What Rough Beast?

“I am going to say something that few people in public life will say, but most know is absolutely true: a vast aspect of our jobs today – outside of the really major decisions, as big as anything else – is coping with the media, its sheer scale, weight and constant hyperactivity. At points, it literally overwhelms.” In his final weeks as prime minister, Tony Blair addresses the problem of the media, calling it “like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits.” (Full text of remarks.) “The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by ‘impact’. Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.“

I wouldn’t say the feral beast metaphor gets right at it — until last year, most of the major news media, in this country at least, was rather well domesticated: It let Dubya lie his way through just about anything, including building a case for war in Iraq on false pretenses, with impunity. But, clearly something is broken with “this relationship between public life and media,” as Blair put it. In the midst of a conflict that’s been dragging on longer than World War II, you’re still likely to hear more about Paris Hilton’s jail travails (Prison sucks? Our criminal justice system tends to favor the wealthy? Who knew?), Don Imus’s racist bromides (A bile-spewing racist on talk radio? Wherever did they find him?), or the winner of American Idol, to take only three recent examples, than anything of use about the status of the conflict, or our actions, there. And even coverage of the horrifying tragedy at Virginia Tech, obviously a legitimate news story, descended into exploitation almost immediately (and provoked very little understanding that this level of tragedy has become virtually a daily occurrence in Iraq.) They’re just giving us what they want, I suspect the comeback is, and that’s almost assuredly true. But, still, it’d be nice to see a little more daily recognition from our major journalistic outlets that the mass media in our society performs a crucial — if not the crucial — function in informing the electorate on current events and providing the information indispensable to maintaining an active, responsive citizenry, and that other factors should come into play in their coverage than just the corporate bottom line. Update: From the press box, Slate‘s Jack Shafer cries foul.

Assassin Nation.

I’ll grant I have as much morbid curiosity as the next man, probably more, and I’ll admit to have found it interesting that — judging from his ubiquitous Youtube-suicide dump (I’m sure y’all can find it) — the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung Hui, also seems to have recently seen Oldboy (and The Killer.) That being said, I’m with the families of the deceased: It was ridiculously offensive on the part of the press scorps to give this murderous chump his much-desired fifteen minutes, even after death, and to plaster his visage all over every media outlet for 18 hours like a two-bit Travis Bickel. CNN’s clearly been trying to rectify by putting the victims on their front page at the moment, but too little, too late. I’m reminded of Sirhan Sirhan’s famous quote: “They can gas me, but I am famous. I have achieved in one day what it took Robert Kennedy all his life to do.” Please, let’s not play into these sick bastards’ games anymore. I’m sorry Cho’s life turned out to be a sad and pathetic one, but let him just be consigned to the ignominious dustbin of psycho killer history, where he belongs. He was a lonely, depressed, raging, and homicidal young man, who lost any claim to sympathy when he started randomly firing at people — We’re not going to understand him any better by throwing up his obscene posthumous vanity portraits in every nook and cranny of the national culture.

That being said, using Cho less as a poster-child for his own sick revenge fantasies and more as one for sensible gun control laws makes a little more sense to me. Now I understand that real gun control is sadly something of a non-starter in this country, and that mandatory gun safety training, for example, is the type of thing that might pay more dividends over time so long as the second amendment remains interpreted as it is. And naturally, the NRA is already ready to push back on any attempt to tie this awful incident to easy access to weaponry. But it seems abundantly clear: Whether we need a new law or just need to enforce the old ones, people who’ve already been declared certifiable by a federal judge should have a little harder time procuring two firearms than did Cho. Can we at least agree on that?

What can men do against such reckless hate?

In the deadliest act of school violence in American history, at least 33 people lie dead at Virginia Tech after what was presumably a jilted student’s bloody shooting rampage.”‘It is difficult to comprehend senseless violence on this scale,’ said Virginia’s Governor Timothy M. Kaine in a statement.“

And, as details from this story emerge, I’ve been catching up over at Medley on the recent nightmare befalling blogger Kathy Sierra, who’s been the recipient of sexually repugnant death threats as a result of her posting on, of all things, tech issues. (Not to say that posting on anything else would justify the depraved sexist bile thrown her way, but I’ve sadly come to half-expect that sort of vileness from Freepers, the uglier elements of dKos, and the like.) I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised by the disgusting misogyny pervading this latter incident — it’s sorta like people acting surprised that we’ve found a racist in our midst in Don Imus, as if bigoted old white guys in positions of power were a dwindling species or something. And, true, these two events have little or nothing to do with each other, except that I’m finding out about them at the same time. Still, I have to say, sometimes all the rage, ugliness, and despair that seems to lurk just under the brittle crust of our society is overwhelmingly disheartening. Let’s get it together, people. To go back to Auden again, we must love one another or die.

Update: Exhibit C in today’s litany of horrors, this ghastly assault on a Columbia Journalism grad student, which occurred not more than twenty blocks from here over the weekend. Sweet merciful Jesus, this is a sick, sick world sometimes. Update 2: They got him.