"Once the human tragedy has been completed, it gets turned over to the journalists to banalize into entertainment...."

"... I think of the McCarthy era as inaugurating the postwar triumph of gossip as the unifying credo of the world’s oldest democratic republic. In Gossip We Trust. Gossip as gospel, the national faith. McCarthyism as the beginning not just of serious politics but of serious everything as entertainment to amuse the mass audience. McCarthyism as the first postwar flowering of the American unthinking that is now everywhere. McCarthy was never in the Communist business; if nobody else knew that, he did. The show-trial aspect of McCarthy’s patriotic crusade was merely its theatrical form. Having cameras view it just gave it the false authenticity of real life. McCarthy understood better than any American politician before him that people whose job was to legislate could do far better for themselves by performing; McCarthy understood the entertainment value of disgrace and how to feed the pleasures of paranoia. He took us back to our origins, back to the seventeenth century and the stocks. That’s how the country began: moral disgrace as public entertainment. McCarthy was an impresario, and the wilder the views, the more outrageous the charges, the greater the disorientation and the better the all-around fun."

From "I Married a Communist" by Philip Roth.

ADDED: From the Wikipedia article "Stocks": 

Public punishment in the stocks was a common occurrence from around 1500 until at least 1748. The stocks were especially popular among the early American Puritans, who frequently employed the stocks for punishing the "lower class." In the American colonies, the stocks were also used, not only for punishment, but as a means of restraining individuals awaiting trial. The offender would be exposed to whatever treatment those who passed by could imagine. This could include tickling of the feet. As noted by the New York Times in an article dated November 13, 1887, "Gone, too, are the parish stocks, in which offenders against public morality formerly sat imprisoned, with their legs held fast beneath a heavy wooden yoke, while sundry small but fiendish boys improved the occasion by deliberately pulling off their shoes and tickling the soles of their defenseless feet."

In the book of Job, we see God accused of using stocks: "He puts my feet in the stocks, he watches all my paths."

Job comes up in "I Married a Communist" — at the end of a rant about betrayal:

Professionals who’ve spent their energy teaching masterpieces, the few of us still engrossed by literature’s scrutiny of things, have no excuse for finding betrayal anywhere but at the heart of history. History from top to bottom. World history, family history, personal history. It’s a very big subject, betrayal. Just think of the Bible. What’s that book about? The master story situation of the Bible is betrayal. Adam—betrayed. Esau—betrayed. The Shechemites—betrayed. Judah—betrayed. Joseph—betrayed. Moses—betrayed. Samson—betrayed. Samuel—betrayed. David—betrayed. Uriah—betrayed. Job—betrayed. Job betrayed by whom? By none other than God himself. And don’t forget the betrayal of God. God betrayed. Betrayed by our ancestors at every turn.