Headlines, January 11, 2011

I am bemused. For two days the news media have spoken of nothing but the noisy murder of all those people in Arizona on Saturday.  We can all agree it was a Bad Thing.  My heart goes out to poor Gabrielle Gifford whose life is not likely to return to normal soon or ever.  A shame Christina Green, the little 9/11 child, was snuffed.  She should have had a 12th birthday.  And the only good thing about Judge Roll’s death is that it may lead to the execution of the skin-head who killed them all.
However, to pretend it is surprising that this sort of senseless mayhem is unusual in the country that brought you Columbine and the Beltway Snipers is disingenuous at best. And the sad truth is that this sort of thing goes on all the time.  In Chicago and New York and Los Angeles.  If we hear anything about these violent deaths it will be a 2-inch summary on an inside page.  After all these are brown people and they do this sort of thing all the time, but now we’re talking about white people in Tucson.
Apparently two days after the main event there were flags being flown at half mast all across the country, and President Obama said the nation is Grieving and Shocked. Why?  
Apparently 54 Gazans were killed or injured during the month of December last year.  No grief and shock for them?  But of course they were just foreigners, so it is understandable that Fox News would have limited interest in it.
However, each and every blessed day, 100 people across the country, this country, die in car crashes, 3 of them in Arizona.  The victims of this sort of violence were also expecting to continue their humdrum lives, much like Dorwin Stoddard who was killed protecting his wife. Do we just step over their mangled corpses without a moment’s grief and shock because their deaths are so routine?  Well, perhaps.  We cannot be expected to pay much mind to some news report that says, in effect, “100 more people crushed or maimed by their cars, same as yesterday.”  Not even a more exciting report like “Only 98 crushed or maimed, two less than yesterday. At this rate there will be no further traffic deaths in only 49 days!”
The luckless Gabe Zimmerman was tragically terminated at the age of 30, at the very beginning of what might have been a successful and distinguished career, leaving behind a brother and a grieving fiancée.  59 other people between the ages of 30 and 34 also died that day.  We know nothing about them, or about the other 60 who died Sunday while the news reports interviewed people who were in nearby shops or friends of the victims or local law enforcement folk who had lots of opinions.
There were something like 500 Americans killed in Afghanistan last year.  This number does not include those who were blinded or maimed or returned to their families back in the heartland to be warehoused like a side of beef for the rest of their lives.  This number also does not include the housewives and goatherds and school children who were sent off to their 72 virgins by the mighty American War Machine as suspected “insurgents.”
This is an ongoing process and it would do us no harm to know more about it, beyond the occasional local news coverage of the return of a flag-draped coffin, the tear-drenched family at the airport, the stern, yet concerned, colonel saluting in a manly fashion while more flags snap in the background and the voiceover solemnly enumerates the many virtues of the fallen hero who is invariably fun-loving, inspirational, generous and sorely missed by all who knew him.  Slimy, brutal weasels never return in flag-draped coffins. Perhaps that is what set off the Arizona thug – no heroic homecomings for him.  Ever.
Meanwhile, while we are saturated by detailed reports of everybody remotely associated with the Tucson murders, the dead, the injured, the bystanders, the shooter, the shooter’s parents, the shooter’s lawyer, the first responders, the people in the next street  who heard the shots, the dog walker who had been there just an hour before, people who would have been there only their car wouldn’t start, while all these people are being documented and served up on the national news, there are other things happening.
For example, there must be something worth reporting coming out of all the ice and snow down in the bible belt.  And there’s the Annual Detroit Auto Show in full swing which the newshounds should be able to wring a paragraph or two out of.  
And we need to remind ourselves that there is life beyond us as well.  I haven’t heard much about the estimable Mr Assange recently, news from the Ivory Coast is thin and repetitive, the fuss in Sudan might actually affect us since we are bound to want to invade one side or another. There are huge floods in Australia, cholera in Haiti, stealth jets on the mat in China, Iran arresting vultures for spying, and yet what we hear about in vast and unnecessary detail is the late Dorothy Morris (her friends called her Dot), a retired secretary, and Phyllis Schneck who was a quilter and gave lemon curd to her friends.
I do not deny that these unfortunate people have been wronged.  I do not even begrudge them a spot on the evening news. What I do object to is the overwhelming attention paid to this lamentable event at the cost of other, larger concerns in our increasingly contentious world.