By now, you've probably seen the tape of the fight between Ron Artest and the Detroit Pistons fans. Just kidding. You've seen it. You've seen it in real time, in slo-mo and--my favorite--super slo-mo. In super slo-mo, Ron Artest's $50-million arm flows into the head of the (apparently innocent) fan like a bird's feather landing lightly on a fireplug. As aesthetics, rather than street fighting, it's hard not to gape and admire. The art director at Sports Illustrated also noticed how TV's compulsion to bathe us in images, no matter the subject, had transformed the fight into something else. For...