Nuts and Nutserer: Sometimes there's a fine line between heroism and lunacy

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Though the Media Person Foundation has not yet announced its Heroes-of-the-Media award winners for June, Media Person, with his insider contacts, can slip you the names of two contenders who are shoo-ins. As you surely know, the Hero prizes are presented to honor, in the words of the foundation's charter, "individuals who have shown courage, nobility and enterprise in the pursuit of news or, failing that, have livened up a slow news day by doing something insane." Well, it's hard to think of anyone more deserving of this prestigious award than Greg Packer and Aaron Barschak.

Greg is a highway-maintenance worker from Huntington, Long Island, with a unique hobby: He gets quoted in the newspapers. Frequently. On every topic.

You know how the papers and TV news are always tossing those insipid "man-in-the-street" bits into stories ... Larda Fishkopf, a part-time camphor-ball retailer from East Quackenbush, N.J., said she'd spent three days in line waiting for the new Deepak Chopra book. "I think Deepak is deep," she said. "That's how he got his name." That sort of thing? Well, Greg Packer has been quoted as a man in the street hundreds of times. He's made all the New York papers and, thanks to the wire services, publications all over the world. In fact, wherever there's a street, there's Greg. He's the man with all the answers.

His remarkable record became known when a couple of bloggers (people who apparently do nothing but read newspapers -- just as the newspapers' own reporters and editors apparently do everything but) noticed Greg's frequent citations in the press and then The Wall Street Journal did a feature on him, making him the happiest man in North America.

According to the Journal, whenever Greg has a day off work, he heads for the big city to attend "events": concerts, ball games, fund-raisers, prayer services, demonstrations, openings, signings, celebrity gatherings -- anything reporters are sure to show up at. He then positions himself near the press corps and does his utmost to look approachable, chatty and nonviolent. They always bite.

Interestingly, the things he says to the media are completely uninteresting. He spews blandness, praise, platitudes, conventional wisdom. The media do not care.

Newsday's Sheryl McCarthy wrote three-quarters of a good column on Greg, saying his media ubiquity "suggests that man-on-the-street interviews are worthless" because seemingly "it doesn't matter whom reporters talk to, as long as they get a quote from somebody." She also came up with this on-the-money insight: "I think the reason Packer is quoted so often is that journalists hate man-on-the-street interviews. It's demeaning to have to scan a crowd of total strangers, searching for someone who looks like he or she might have something quotable to say, and won't tell you to get lost." Greg looks happy to see you.

But McCarthy then ruined everything by saying that occasionally you come across a really good quote, so that justifies MITS syndrome. But why run all the inane ones, too?

No, Man In the Street must go. Media Person has ruled, and there is no appeal. It is Greg Packer we must thank for bringing this worthless institution into question, even if it does reveal him as a pathetic exhibitionist in desperate need of attention. His sacrifice is indeed heroic.

As for Aaron Barschak, well, how can Media Person possibly heap enough praise on this admirable young lunatic? In case you've already forgotten, he's the guy who sneaked into Prince William's birthday party at Windsor Castle, causing the British security establishment almost as much angst as Jayson Blair did The New York Times.

Disguised in turban, beard and ball gown to resemble a cross-dressing Osama bin Laden, Aaron climbed over a castle wall and somehow convinced security he was an invited guest. Media Person guesses the thinking was that the real Osama bin Laden would never wear a dress due to religious restrictions, so this guy must be an eccentric school chum of the Prince. You know those wacky royals.

Aaron wasn't arrested until he'd jumped onstage and tried to do his act (he calls himself a "comedy terrorist"), which included such knee-slappers as pointing to another fake beard under his dress and exclaiming, "The real hair to the throne!"

No doubt he is now in a small cage in Guantanamo being politely questioned with the aid of electrical wires attached to his genitals, a process Media Person has been given to understand is necessary to maintain our safety here in the free world. That knowledge only points up the heroism of Aaron's exploit, which reveals the interesting duality in our nature. We want to be protected from tragedy terrorists and so we accept the helmeted folk strolling among us with machine guns and X-ray devices. But at the same time the anarchist in us loves seeing security's nose yanked. Aaron, tell them nothing!

JWR contributor Media Person -- a.k.a Lewis Grossberger -- is a columnist for Media Week. Comment by clicking here.

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