Bullets, Bullets, Bullets
Apr. 5th, 2009 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaSince March 29, there have been four separate mass shootings in the United States, killing a total of 31 people. There were three more in the three weeks before that.
Media critic Eric Boehlert has been pointing out since mid-March a curious pattern in the press coverage of these events:
It's getting worse. It's going to keep getting worse; there's a lot of misery around (U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, is at nearly 16%) and a lot of people out there deliberately stoking rage. Do you think it's an accident thatFriday's shooting in Binghampton, New York, targeted an immigration center, or that Saturday's shooting was an ambush of police officers by a man who apparently feared that Obama was going to seize his guns?
It's getting worse, and it's going to keep getting worse. And I have no idea what to do to make it get better.
ETA: Well, the Binghamton shooting is definitely not easily shoehorned into "nativist attacks immigrants", since the shooter was himself a recent immigrant. Though he was a victim of the current recession/depression/AUUUGH!, whichever you happen to call it.
Media critic Eric Boehlert has been pointing out since mid-March a curious pattern in the press coverage of these events:
The press now covers shooting sprees the way it covers killer tornadoes: They're one-day stories, they're acts of nature, and all people can do is try to stay out of the way.
It's getting worse. It's going to keep getting worse; there's a lot of misery around (U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, is at nearly 16%) and a lot of people out there deliberately stoking rage. Do you think it's an accident that
It's getting worse, and it's going to keep getting worse. And I have no idea what to do to make it get better.
ETA: Well, the Binghamton shooting is definitely not easily shoehorned into "nativist attacks immigrants", since the shooter was himself a recent immigrant. Though he was a victim of the current recession/depression/AUUUGH!, whichever you happen to call it.
