I don't listen to talk radio a lot anymore. (I have the internet :P). But for some reason its illegal to browse and drive. So when I can't bear to listen to the Hot Chelle Rae CD I've had in my player for over a year, and there's static on Air1, I break down and turn to KFI.
This morning on my drive home from work, I turned on the radio and listened to Phil Handel.
He was talking about this
As side from being really sad to listen to, it also annoyed me, especially because Handel and Co. specialize in irreverence and sarcasm. To my "I've not listened to talk radio in a while" ears, it sounded a bit like what I would imagine an internet message board would sound like if you could hear the trolls' voices. (Not that that is an inherently bad thing, obviously it holds my attention enough to keep me awake on my way home).
But later in the day I got in the car again and this time the afternoon hosts John and Ken were talking about yet another story of a young person shooting people because he was mad.
I found their account of this story similarly distasteful. The sensationalist and defeatist attitude with which these guys discuss mass murder is really starting to bug me. Its pretty much taken for granite that this behavior is 'just a part of human nature' and 'nothing we do will change it'.
One of the two hosts even made the analogy between these incidences and reality TV stardom: The perpetrators want to show everyone what they're going through; they want to be famous for it. (I don't watch reality-TV except for the ones where they fix a house, make a wedding dress, take care of farm animals...so I'm not quite familiar with that concept.)
I don't think it's wrong to report this kind of stuff but what gets me is that these people...by their own admission...are encouraging a sociopathic mentality (that they themselves have actually IDENTIFIED!) through their manner of "reporting". If indeed these evil people are doing this to get attention, WHY THE HECK ARE WE GIVING IT TO THEM???!?!??!?!
We may indeed be doomed to live in a world where bad things happen, but we are spiritually damned if we glorify that kind of evil.
When I was in Australia (Yes I'm about to become one of those "When I was on my mission/foreign exchange/australian adventure" type of people) I got to plan the part of the trip when we visited Tasmania.
One of the places I was very interested to see was Port Arthur.
Port Arthur is a historical prison in Tasmania. You can read a bit about my visit there here.
One thing I didn't share in that post is what I learned (and didn't learn) about an incident that occurred there in 1994 that resulted in the deaths of 35 people.
I researched the historical site where this took place (On wikipedia, the port arthur website, multiple tourism sites, magazine articles, a guidebook etc).
I thought it was interesting that they said things like 'If you visit Port Arthur or the neighboring community please be respectful and don't ask the resident's about it unless they offer to tell you' but it wasn't until I visited the memorial site that Red pointed out how low-key everyone was being about it. It was respected, not sensationalized. Even though we'd read and heard about this incident from multiple sources and even though we were STANDING IN THE EXACT SPOT where it took place, we'd come across no references to the identity of the shooter or his/her motivation for the shooting, or his/her ultimate fate.
Even though there is a difference between breaking news (like what you'd hear on the news talk) and something-that-happened-twenty-years-ago, I can't help but wonder what it would be like if people like Timothy McVeigh and the Boston Marathon Bombers didn't get glamorized for the evil things they did. If they just disappeared an no one talked about their court-date or their court-sentence, their repeals or execution date.
Would people who are psychologically disturbed be as tempted to follow in their footsteps if the ego gratification wasn't there?
I can't say I think I'll ever find out the answer to that, as a society we love our celebrities (even/especially the bad ones).
There's a quote I read a while back, at the time I thought it was really cheesy and stupid because it uses turd-words one to many times, but it it keeps coming to mind:
"It's a shitty world and shit happens, but we don't have to bathe in shit."
As of today, I still don't know who was behind the shooting at Port Arthur or what the person's motivation was. Maybe someday curiosity will bite me and I'll look it up, but for now its kind of nice to know that I don't have to/need to know. There's a difference between living a sheltered lifestyle and avoiding stepping in shit.
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