I’m avoiding hard media this week.
My television viewing consists of infomercials; Tim, the
Tool Man, reruns; and a stinking lot of the Hallmark Channel. I’m only
listening to Laugh USA, Channel 96 Sirius, and I’m only skimming Facebook
status updates.
I just can’t handle the real news. It’s horrific, graphic,
and just plain hurts my heart. I can’t do it. It’s not just the tragedy of it –
which, in so many ways, should be enough to keep me away.
It’s way more than that. It’s what we do to these sad,
tragic characters who commit these crimes.
I roll my eyes when Princess Kate’s royal bun in the oven gets
so much coverage; I wonder when life with the Kardashians makes hard news;
and I cringe when the First Lady’s fashion choices get airtime. The wisdom of
our news industry just isn’t surprising.
Nonetheless, what’s worse than all of that nonsense is what
they do to these shooters. The media we encourage and perpetuate inspects these
killers; they try to explain the lives, the issues, the neuroses, the psychoses,
the families, the friends, the educations, the employment records, the significant
others, the living arrangements, the fashion choices, and the social ineptness
of these murderers.
They explain the guns, the weapons, the clothes, the Kevlar
vests, the GPS systems, the vehicles, the computers, the maps, the cell phones,
and the schedules that these freaks used to commit their crimes.
They outline every second of the fatal events that these social
mutants perpetuated. They interview victims, victims’ families, eye-witnesses,
police officers, mayors, doctors, nurses, coroners, lawyers, judges,
psychologists, and criminal profilers.
They make available to viewers diagrams of buildings and
grounds of the areas where the shootings occurred; they show graphs of the victims’
ages and genders; they map the distances between the shooters’ homes and where
they went on rampage; and they provide a virtual timetable of every second that
lead up to the death of innocents.
Then, they furnish coverage of the funerals.
After a while, they make two-hour documentaries about these fatal,
mass shootings, and they run them in the prime-time market on major networks.
Then, those shows live in syndication. Forever.
Ultimately, who else gets that much attention? What other
individual is made into a super hero of such a distorted sort?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be Wonder Woman – only because
I watched her on television so much. Who is to say that, with a bit more of a
twist in my psyche, I wouldn’t have chosen a less wholesome character to
daydream about becoming?
Who is to say that some child right now isn’t scrutinizing this
week’s news reports with the tiny sprout of an idea – an idea that might one day
lead him to become that sad, psychotic character he sees on television?
Ultimately, evil has always been in the world. It always
will be. Simply, we live in a fallen world. That news is not new. Last week did
not suddenly bring different, fresh sin into our spheres. In truth, it is the same
old wickedness humans have lived with since Adam plucked that first fig leaf to
hide his shame.
While the sin is the same, the attention that our human iniquity
gets doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to overdose on the details of this sin;
we don’t have to anesthetize ourselves to the horror that these deaths brought.
We don’t have to prove to our children that this behavior will get them more
air time than anyone else. Anywhere. Ever.
For the unforeseen future, I’m sticking to the Hallmark
Chanel and the Bob Hope shtick. I pray others will join me, and, as Max Lucado
wrote in his December 15, “Up Words,” online devotional, “Dear Jesus,… This
Christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, [and] be born anew in us.”
