Virginia Tech Tragedy: A Revealing Sociological Tome
Title
Virginia Tech Tragedy: A Revealing Sociological Tome
Description
about 1 month ago by Nate Brugnone
The recent shootings at Virginia Tech are not only a tragedy at face-value, they are also a revealing tragedy on many social levels. As this story broke almost every headline across the US, and no doubt throughout much of the world, it's become apparent to me how much journalism today resembles a botch theatrical moral auction.
It's a "who can draw the most hits using the most visceral, emotive attractor" competition. First come the alligators of the shallow, murky riverbanks. These are the fat lizard spawn of necessary 24-hour news corporations -- the ones with catlike reflexes and the largest paychecks. They're bug-eyes keep a most sentinel vigil over "normalcy" amongst the crowd. Even the slightest ripple caused by a ubiquitous herbivore hoof could spell a ratings spike and a big payoff. And I'm not just going to roll over here and give them the credit of, "[in a whiny, airy Bob Saget voice] well, they just want to get us the news we need to know about. They're looking out for us." If that's the case, then I'm severely deluded as to the nature of mass media in the US and Rupert Murdock (or whomever) has a proportional messiah-complex. We know, at least considering the second statement, that this is untrue.
Covering the rest of Noah's Ark here, we come to the wolves in peacocks' feathers -- the journalists who find it necessary to employ visual aids, as if the headline, "33 College Students Slaughtered in Largest Killing Spree in US History," doesn't tweak tightly enough the heart muscles and gray matter of the soon-to-be-touched-upon emotional-parasites. "Here's a picture a bloodied boy barely clinging to life as he is carried out by fellow scholars." Blah blah blah... on & on.
Then in come the dumpster-diving raccoon collage artists, riding the coattails of those before, pasting, quoting other papers, quoting bloggers (dah!), in hopes of making a few more bucks. These things smell and are super lazy. Just look at the abundance of this type of roadkill for one week. Its prominence it staggering.
And the saddest of all, just our collective attention is turned furthest from the topic, we have monkeys parachuting into football stadiums with a sanctified howl of political co-opting. It used to annoy me to no end when someone called George Bush a monkey and blamed him for something he probably had no direct hand in, but after this ringmaster bit at VT I can say the man has no moral fiber of his own and is nothing more than the flaccid remnants of a fraternity kegger ... thus making him a monkey... er, something to that extent.
Now it feels like I'm done here with this topic, but I can feel something; some animal has been overlooked. Ah, yes. The very foundation on which all the rest of these rely: <i>Heliactin bilopha</i>, the Horned Sungem. No bird flaps its wings faster and therefore no bird is more fickle. There are over 6 billion inhabiting the globe. Each determines which flowers shall bloom next year and the year after and so on. No single bird sees itself as the essential part of this zoo as it can freely and discriminately drink nectar from wherever it may choose...
I find it odd and also telling that year after year the same flowers come into bloom. We're interesting creatures...
--
Original Source: <a href="http://dormitem.com/blog/95">http://dormitem.com/blog/95</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States</a>.
The recent shootings at Virginia Tech are not only a tragedy at face-value, they are also a revealing tragedy on many social levels. As this story broke almost every headline across the US, and no doubt throughout much of the world, it's become apparent to me how much journalism today resembles a botch theatrical moral auction.
It's a "who can draw the most hits using the most visceral, emotive attractor" competition. First come the alligators of the shallow, murky riverbanks. These are the fat lizard spawn of necessary 24-hour news corporations -- the ones with catlike reflexes and the largest paychecks. They're bug-eyes keep a most sentinel vigil over "normalcy" amongst the crowd. Even the slightest ripple caused by a ubiquitous herbivore hoof could spell a ratings spike and a big payoff. And I'm not just going to roll over here and give them the credit of, "[in a whiny, airy Bob Saget voice] well, they just want to get us the news we need to know about. They're looking out for us." If that's the case, then I'm severely deluded as to the nature of mass media in the US and Rupert Murdock (or whomever) has a proportional messiah-complex. We know, at least considering the second statement, that this is untrue.
Covering the rest of Noah's Ark here, we come to the wolves in peacocks' feathers -- the journalists who find it necessary to employ visual aids, as if the headline, "33 College Students Slaughtered in Largest Killing Spree in US History," doesn't tweak tightly enough the heart muscles and gray matter of the soon-to-be-touched-upon emotional-parasites. "Here's a picture a bloodied boy barely clinging to life as he is carried out by fellow scholars." Blah blah blah... on & on.
Then in come the dumpster-diving raccoon collage artists, riding the coattails of those before, pasting, quoting other papers, quoting bloggers (dah!), in hopes of making a few more bucks. These things smell and are super lazy. Just look at the abundance of this type of roadkill for one week. Its prominence it staggering.
And the saddest of all, just our collective attention is turned furthest from the topic, we have monkeys parachuting into football stadiums with a sanctified howl of political co-opting. It used to annoy me to no end when someone called George Bush a monkey and blamed him for something he probably had no direct hand in, but after this ringmaster bit at VT I can say the man has no moral fiber of his own and is nothing more than the flaccid remnants of a fraternity kegger ... thus making him a monkey... er, something to that extent.
Now it feels like I'm done here with this topic, but I can feel something; some animal has been overlooked. Ah, yes. The very foundation on which all the rest of these rely: <i>Heliactin bilopha</i>, the Horned Sungem. No bird flaps its wings faster and therefore no bird is more fickle. There are over 6 billion inhabiting the globe. Each determines which flowers shall bloom next year and the year after and so on. No single bird sees itself as the essential part of this zoo as it can freely and discriminately drink nectar from wherever it may choose...
I find it odd and also telling that year after year the same flowers come into bloom. We're interesting creatures...
--
Original Source: <a href="http://dormitem.com/blog/95">http://dormitem.com/blog/95</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States</a>.
Creator
Nate Brugnone
Date
2007-06-02
Contributor
Brent Jesiek
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
Language
eng
Citation
Nate Brugnone, “Virginia Tech Tragedy: A Revealing Sociological Tome,” The April 16 Archive, accessed April 20, 2024, https://www.april16archive.org/items/show/362.