“all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us.” (Baudrillard simulacra and simulation 160)
Don’t you see that it is all a game? The Unabomber was an idiot. “At the behest of the square-jawed “make my day” Freeh, The Washington Post and The New York Times (21 September) collaborated – against their better judgment – and printed all 35,000 words of the Unabomber’s treatise, “Industrial Society and Its Future.”” (Meeks)
“against their better judgment” ?!
Hardly. I’m sure it put them in a real economic pinch. I’m sure that they only sold a couple thousand extra newspapers that day. I’m sure that it really hurt the media to ‘do the right thing’ and collaborate with the FBI to ‘catch the killer.’ I mean it is terrible to have to print something that will sell AND look like the good guy while you are doing it. The secret to the media spin is to simulate a conscious. To hold various ‘closed door’ conferences with the FBI on whether or not you should publish it. To make it seem like you are only doing this ‘for public safety reasons.’ “By keeping his manuscript under wraps – ensuring a burst of intense interest when they were finally forced to reveal its contents to the public – The New York Times and The Washington Post may have inadvertently confirmed the bomber’s theory.” (Corcoran)
Don’t you see, Ted, that the media always wins? I’m sure that in Ted’s mind the day after the Post ran its print of the manifesto their was going to be a massive revolution. Apparently Ted thought that these eloquent words would surely wake people into an angry torrent. Apparently Ted thought that he was telling us something we didn’t already know. Apparently, Ted overlooked the fact that he was using the very technology he wished to purge. Not a revolution, Ted, just your fifteen minutes of fame. The killer killed by the media… not with a bullet, but with a blanket.
“One problem with seeking celebrity as a mass murderer is that once you’re caught, it’s strictly their movie. By last night’s “film at 11,” the script that the character of Theodore Kaczynski will have to play out in public had been inscribed in concrete.” (Silberman)
One more day of printing presses and radio towers and television sets, Ted. A gigantic media orgy breeding with itself. Special news bulletins on whether ‘the media’ should or should not have published the manifesto. Maybe we should even do one of those special ‘we interrupt this program’ bulletins. Special graphics and theme song intros made with mega-computers and billions of dollars, Ted. Entire internet sites, even your own newsgroup (alt.fan.unabomber), going over trillions of miles of phone lines and optic lines and computer processors and digital bits.
“It would be beautiful to be a nihilist, if there were still a radicality — as it would be nice to be a terrorist, if death, including that of the terrorist, still had meaning…. The system is itself also nihilistic, in the sense that it has the power to pour everything, including what denies it, into indifference.” (baudrillard, simulacra and simulation 163)
How do you diffuse a mail-bomb? Why would we want to diffuse a mail-bomb, Ted? We will implode it. Absorb and smother it with love. Devour every last morsel of energy to be gained. Publish and re-publish. What is the currency of three deaths by a mail-bomb? How many minutes of coverage? How many articles? How many pictures? What is the media value of the search for the bomber? What is the media value of a terrorist manifesto? What is the media value of a terrorist?
You cashed yourself out, Ted. If you were smart you would have took up the offer for a percentage of the take.
“Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione offered a monthly column in his magazine if he would agree to cease the killings indefinitely.” (Corcoran)