9:20:47 PM
Remote Name: 68.74.28.251
Kari,
What's happening to Robert Blake should surprise no one. The following is a supplement to what I wrote in another post to you about Fuhrman’s ability to influence the media….
The number one thing that drew me so heavily into the O.J. case was the issue of image assassination. I had been struggling with it since 1971 when I came home from Vietnam on emergency leave and a woman in the airport asked me how it felt to murder children.
The way people treated us depended to a great extent on what they saw and heard about us on TV or in the movies. So many of us were denied jobs because employers were afraid of our image that Congress had to give Vietnam vets “protected” status under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I was not new to stereotypes as such or the powerful influence they had over ordinary people’s attitudes and behavior toward individuals falsely categorized. As a “test subject” in a Ford Motor Company attempt to undo the Civil Rights Act of 1991 I began to see a pattern in the media that created and nurtured stereotypes in general.
The reason you see so many Catholic priests in the movies, for example, is because everyone can identify them as religious figures on sight. In addition, the icons associated with Catholicism can be used to convey a slew of instant messages. You can apply the same principle to individuals you want to put in any group for any purpose if you have access to the media.
The easiest way to guarantee that access if you are not already a media insider, like the pundits used over and over in high-profile murder cases, is to commit a “newsworthy” murder. You can’t beat a political assassination for drawing attention to yourself. But if you want the attention without paying the penalty, the way to do it is to be and insider in the covert image assassination of someone who already had the media’s attention. O.J. as a murder suspect in a gruesome double-homicide was an ideal target. By committing the murders and making it look like O.J. did it, the killer could expect to get a lot of attention – if he was an IMPORTANT FIGURE in the story.
Ever since the Bundy murders, cops, prosecutors, journalists and pundits have been trying to cash in on the stereotypes of O.J. “the killer” that made Mark Fuhrman rich and famous. Blake is the best thing going at the moment. The O.J. stereotype of a rich, controlling actor who believes he can get a way with murder on the strength of his name, is new. The formula for making money in America by way of image assignation goes all the way back to the African slave trade. You can do anything you wish to anybody if you can manipulate his image. Just look at what happened to Michel Skakel. --Jasper