American Elephants


Our Thoughts and Prayers Are With The Families of Newtown, CT by The Elephant's Child
December 14, 2012, 5:18 pm
Filed under: Politics

There are no words that suffice for senseless violence. No comfort is enough. We speak of flawed human beings and original sin, yet never associate it with the possibility of this kind of thing, but it happens, and there is no understanding. How can one understand the killing of children? There are only questions and sorrow.

2 Comments

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment

My thoughts and prayers are with them all.

One note that I want to throw out here. I am so tired of watching news coverage of events like this. Watching some of the news channels reminded me of this bit from the late comedian Richard Jeni (the relevent portion starts at 12:25).

“… where our reporters are trying make a tragedy victim cry on the air”.

I find in some quarters, in an effort to get the news out, there is such a competition to try and get that “award-winning moment” that they forget what they’re doing and why they are there.

Like

Comment by Lon Mead December 16, 2012 @ 3:17 am
Reply

These tragedies are probably impossible for the media to get right. They want to show how awful it is, and pursue the worst situations. And Richard Jeni does get it about right. They are attempting to get the award-winning moment. Yet the over-the-top coverage makes one wonder if it is not the excessive attention that attracts disturbed people to the acts they commit. It is the television coverage that transforms an evil act into an international horror show, and seems to inspire copy-cat events. Would there be terrorism if there was not the opportunity to have the drama played out on every television set in the world? We don’t get so involved in remote events for which there are no pictures.

Back in the day, when there was a dreadful event in a Communist country, the radio stations all ceased their programming and switched to just solemn music, sometimes for days. You knew something had happened, but not what. I have no answers, but the media would be well advised to seriously consider if and to what extent their customary method of coverage contributes to the commission of the act itself. Everything we do has consequences, you have to try to think them through.

Like

Comment by The Elephant's Child December 16, 2012 @ 3:33 pm


RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI


Leave a comment