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mallorys_cameraAbsolutely my last word on the Virginia Tech massacre after which I promise to shut up about it for all eternity.
I had a bad dream last night so this morning I lolled in bed, sipped coffee and watched a CNN program analyzing media trends of the week just past.
Big shoulda/shouldnotta debate (of course) concerned NBC's decision to air the killer's deranged rantings.
Steve Capus, the head of NBC's news department – an aggrieved voice and a weasely looking headshot since the gentleman himself could not be bothered to come into the studio – sniffily defended NBC's decision. I'm paraphrasing: "The practice of journalism involves making hard choices. A lot of times people don't realize this. We were under a lot of pressure from other news organizations –" dig, dig – "to release that material – the same news organizations that are criticizing us now – and we debated it for seven hours between the time we actually received the materials and the time we aired it, and anyway we didn't air it all –"
And I'm thinking: right, asshole. You're saving most of it for a May sweeps special.
And I'm also wondering how a guy manages to become the president of a network news organization without understanding the distinction between "releasing" material and "airing" material? Or was Capus merely being disingenuous?
And how schizophrenic anyway is a news organization that fires a radio host for inappropriate racial comments but then goes on to give a spree killer a national pulpit?
Now, I haven't seen the video clips myself. I assume they aired on some edition of NBC's nightly news show. I haven't watched a network nightly news show in over a decade – I'm picky about the bozos who selectively filter my information flow. From a content point of view, I suppose the most controversial part of the transcripts was the allusion to Columbine killers Klebold and Harris.
Except, see, it's not the content I worry about in these situations.
There's a kind of… mimetic (for lack of a better word) component to human behavior. I think the accelerated technological advances of the last 25m years have only amplified this tendency. It's a suggestibility akin to mass hypnosis. Individual psychosis begets collective psychosis.
I can't really articulate it very clearly, but "copycat crime" doesn't begin to describe it.
The dangerous thing would not be what Cho said but how he said it. The vacant look in the eyes, the inflexion in the voice.
I only skimmed part of the transcript online, but I could feel how psychically dangerous it was. And I'm sure it was the set-up for the nightmare I had last night, a kind of Childhood's End spin-off: the current epidemic of autism is actually a mutation, the mutants have brain neurons that code for amplitude rather than frequency and thus all human behavior, all codes of conduct, are not only incomprehensible, they're irrelevant. It was night, pitch black, and I was sitting outside a locked door, hammering – "Let me in, let me in!" – but nobody would open it. In the distance I could hear sirens and pretty soon (I knew) the autistic demons would come and slit my throat.
I had a bad dream last night so this morning I lolled in bed, sipped coffee and watched a CNN program analyzing media trends of the week just past.
Big shoulda/shouldnotta debate (of course) concerned NBC's decision to air the killer's deranged rantings.
Steve Capus, the head of NBC's news department – an aggrieved voice and a weasely looking headshot since the gentleman himself could not be bothered to come into the studio – sniffily defended NBC's decision. I'm paraphrasing: "The practice of journalism involves making hard choices. A lot of times people don't realize this. We were under a lot of pressure from other news organizations –" dig, dig – "to release that material – the same news organizations that are criticizing us now – and we debated it for seven hours between the time we actually received the materials and the time we aired it, and anyway we didn't air it all –"
And I'm thinking: right, asshole. You're saving most of it for a May sweeps special.
And I'm also wondering how a guy manages to become the president of a network news organization without understanding the distinction between "releasing" material and "airing" material? Or was Capus merely being disingenuous?
And how schizophrenic anyway is a news organization that fires a radio host for inappropriate racial comments but then goes on to give a spree killer a national pulpit?
Now, I haven't seen the video clips myself. I assume they aired on some edition of NBC's nightly news show. I haven't watched a network nightly news show in over a decade – I'm picky about the bozos who selectively filter my information flow. From a content point of view, I suppose the most controversial part of the transcripts was the allusion to Columbine killers Klebold and Harris.
Except, see, it's not the content I worry about in these situations.
There's a kind of… mimetic (for lack of a better word) component to human behavior. I think the accelerated technological advances of the last 25m years have only amplified this tendency. It's a suggestibility akin to mass hypnosis. Individual psychosis begets collective psychosis.
I can't really articulate it very clearly, but "copycat crime" doesn't begin to describe it.
The dangerous thing would not be what Cho said but how he said it. The vacant look in the eyes, the inflexion in the voice.
I only skimmed part of the transcript online, but I could feel how psychically dangerous it was. And I'm sure it was the set-up for the nightmare I had last night, a kind of Childhood's End spin-off: the current epidemic of autism is actually a mutation, the mutants have brain neurons that code for amplitude rather than frequency and thus all human behavior, all codes of conduct, are not only incomprehensible, they're irrelevant. It was night, pitch black, and I was sitting outside a locked door, hammering – "Let me in, let me in!" – but nobody would open it. In the distance I could hear sirens and pretty soon (I knew) the autistic demons would come and slit my throat.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 05:00 pm (UTC)is it that collective consciousness or something I refer to as the "hive mind" prevalent in sci fi??
no subject
Date: 2007-04-23 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 11:59 am (UTC)And yes, I get the same crawling on the skin whenever news agencies decide to have a bacchanalian over stories like this. Are they so far gone that they don't care that they are contributing to the danger?
no subject
Date: 2007-04-24 01:36 pm (UTC)