Littleton, Earshot and lots of flaming

I don't have time to follow the newsgroup regularly anymore
unfortunately, but I dropped in yesterday to skim the responses to the
banning of Earshot, and was driven a bit nuts so I decided to flame to
clear my brain a little bit.  I haven't even come close to reading
every post on the subject, just the few from the posters I tend to
like and skimming the threads they responded to, so I probably missed
lots of major points, but what the hell, it's usenet, right?

What, exactly, are we supposed to be mourning in the Littleton
killings?  I have heard lots of sentimental claptrap about the tragedy
of lives cut short.  If that's a reason to pull an episode and cause a
weeklong nationwide ruckus, we should be doing it every week.  In
1995, 1700 children aged 16 or younger were murdered (source, fbi
uniform crime report, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/Cius_97/Welcome.pdf).  In
1996, 1500.  In 1997, 1300.  Even at the 1997 rate, that's 25 children
a week being murdered (and those are only the cases identified as such
by the FBI, not including negligent death).  That is close to double
the number killed in Littleton.  Every week.  Where are their 5000
person funerals?  Where is their TV coverage?  Why do we not honor
them?

In 1993, the Chicago Tribune ran a series where they documented the
murder of every child under 15 in the Chicago
area. (http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/ws/0,1246,18681,00.html)
By the end of the year, that was 65 children.  By 1998, one third of
those killers were already
free. (http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/ws/item/0,1267,18681-18664-18666,00.html)
I thought this was a great effort, because it made people think about
how much grief and misery we sweep under the rug every day.  Those
children had parents who grieved every bit as much as the Littleton
parents.  They probably weren't as photogenic, they probably didn't
have the outrage of it having in a suburb, but does that make the
emotion any less?

If the tragedy was in the youth turned murderers, I refer again to the
FBI crime report - approximately 1300 murderers under 17 in 1995, 1500
in 1997.  And I'd suspect a good portion of their victims were also
children.

Basically, this is an exercise in hypocrisy.  We are mourning
Littleton because the media is telling us it's a big deal.  We ignore
inner city deaths because it doesn't even make the nightly news any
more.  Any of the reasons I've seen for honoring Littleton's deaths
apply just as well to the hundreds of children murdered each year that
get ignored by the national media.  Why should it be more of a tragedy
because it happened to photogenic, middle-class suburban folks?

Yes, I'm callous and unsympathetic.  But at least I'm consistently
callous and unsympathetic.  I go on living my life despite the fact
that people and children get murdered probably every day somewhere in
the US.  I could devote my life to trying to fix that, but I neither
have the drive nor the power to make a difference.  I'm certainly not
going to mourn something because the media tells me to.

To bring this all back to Buffy, I, of course, disagree with the
decision not to air Earshot.  I know nothing about the plot beyond the
fact that it involves a student planning a mass killing.  But I
suspect that he does not, in fact, succeed in it.  And, possibly,
Buffy and the gang find a way for helping him deal with his conflict
in a way other than killing his fellow students.  If that is the case
(and I don't know if it is), it would actually be a great episode to
air to show kids alternate ways of dealing.  If nothing else, I think
it shows how the Buffy writers have a good hand on the pulse of
American teenagers - the number of kids who have thoughts of doing
violence to their abusive classmates is legion (look at the slashdot
accounts - http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml).

And as for fears of copycat incidents because of Buffy, that's just
ridiculous.  Not that it wouldn't happen, but that it could be any
worse than devoting a full week's worth of smothering coverage to the
incident.  I have heard that there have been many bomb scares
throughout the U.S. already - I don't see how Buffy could have made it
any worse.  Kids now realize that if they kill their classmates,
they're going to get way more than their 15 minutes of fame - it could
be a whole week's worth!  What better reward for the kid who's been
ignored and mocked all his life?

Okay.  I feel a little better now.  Let the flaming commence.
--
Eric Nehrlich, who realizes, once again, why he ignores the news media
http://www.sfis.com/personal/eric