A while back I was watching a baseball game on a Saturday afternoon. The game only sticks out in my memory because in the late innings some drunken idiot thought it would be a good idea to run onto the field and make an ass of himself. He probably was egged on by equally idiotic friends and he wanted his fifteen minutes. In reality, the security and the NYPD almost disemboweled him as they tackled him to the turf. He spent the night in jail and he won’t ever step foot in a stadium again.
Funny thing was, the broadcast didn’t show any of the action. They just gave a half-hearted play-by-play of the scene and a commentary about how you just can’t do that in the “post-9/11” world. They also explained the policy of not showing these idiots because they don’t want to encourage that sort of behavior.
So what’s their policy on mass murderers and their deranged manifestos?
In 1992 I had an inkling that the next presidential cycle would be about economy and technology. In 2000, I thought the next 8 years would be about the Mid East. Right now, I think the next cycle will be about the violence of our society. It’s a broad term, I know, and I think it encompasses education, racism, and equality as much as lunatic murderers.
Personally, I want to see an ’08 candidate take a stand. I wished on Thursday morning that ANY candidate or politician would have the guts stand in front of a camera, willing to put their political lives on the line, and say that NBC was out of line with the public’s interest. And, that the people who made the decision to air Cho Seung-Hui should be fired.
It’s not a freedom of the press issue. Of course they were free to show a lunatic’s manifesto. He mailed it to them, after all. But, they could’ve decided not to show it. They could’ve just said they don’t want to encourage that sort of behavior, but they didn’t. This was a ratings issue not a freedom issue.
Perhaps the public’s desire to see such lunacy is exactly the problem after all.
Somewhere in this country there might be an angry kid considering going on a murderous rampage. Now he thinks he can get his twisted manifesto on TV and go out with Forever Infamy. NBC might have invented a whole new genre or murder.
Nothing of consequence was said or done by any candidate, politician or activist. NBC is just too strong and they’re too scared to take on the mighty media machine.
In my opinion, all the candidates for ’08 are just a bunch of wimps at this point. Senator Obama included. The time to change the world was this week. I, for one, have turned the TV off.
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