The executioner's wrong

To better comprehend the US death penalty, maybe we all need to go to the movies. One scene in the tale of media mores Broadcast News depicts the hacks asking themselves whether they would consider leaving a television camera running during a state execution. It takes them mere seconds to decide that, yes sirree, they would, if it meant upping the ratings. This scene was intended as a bleak study of media callousness back in the 80s, when we thought that society had sunk as low as it was ever going to.

As evidenced this week, we couldn't have been more wrong. The 80s were about as scary as a 10 cent whirl on a kiddies' ghost train compared to our bloodcurdling present. We seem to be living in a time when, truly, anything goes. Only this could explain why nobody raised an eyebrow when Gore Vidal, the most 'fanatically anti-death penalty' of liberal commentators, declared his intention to attend a state execution at the personal invitation of the condemned man. Not to gloat, mind you, but to rage against the barbaric US legal system and weep copious liberal tears about the ultimate violation of human rights, and the inhumanity of man to man. And then submit a fat, glossy article to Vanity Fair about the whole 'haunting' experience.

As the entire Western hemisphere is only too aware, next Wednesday, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber whose actions led to the deaths of 168 men, women and children, is to be executed by lethal injection. McVeigh is allowed six witnesses, and he has asked Vidal to be one of them. It appears that McVeigh and Vidal have been cuddling up as pen pals for some time now, a little factette which I alone seem to find risible. If some frizzy-haired, Twinkie-munching Darlene from a trailer park were to start exchanging letters with a genocidal maniac on death row, then she would doubtless be dismissed as lovestruck and demented. However, Vidal is a well-bred intellectual, a liberal blue blood, so that presumably makes everything OK. Vidal also has the 'Get Out Of Morality Jail Free' card. A well-kept secret among the international intellectual community, this is a useful little gadget which enables the great and the good to slum it as 'reporters' for the sake of a front-row seat at the best show in town. Readers might recall that it was last used very effectively by Martin Amis for his 479th 'Isn't All The Porn I've been Dribbling Over Just Terrible?' article.

Few could trump Vidal's coup, though. Not even Amis got to watch a real-life snuff movie and come up smelling of righteousness. Not that Vidal has managed to fool everybody. Like Bridget Jones itching for an excuse to hit the chocolates, Vidal may have stacked up lots of v good reasons why he should be there, but the fact is that he just wants to be, otherwise he wouldn't be.

Fancier brains than mine have failed to come up with an alternative to death row that would satisfy everyone. A prison planet? A new Australia? Where the sticky end of crime is concerned, we have run out of world to deal with it. Not to mention compassion. With hundreds of mainly black and Hispanic human beings legally executed in the past-quarter century, the US is its own worst serial killer. Now that Gary Gilmore culture is enjoying a resurgence, the rubber-stamped killing fields will be enjoying more free publicity than ever.

It's not only the nut jobs holding candlelit vigils who keep death-row culture alive. It's you, me and Vidal coming over all voyeuristic and unnecessary when the opportunity arises. Vidal has compounded his liberal crime by declaring that he considers McVeigh to be 'very intelligent' (therefore sane and culpable, not in need of help?). The last low was Benetton using death-row inhabitants in its adverts for jumpers; now we have one of the world's leading progressives turning up for a lynching. What price progress?

It is not enough to argue that Vidal will be a positive presence. What makes his eyes any worthier than the next man's? Moreover, why didn't Vidal use this high-profile opportunity to refuse to attend? Why didn't he declare that killing is killing, and he could no sooner watch a man die at the hands of the state than he could stand by and observe a fatal stabbing in an alleyway? As it is, simply by attending this gruesome carnival, Vidal will be guilty of rubbishing the sanctity of life, as surely as if he was to show up wearing a funny hat and handing around a box of pre-show Maltesers. It would serve us all to remember that, following Vidal's oft-vaunted liberal principles to the logical letter, nobody should be present at the execution next Wednesday. Least of all McVeigh.

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