Sorry, Steven Avery: Your 15 minutes of fame/infamy has expired.
No one cares anymore — about you or about “Making a Murderer.” That was, like, so 2015. We’ve moved on to mourning David Bowie . . . at least for now.
Check back with us in a few days.
Doesn’t it seem like just yesterday when all anyone could talk about was whether Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey were railroaded by those sketchy Manitowoc cops? About all those peculiar “Fargo”-like accents? When Nancy Grace, Investigation Discovery and Fox News Channel rushed specials onto the air to blather about Avery et al. and Seth Meyers aired a (very funny) “Making a Murderer” parody on “Late Night”?
When both the documentary and its creators dominated the morning-show cycle (and appeared on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”), spurring online petitions (“Free Steven Avery!”) and even forcing the White House — THE WHITE HOUSE — to weigh in by issuing a statement that it didn’t have the authority to reverse Avery’s conviction?
When it even got to the point that Avery’s so-called “hot” defense attorneys had their 15 minutes? (Thanks, Internet, for that exercise in absurdity. Did everyone forget that this case revolves around the murder of a young woman?)
But “MAM” has vanished off the pop-culture radar screen quicker than Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 (still missing — but did you remember that?). Sure, the series is still being written about — Avery filed yet another appeal (this time to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals), and People magazine ran an interview with Avery’s bizarre on-again/off-again girlfriend — but both of these went virtually unnoticed in the wake of the Golden Globes, Bowie’s death, the NFL playoffs, “Billions” on Showtime . . . well, you get the picture.
That’s just the way it goes in America, where we’re fed a steady diet of round-the-clock cable news which, in turn, feeds into our addiction to social media (or is it the other way around?) — both of which contribute to turning interesting stories into national obsessions. That’s our culture. Remember the blue-and-black dress that wasn’t (or was it?), or even the days-old GIF of Lady Gaga brushing past Leonardo DiCaprio during the Golden Globes (“OMG!”)? Didn’t think so.
And it’s not necessarily a bad thing that we’ve moved on from the all-around-creepy “Making a Murderer” scenario, which came thisclose to turning a convicted murderer (Avery), and his convicted accomplice (Dassey), into wounded folk heroes — inherently wrong on so many levels, whatever you think of the case.
So thanks, America, for having the attention span of a flea.
Sometimes that’s a good thing.