{"id":6377,"date":"2011-01-14T10:39:16","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T15:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=6377"},"modified":"2012-12-26T20:08:05","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T01:08:05","slug":"why-the-media-shouldnt-be-blamed-for-the-arizona-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/cultural-correspondent\/01\/14\/why-the-media-shouldnt-be-blamed-for-the-arizona-shooting\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Media Shouldn’t Be Blamed For The Arizona Shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cDo you see that blue tree over there?\u201d the future gunman asked his friend. <\/p>\n

Last week it was the orange sky. Last house-party it was Jared disappearing upstairs to read a dictionary in an empty room. This isn\u2019t normal, Zane Gutierrez thought. This isn\u2019t sane.<\/p>\n

Jared Lee Loughner is what happens if you think the movie Inception is real. He thought that this was all a dream. That his dream world was his true reality. The real question, then, was what bed would he really wake up in?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cJared felt nothing existed but his subconscious,\u201d Zane told reporters<\/a>. \u201cThe dream world was what was real to Jared, not the day-to-day of our lives.\u201d First thing he did when he woke up in this world was jot last night\u2019s dreams down in his journal. \u201cMy favorite activity is conscience dreaming,\u201d he fantasized in a YouTube video towards the end. When the bizarre rants got even crazier.<\/p>\n

He claimed the United States government was using grammar to brainwash us. He insisted Washington shackled us with prepositional phrases and hyphens to rein in our thoughts. And he was obsessed with the Mayan prophecy that the world would end in 2012. <\/p>\n

He met Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at an open meeting back in 2007. He raised his hand and asked her, \u201cWhat is government if words have no meaning?\u201d Okaaay, Giffords thought, and delicately skipped to the next question.<\/p>\n

Loughner never forgot the snub. He became consumed by it. \u201cEver since that, he thought [Giffords] was fake,\u201d his friend Bryce Tierney recounted<\/a>. \u201cHe had something against her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you see the blue grass?\u201d Loughner asked Zane.<\/p>\n

Zane told Jared to go sleep with himself. And they went back to shooting cans outside his trailer with the 9 mm Glock.<\/p>\n

**********<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

We do this every time. It\u2019s natural. It\u2019s what separates us from Jared Lee Loughner. We jump from shock to fear to fury. We demand to know who to blame. To find a rational scapegoat to exonerate us from this most irrational of tragedies. We try to untangle the twisted fantasies of a madman and dissect what made him snap.<\/p>\n

The problem is we can\u2019t. We can\u2019t pinpoint what bloody video game, bellicose political slogan, or off-handed joke pushes a lunatic into the abyss. But that does not stop us from trying. With each youth shooting, we target a new stimulus that set him off. It\u2019s become a Rorschach test of sorts. The coping mechanism for a grieving nation that updates with the times.<\/p>\n

\"Violence<\/p>\n

After Columbine, we pinned it on gory video games and movies. Our parents took away Doom or GoldenEye for Nintendo 64. We couldn\u2019t rent Natural Born Killers from Blockbuster. After Virginia Tech, the state cracked down on gun control. We got a second opinion on mental health institutions.<\/p>\n

And now, after Tucson, we\u2019re blaming the media. We\u2019re charging 6 deaths and 14 injured to talking heads and glossy political maps. Supped up, hyper-sensationalized commentary for nudging a lunatic to the brink. The local Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik opined, \u201cI think it\u2019s time that this country take a little introspective look at the [inaudible] crap that comes out on radio and TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

The networks are. Anchors and executives each embraced their own solemn moments of catharsis over the past week. \u201cYou can\u2019t outsmart crazy,\u201d Jon Stewart demurred in the first Daily Show after the shooting, \u201cCrazy always finds a way.\u201d FOX News chief Roger Ailes chided his commentators, \u201cShut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast.\u201d MSNBC\u2019s Keith Olbermann first bitterly accused then apologized to Sarah Palin for the infamous political map with Giffords\u2019 district in cross-hairs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t blame the cross-hairs, media outlets acknowledged. We all do it. Democrats had their own map with cross-hairs over Palin\u2019s district back in 2007. The New York Post back page targeted Peyton Manning in cross-hairs the day before the shooting. If someone took a shot at Peyton Manning, the ladies on The View mused, the editors wouldn\u2019t sleep very well but wouldn\u2019t be blamed.<\/p>\n

\"NYPost<\/p>\n

If the Tucson massacre becomes a referendum on turbo-charged media, all well and good. If pundits learn saying something louder doesn\u2019t make it more right, we\u2019re better off for it. If Democrats and Republicans sit together during the State of the Union speech, if they ratchet down the campaign slogans, it\u2019s long overdue. But that\u2019s not what the morale of the Tucson story is. Mellowed out rhetoric will be an unintended legacy of the Arizona shootings. An incidental consequence of a madman\u2019s rampage.<\/p>\n

Because the media isn\u2019t too blame for the mayhem in the Safeway parking lot. To implicate American TV is to implicate the American TV viewer. FOX News, MSNBC and other polarized outlets only show us what we want to see. It’s a two-way street. Criticize FOX News\u2019 tactics but the ratings show viewers are tuning in.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a media Catch 22. As author Robert Entmant put it, \u201cTo become sophisticated citizens, Americans would need high-quality, independent journalism; but news organizations to stay in business while producing such journalism, would need an audience of sophisticated citizens.\u201d In translation, we wonder why the networks can\u2019t be more like PBS. But we don\u2019t watch PBS.<\/p>\n

**********<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

We love labels. We want to label Jared Lee Loughner as the newest, craziest mouthpiece for a seething, corn-fed White American rage. A right-wing extremist rage that exploded with Timothy McVeigh and has reared its ugly head again after years of economic malaise and a growing government. We want to, but it\u2019s wrong. Loughner loathed all government and all politicians. Giffords was simply the closest one to him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Tucson shooting is not the media\u2019s fault. It\u2019s not Sarah Palin\u2019s fault. It\u2019s Jared Lee Loughner\u2019s fault. We want to lump Loughner under any of these one-size-fits-all labels, but it is such blanket prescriptions that help these butchers slip through the cracks. To accuse the media of the massacre is to play their game. It\u2019s a convenient and easy sound byte that absolves us from the true culprit: personal responsibility. It absolves us from the fact that each of these tragedies is partly the fault of neighbors who did nothing. Guidance counselor who looked the other way.<\/p>\n

Jared Loughner isn\u2019t the first youth shooter. He sadly won\u2019t be the last. He is merely the latest warped product of lunacy, a broken home, timid neighbors, an indifferent school system, and porous gun control laws.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s another one that in hindsight was all too obvious. All the tell-tales signs were there. Quiet kid, loved Mein Kampf and quoting Nietzsche. An angry kid, who made his teachers\u2019 nervous, got suspended, and told to get a letter from a mental health doctor if he wanted to come back. If he felt like it.<\/p>\n

He came from a dysfunctional family that withdrew into itself and a shuttered up house. The irascible dad, the silent mother. Kick a soccer ball into the Loughner\u2019s backyard, neighbors sighed, and you were buying a new one. The police came by the house a couple times to check them out, but nothing stuck. Anger in the first degree isn\u2019t a punishable offense. And the delusions grew\u2026<\/p>\n

People who knew Jared Lee Loughner knew that Jared Lee Loughner was unstable. Dangerous, even. But they hoped that he would simply go away. That he would become someone else\u2019s problem. Until he became all of ours.<\/p>\n

**********<\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

\u201cDid you hear what I said?\u201d the FBI agent asked the gunman.<\/p>\n

But Loughner just sat there, looking down at his shackles. He has reportedly barely said a word since he was taken into custody. He wakes up every morning in his bunk in the Federal Correctional Institute in Phoenix without his dream book. Death penalty or life in prison, either way he will never see the blue trees again.<\/p>\n

This is his new reality.<\/p>\n

**********<\/strong><\/p>\n