The Roanoke Shooting Belongs on the Front Page, Images and All

[Karmadillo]

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/the-ny-daily-news-is-a-disgrace-but-those-images-b.html

The Roanoke Shooting Belongs on the Front Page, Images and All
By Shane Ryan
August 27, 2015 | 9:23am

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Why am I glad that the images of Parker facing down the barrel of a gun made the front page? Because, sensational journalism aside, actually watching the sickening footage of a terrified young woman being murdered by a psychopath may actually get a point across. Maybe it will stop the willful ignorance, and the ridiculous cycle of superficial recovery that ends with finding hope and meaning in something that is both hopeless and meaningless. Maybe it will wake us up to the pain that we cause each other, and the changes we desperately need to make.

Let’s go back to Sandy Hook. Imagine if we had video footage of Adam Lanza terrorizing those 20 school kids and six adults in a fit of calculated madness. Imagine you could see the panic on the children’s faces as they tried to flee, only to be cut down and murdered by a raging lunatic with a Bushmaster rifle. Imagine you could watch the teachers desperately trying to barricade their students inside a classroom as Lanza paced the hallways, searching for new victims. If we had seen it happen, rather than reading about it, maybe it would have made a difference in Washington.

But there was no video, and what did we get instead? A country so deep in denial that a large faction has convinced themselves it didn’t happen. These are the same people that will believe any third-rate conspiracy theory about the government—who legitimately think Obama is on the verge of invading Texas, a landmass that already belongs to the United States—and they want to keep their guns so badly that they’ll pretend those kids didn’t die, as long as it saves them from examining their batshit beliefs.

Answer this: Why did the first George Bush ban news media outlets from photographing coffins of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq? Why did that ban continue under his son’s reign? The answer is that they both knew something important about American citizens—as long as you don’t shove violent death in our faces, we’re too happy to look away. We’ve taken our human capacity for empathy and abstract reasoning and shoved it back toward dark pre-history, when we were uncaring animals. If you don’t show the dead people, the Bushes knew, the living won’t care. At least not enough to matter.

And believe me, we’re all picking up the message—especially young people. College kids on the right won’t read books that challenge their beliefs. College kids on the left are eagerly censoring speech that makes them uncomfortable. Even the Washington Post can write words like these with a straight face:

If we’ve learned anything from this incident, it’s that we do have a choice. We can click pause. We can turn off auto-play. We can, as many others have done, encourage people not to look. Counterspeech is what should be restoring our faith in humanity today.

Avoidance, somehow, has become heroic—as though depriving a dead man of attention is a panacea that will stop future tragedy in its tracks. It’s a wonderful fantasy, conjured up by clueless, over-privileged liberals who have no idea how the world works, and the best part is that in order to participate, all you have to do is bravely avert your gaze. How easy!

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