Newtown Shooting
If you are not surrounded by American media all the time you may not be aware of just how...disgusting...media reaction is to the mass murder in Newtown Connecticut.
Actually, it's not really their fault: No one knows how to pretend that this incident is singular and 'unimaginably horrible'. It was imaginably horrible, because it's only a relatively short step beyond Columbine and other school shootings in the US. So there's something sickeningly slick and professional about how the tragedy is being handled: There are photos and names of the small children that died, along with grieving parents talking about how wonderful and special their dead child was (though I've noticed they often speak in the present tense about their dead children). Newscasters show downturned and concerned eyes and are shocked, shocked! about what has happened.
But no one's really shocked.
The recent and most disgusting trend is for newscasters to echo Obama's statements about "God" "calling the children home". Indeed this very morning one of the local newscasters declared that the children were "in heaven", which even if true is a disgusting thing to say: It almost exonerates our society's participation in the murders by declaring this all "God's will". And of course, the obvious implication is that nothing needs to be done because it was, after all, an act of God's will. Numerous religious and quasi-religious figures have also chimed in, trying to locate the "cause" of the incident within the scope of God's judgment due to removing prayer from school and/or society, or homosexuality. Of course, none of them have pointed to the possibility that this happened because we allowed it to happen, and allowed selfish, specialized interests to make us complacent.
In other words, if there's a God and if he's reasonably benevolent, he certainly won't intervene if we ourselves don't decide to do anything about the fundamental problem.In other words, we murdered those children, and it will keep on happening until we take responsibility and make it stop.
Actually, it's not really their fault: No one knows how to pretend that this incident is singular and 'unimaginably horrible'. It was imaginably horrible, because it's only a relatively short step beyond Columbine and other school shootings in the US. So there's something sickeningly slick and professional about how the tragedy is being handled: There are photos and names of the small children that died, along with grieving parents talking about how wonderful and special their dead child was (though I've noticed they often speak in the present tense about their dead children). Newscasters show downturned and concerned eyes and are shocked, shocked! about what has happened.
But no one's really shocked.
The recent and most disgusting trend is for newscasters to echo Obama's statements about "God" "calling the children home". Indeed this very morning one of the local newscasters declared that the children were "in heaven", which even if true is a disgusting thing to say: It almost exonerates our society's participation in the murders by declaring this all "God's will". And of course, the obvious implication is that nothing needs to be done because it was, after all, an act of God's will. Numerous religious and quasi-religious figures have also chimed in, trying to locate the "cause" of the incident within the scope of God's judgment due to removing prayer from school and/or society, or homosexuality. Of course, none of them have pointed to the possibility that this happened because we allowed it to happen, and allowed selfish, specialized interests to make us complacent.
In other words, if there's a God and if he's reasonably benevolent, he certainly won't intervene if we ourselves don't decide to do anything about the fundamental problem.In other words, we murdered those children, and it will keep on happening until we take responsibility and make it stop.
posted by Em at 8:20 PM
1 Comments:
You nailed it.
Post a Comment
<< Home