Posted on 07/26/2012 1:08:18 AM PDT by Rummyfan
I feel awful about what happened in Colorado, but can we stop the hugging and the teddy bears? Just as society can become inured to violence, it can also become inured to sentiment. There is nothing so hackneyed in the world of photojournalism as pictures of the hugging and the shrines with candles and teddy bears after a tragedy, with a piano softly trilling in the background.
This accomplishes nothing. If you want to do something, please write a check to a good charity, a family financially harmed by the shooting, or send flowers to a specific person.
It is also not helpful to have politicians and television personalities pledging not to discuss the alleged shooter. Unlike most news, that information serves an actual purpose, such has helping us recognize warning signs in other potential mass murderers in the future.
Only people who are themselves obsessed with being famous could imagine that any kind of fame -- even infamy -- is some kind of a reward. Thus, President Barack Obama and MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, among others, have vowed to punish the suspect by not mentioning his name.
If only we had thought of that with Adolf Hitler! Apparently, it wasn't Hitler's twisted Darwinian "master race" philosophy that led to the Holocaust. He just wanted to get his name in the paper. Say anything you want about how much I hate Jews -- just spell my name right!
This is the apotheosis of the "Jersey Shore" mentality.
(Excerpt) Read more at anncoulter.com ...
Why doesn’t she shut up and let people hug? What a petty thing to pick on. Oh, wait...they’re not gay.
I sometimes think the media persists in broad and extended coverage of the aftermaths of such events so as to bring viewers to a level of subconscious sharing of guilt because as fellow human beings, we all bear some responsibility in what has happened.
This kind of coverage doesn’t necessarily facilitate a healing process as much as it tries, however enthusiastically, to develop a particular emotional connection with both the victims and the perpetrator.
Ann, I know you’re not anti-love or pro-hate...Some people would rather just feel than be brave enough to think and it’s not as though you can’t do both.
I agree to a degree with the point she makes, but not how she makes it.
I have an issue with the flag at half mast. In WWII we had a man killed every single minute for an entire day during the Normandy invasion, but we didn’t have the flag at half mast.
I think she has a point. Where I live, whenever someone dies (I guess) in a car accident, we have the usual makeshift memorials. They linger there for years, flowers turned to weeds, teddy bears turned to hideous little remnants of themselves. It can be really unsettling after a while.
Former U.S. senator Christopher Dodd, now head of the Motion Picture Association of America, instantly came out for gun restrictions in response to the Colorado shooting.Hmmm.. Just like his vile, stinking daddy who based GCA 68 on Nazi gun control laws.
Is Coulter still writing? I thought she dropped off a cliff and into the tank of obscurity.
I guess she is still writing. She may as well drop off a cliff since there is nothing she can do that will ever make me read a word she says again.
She is so yesterday, and no longer do many here find her funny, or even worth listening to. But I do notice that her pimps abound trying to revive what she lost with her after-birther comments and her support of Myth.
Here next book will be purchased by RINO’s.
I notice that the calls for pictures to be posted and there being 200-300 posts for on eof her articles is long gone.
I wonder if she still dates Bill Maher, yes that Bill Maher.
She still has a man’s neck with that Adams apple.
So now you post pictures of her that appear as if she is stripping, interesting, but no one here cares any more.....
She stole this from Laz.
—I sometimes think the media persists in broad and extended coverage of the aftermaths —
It’s one of the things I gladly miss since dumping TV in 1997. That kind of stuff is not news. It is voyeurism and gossip.
I got chastised by a liberal acquaintance for not caring about what’s happening at Penn State. Why should I? There are worse travesties going on all over the country and world. The only reason everyone “cares” about Penn State is that it is what is being reported.
If I had children attending there or thinking about attending, I’m be interested. But I would then make the decisions I need to make and move on. The only thing that would have made this a bigger story than me is if the guy had been found not guilty. I’d want to know why everyone was so sure he was if a jury decided he wasn’t. But that didn’t happen. End of story.
Same with this. I know nobody in Colorado and a lot more people were killed in car accidents that same day. Sure, I want to know it actually happened, with whatever particulars there are, but the next day it is yesterday’s news.
When the jury reaches its verdict, it will be news to me that day too. But the day after that it will be “yesterday’s news”.
Dumping tv sure simplified my life...
The press falls back on tacky sentimentality and journalistic cliches because they’re lazy and vain. Asking any deep questions, probing for any real truth takes work. It’s far easier to sell ad time with trite pictures of makeshift memorials. Besides, if the pictures are maudlin enough, someone is bound to compare them to Joe Rosenthal’s shot of Marines on Suribachi, and that can be a career-maker for a photographer.
Suffice it to say that there is little concern for the victims — alive or dead — except as vehicles for self-promotion, teary-eyed career enhancers.
I totally agree - it is amazing what I used to think I *had* to know and now I am content to scan the headlines and read what I choose... I had about a week of “news” withdrawals - now I don’t even think about it!!! I highly recommend removing the TV (or, as we do, just use it for DVD/ netflix movies). I feel much calmer somehow :)
Ol’ Andrew is still scrawny, I see...
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