Practical Jokes Aren't Jokes At All

I have often quipped that there should be the death penalty for those who perpetrate practical jokes. I never found them funny, especially, of course, when I was the victim. The humiliation – and the rage – stayed with me a long time, maybe longer than for most.

This could be hereditary. I remember when my mother was the target of a “Candid Camera” TV stunt in a New York supermarket. The nature of it escapes me, but the crew, of course, was hoping she’d have a sense of humor and be a good sport about the whole thing. She did not. When asked if she would sign the release to allow the bit to be broadcast, she not only refused, but stamped her foot while doing so. That meant she was REALLY mad.

Many of us are rightly outraged and disappointed at the two Australian DJs who pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles calling into a hospital about the condition of the pregnant Princess Kate. They talked to a nurse, who gave them some personal medical information about the royal, and the interview was broadcast. The nurse was later found dead, an apparent suicide.

The incident is being investigated, but it’s hard to avoid what looks like the obvious conclusion that the nurse’s death was an unintended consequence of the hoax. It could be argued that the nurse must have had other emotional issues percolating inside her and that no reasonable person in that situation would have taken her own life. But how can the perpetrators of this practical joke ever be sure that it wasn’t their action that pushed this woman over the edge?

The DJs involved, who were the subject of death threats themselves, have since tearfully apologized. But the CEO of the parent company of the radio station, while (according to the Huffington Post) admitting the incident was tragic, said such jokes were a standard part of radio culture.

As a former radio broadcaster myself, that’s not a standard I’d be publicly accepting. If that’s anywhere close to true, the industry better start doing some heavy navel-gazing about now.

Romney and the Duchess

They’re still talking about it on cable news – whether Mitt Romney blew his campaign out of the water with his remark about 47 percent of Americans being dependent victims. And then there are the topless photos of Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, which have hit print in Europe.

What’s the relationship here? In Romney’s case, he thought he was speaking to a specialized audience about campaign strategy. The Duchess was just trying to get a little sun, and wasn’t playing to an audience at all, or at least, thought she wasn’t.

The price of fame keeps going up. When you’re really famous, you can run, but it’s almost impossible to hide these days. It’s a reality that those folks find themselves having to learn to deal with. And everywhere they go, whatever they say, they have to wonder whether there’s a data-gathering device nearby. And now, everyone has them. Still, the Duchess did have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and it’s hard to blame Prince William, who saw his mother essentially killed by paparazzi, for being angry.

I of course have less sympathy for Mr. Romney, who is actively seeking as much publicity as he can get. He should know by now that everything that comes out of his mouth is probably going to be within range of a smartphone – and fair game. Did he really blow his campaign up? The thing that will probably keep him viable is our woefully short attention span. We still have those debates yet.

I haven’t seen the pictures of the Duchess, but I think I’m safe in guessing that they offer no anatomical surprises, and that the world will move on.

All that said, these incidents demonstrate to me how increasingly rare safe places are for people with fame, beauty, political power or ambition, and/or money. And with cameras and microphones attached to everyone like new physical appendages, even we common folk are getting a taste of this problem.

Safe places, where we can wear as much (or as little) as we want or say what we want to say, are disappearing faster than the Brazilian rain forest – and I hope we start figuring out how to preserve them in our own lives, because famous or ordinary, we all need them.