No offense, but not all the examples in the OP were scandals. Karen Ann Quinlan was the subject of a debate, not a scandal. Her parents wanted her taken off life support so the decision would be in God’s hands, but the medical staff refused, so they filed suit. That took months to resolve, during which time the story was part of the daily, or at least weekly, news cycle. It was controversial, sure; it became a benchmark in right-to-life decisions, such as Terri Schiavo’s case. But not scandalous. Baby Jessica, also not a scandal, but a riveting story for a few days. So maybe “stories” or “sagas” would be a better general term?
Yes, I specifically remember People Magazine’s end-of-year issue for 1987, where they name the “25 Most Intriguing People” of the year. One of the “people” was a composite: Donna Fawn Hahn. Even as a teenager, that didn’t sit right with me. (Yeah, I read People, but I also read Newsweek. And the daily papers, to an extent.) There were three big stories that involved women, but they were very different stories.
Donna Rice, I have little sympathy for. From what I gathered, she was a failed actress/model who was trying to marry up. And it wasn’t Gary Hart she was interested in at first; it was his friend, who was not married, and not running for President. (Don’t quote me on that bit; I could be wrong.) Anyway, that was a straight-up scandal. I wouldn’t call her a ho, but certainly a gold-digger and social climber. Jessica Hahn was not Jim Bakker’s mistress; she was assaulted by him. But the primary scandal, the one that got Bakker sent to prison, was his fraud and embezzlement. Maybe tax-dodging, too. He and his friends were playing fast and loose with the ministry donations. And it was only after that made headlines that Hahn felt safe to come forward about what happened years earlier. And Fawn Hall didn’t do anything sexual. She was Oliver North’s secretary and henchperson. She shredded documents, and I think cooked the books for him as well. She was attractive, sure, but Col. North wanted an accomplice, not a mistress.
So it kind of bugged. I mean, did anyone do a mashup of Ollie Jim Hart? “It’s the same mindset,” my mom said when I brought this up, “that arrests prostitutes and not their customers.”
Not sure what you mean by that. What was rampant was people blaming Satanic influences for a lot of problems they didn’t want to deal with. But the alleged cults did not exist, nor were there backwards-masked messages on heavy metal records. Sadly, a lot of times in the 1980s, when a teenager was showing symptoms of abuse or depression, or even just being odd in a way their parents didn’t like, the parents found it easier to blame Satan and Satan’s music than to take an objective look at the kid and themselves. TV preachers, and people like David Toma, fueled this, and had a lot of people convinced that at any moment, their son or daughter (or their neighbor’s kid) was going to murder them in their sleep because their Motley Crue record told them to.
And the McMartin daycare case was ridiculous. The parent who made the accusation was mentally ill. She accused the workers of acts that were physically impossible. And FFS, the center was in a storefront building on a public street. Anyone could walk by and look through the plate glass window all along the front. (Jeez, imagine that today!)
