Television

TV Screens
Dixie Palms Motel
St. George, Utah
April 08

"The FBI," she said, "look in on houses to see if people are committing any crimes. They do it through the TV, you know." She lay back on the bed and the room was spinning. It was like the motel room she had gone to with a rich man. She had felt so alive that night because the plastic was so dead.

April Baker
excerpt from The Motel Room
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

After I left Mountain Meadows, I drove back to St. George and checked into a room at The Dixie Palms Motel. I turned on the TV and found the story about the FBI raid on the polygamist compound in El Dorado, Texas on Larry King Live. The same footage played over and over again with victims telling their lurid stories, newscasters with menacing snarls and women who claimed they liked being one of many wives. I sat on the bed and shot digital photos of the TV screen and thought about how everything felt all at once sleazy: television is sleazy, the FBI is sleazy, polygamists are sleazy, newscasters are sleazy, victims are sleazy, motel rooms are sleazy, Utah is sleazy, Texas is sleazy, America is sleazy, religion is sleazy, cameras are sleazy, even I am sleazy.