By the ruthlessly Darwinian laws of modern American media, the members of Heaven's Gate get to die twice. Once when they left their temporal bodies hoping to link up with a UFO lurking behind Hale-Bopp. Then again as America's high-speed, techno-driven news organizations - plagued by attention deficit disorder - leave the story behind.
In the eyes of America's media, the Heaven's Gate tragedy lasted less than a week. It will sputter on a while, as major papers flesh out their Pulitzer entry packages and the stray Heaven's Gate refugee or bereaved family member surfaces. But to all intents and purposes, the Heaven's Gate cult passed away as a major story somewhere between Monday's newscasts and Tuesday's morning papers and talk shows. Soon, there'll be few traces of these lost souls anywhere.
Technology drives modern media, especially broadcasting, a news culture on speed. TV and its insatiable hunger for fresh imagery, vital to keeping any story alive, now drive most news. The Simpson trial continued so intensely for so long in part because there was daily video to fuel it. The members of Heaven's Gate left video and Web imagery behind, and the story caught fire.
But there isn't any more.
One of the eeriest things about these deaths is how successful the cultists were in their wish to leave this world far behind. They seem to have vanished like ghosts. Their own testimony and their families' and friends' recollections failed to bring them back to life, to explain their beliefs, or to make their journeys comprehensible.
Even with all those reporters, cable channels, Web sites and newspaper reporters, it's almost impossible to grab onto a single one of these people.
By Tuesday, none of the three networks were leading their morning news with the mass suicide. New images - storms all across the country - were everywhere. And The New York Times officially signalled the end of its front-page coverage with a small front page box headlined: "Inquiry Winds Down In Deaths of Cultists."
Translation: We have nothing more to say about it. There will be some giant Sunday wrap-ups in a week or two, and some of the monthly slicks will check in with a few forgotten kernels and perspectives. Then, as they wished, the members of Heaven's Gate will float off into space along with the comet they'd been waiting for.
Despite the early and hysterical reports linking the Web to the cult, this time the phobia didn't take hold. Even the ever-opportunistic politicians were strangely silent. Nobody called for hearings or introduced cult-protection-from-the-Net legislation. Americans and their media seem more frightened of sex and pornography than even brainwashing and death.
The emerging middle media seemed to temper the expected hysteria. CNN was repeatedly skipping over to its own interactive Web site. The LA Times and NY Times were linking stories to theirs, and NBC and MSNBC were trading footage all day. On MSNBC, actual young people who knew the Web were covering the story and talking about it intelligently. It was a shock.
The title of Most Clueless, Irresponsible, and Mediaphobic News Organization now seems to belong to Rupert Murdoch's new Fox News, which ran "computer cult" stories all over the country all weekend, along with countless alarmist accounts of how America's children need to be protected. Fox News, unsurprisingly, doesn't link to Web sites.
Otherwise, the big media news was that a turning point seemed to have been reached in the old information culture's portrayal of the new. Dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age, there were signs that the interactivity journalism has so fiercely resisted - genuine communication with readers and viewers - just might be their salvation. And ours.
But for now, the 39 dead people who belonged to Heaven's Gate are largely gone from view, along with the increasingly sporadic coverage of them. Neither new or old media could ever get a grip on who they were or why they did what they did. On the Web, the suicide evoked strong and varying feelings. "What are you smoking?" emailed Jason. "How can you even suggest that I have anything in common with these wackos? They are not part of our culture in any sense of the word."
But Sandy wrote that she had been deeply touched by the Heaven's Gate deaths. "They were a part of this community. I can't relate to them, but I can't orphan them either."
But orphaned they are and will be. Nobody is lining up to be associated with the departed members of Heaven's Gate. And like the short-lived media frenzy they inspired, they seem to have left nothing behind but some digital tracks on the remote reaches of the World Wide Web.
