It was a small part of the trial. A tiny piece of a grasping-at-straws legal argument that was offensive at worst and cringe-worthy at best.
And yet, the assertion made by defense attorneys during last week’s Erin Andrews trial might have the most lasting impact of any item from a courtroom drama that was salacious but hardly groundbreaking. That’s because it might shed more light on our societal values than even the fact somebody would alter a hotel-room peephole to surreptitiously record video of a minor celebrity.
Andrews, a sportscaster and co-host of “Dancing With the Stars,” was videotaped several years ago while nude in her hotel room. Michael David Barrett had tricked hotel management into giving him the room next to Andrews, and he altered the peephole so he could record her. Video soon appeared on the Internet, and a scandal was born.
Barrett was sentenced to 30 months in prison, served 27 months, and now is living in his father’s basement in Portland. Andrews filed a civil suit against Barrett and against West End Hotel Partners, which owns and operates the hotel in Nashville, Tenn. Last week, a jury awarded her $28 million from the hotel operators and another $27 million from Barrett.
It was the kind of trial that is made for the Internet age, with voyeurism and a hint of sex. So, while the Twitterverse is debating whether or not the award was excessive — and whether or not Andrews will ever see much of it — the most accusatory revelation of the conflict goes largely overlooked.
Offensive questioning
You see, during the defense portion of the trial, lawyers suggested that Andrews’ career was actually helped by the incident. Attorney Marc Dedman pointed out that Andrews has moved from ESPN to Fox, and that she has landed a series of endorsement deals in the wake of the video, which garnered some 16 million views.
It is this frat-boy line of questioning that lends some insight to our values. The implication is that Andrews benefited from infamy, has used it to boost her career, and is actually better off for having her naked body broadcast to the world through no choice of her own. Never mind her tear-filled testimony that, “I feel so ashamed,” or her father’s testimony that, “She’s afraid. She’s afraid of crowds, afraid of people. She doesn’t trust anymore.”
The fact somebody would suggest that Andrews is better off for this violation — and actually use that assertion as a legal defense — is appalling. And in a roundabout way we can blame the Kardashians. We can blame a presidential candidate whose primary qualification for the job is, “I’m really rich.” We can blame a culture that has come to measure success by the metrics of fame and wealth rather than content of character.
It is a culture that all too frequently celebrates shallowness at the expense of depth and embraces phoniness at the expense of substance. How else do you explain reality TV? How else do you explain a reality TV star becoming a presidential front-runner? Whether or not Andrews’ career has thrived since the world saw her naked does nothing to mitigate the intimate violation of her privacy and should not be used as a defense.
Author Tom Wolfe once described the 1970s as the “Me” decade, a time in which the social consciousness of previous years was lost in a quest for individual satisfaction and self-promotion. Yet this was long before “Me! Me! Me!” generation. Before selfies and Instagram and Facebook “likes” serving as a measure of self-worth. Before an ethos that suggests fame is preferable to anonymity, regardless of the black mark it might leave upon your soul or the cost it might extract from your dignity.
Dedman was tapping into this culture during his line of questioning, hoping that a jury might buy it as he tacitly acknowledged that his clients had no reasonable defense. The jurors didn’t buy the notion that no cost is too high for the purchasing of fame. We all would be poorer if they had.
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