Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Just can’t cut off Bobbitt’s fame

Scott Dickensheets

Sunday, Oct. 25, 1998 | 9:40 a.m.

Aaarrghgh! Yeeoowwch! John Wayne Bobbitt's pain must have been searing, intense, disorienting. For a moment he must have wondered what life would be like without the use of such a vital part of his body.

But did it merit a press release? Did the world need to know that on Oct. 15 sparks from a welding torch flashed in Bobbitt's eyes as he worked on his car? When a fax about the nonincident landed on my desk last week, I found its existence more curious than its contents. Why would the Northern Nevada brothel where Bobbitt tends bar bother to spin this trifle into nine paragraphs of winking PR? Did the media really need to be alerted to an injury that the once and future Leno punch line managed to treat himself?

Yes, of course; silly question. For that is Bobbitt's fate. Long ago, in a news cycle far, far away, a single instant of white-trash melodrama vaulted him into the spotlight, and now he'll live forever in the reflected flash of that swinging knife. His Severed Penis Express to Fame and Fortune may have coasted to a slow roll, but it hasn't come to a halt.

Did I say that was his fate? It's ours, too. Forget 15 minutes of fame -- nowadays we grant those shoved into the public eye a lingering 15th-and-a-half minute, a trivial-pursuit twilight in which we have to hear about every remotely "quirky" occurrence in their lives. (Joey Buttafuoco tidbits still roll in, and believe me, there ain't much worse than Buttafuoco tidbits.) I doubt Bobbitt will ever achieve the anonymity of a 16th minute, nor us a permanent break from meaningless news about him.

He didn't ask to be famous, of course, certainly not this way. And having spoken briefly with and read extensively about him, I'm not surprised fame made him squirrelly, making him a handy symbol of the tabloid geekiness of our time. There's no way he was equipped to deal with what hit him. "He's just a regular guy from Niagara Falls," says a guy who knows him.

Yes, he cooperated with his own exploitation. How could he not? Everything about our culture told Bobbitt he had to capitalize on the spotlight, that he'd be a fool not to leverage a monster payday from all this attention. (Don't quack to me about the traditional virtues of modesty and restraint; a country whose citizens sue each other at the drop of a coffee cup truly values the Big Opportunity.) In America, fame is the best thing ever. He must have actually believed that if people want your autograph, it's because they like you.

That decided, what avenues were open to him? A man of modest intelligence and few marketable skills, Bobbitt had little choice but to exploit that which first got him noticed. Porno films seemed sadly inevitable.

Alas, novelty fame is rarely as steady or lucrative as the real kind; to no one's surprise, the porn gig petered out. It was followed by increasingly marginal attempts to eke a little more mileage from the Severed Penis Express as it began running on fumes: a gimmick ministry, his first job at a brothel. Those and the subsequent mundane turns in his life have been reported by a chortling press to an amused audience, often with snappy wordplay of the "Bobbitt's shortcomings" and "everyone wants a piece of John Bobbitt" variety. (As this paper's People in the News columnist during that time, I played lead chortle).

Does it bother him? "Not really," Bobbitt says. He either doesn't grasp or isn't troubled by his freaky status. "Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I just live my everyday life,you know, and then something happens andit gets on the press. Getting a ticket ... going to court ... getting back with Lorena ..."

WHAT? Whoa, full stop. Confused silence at my end of the phone line. "HA HA HA," he chortled.

If the Severed Penis Express didn't deliver the fortune, it hasn't stinted on the fame. His grim history of domestic violence notwithstanding (Lorena viewed her chop job as severance payback for years of spousal abuse), Bobbitt's quite the draw at Kitty's. "You should see all the people who come in wanting to take pictures with him," says Bill, the brothel's PR man. But it doesn't mean they like him, only that he's famous, and if fame is the best thing ever, getting your picture taken with it is a close second. That's the nature and price of celebrity. Whether it's for a buck, an easy laugh, a snapshot, a press release, a wire story or as a topic for a column on the nature and price of celebrity, we'll always want a piece of John Bobbitt.