The Media and Crazy

Another week, another mass shooting perpetrated by a middle aged white guy who just happened to own a lot of guns. This story about Jason Brian Dalton going on a massive shooting spree in Kalamazoo over the weekend is already fading from news site front pages. And the story itself is all too familiar especially in the media’s portrayal of the perpetrator: a deeply disturbed white male who seemingly led a normal life, suddenly snapped and started shooting people. Clearly a mental defective…nothing to see here and nothing to ponder here as it pertains to larger societal issues.

It is simply not possible for our media to see a white mass shooter as anything other than crazy. It is beyond their abilities of reason and logic to infer or posit that such a person could be sane, yet smoldering with a violent agenda known only to him before firing a gun.

But if the person is brown-skinned and adhering to the Muslim faith, it is equally impossible for our media to ascribe the same level of insanity as if he were a white guy. No, Muslims don’t snap, lose their minds and grab their cache of weapons and start blasting away.  They are terrorists –sayeth our media – and they are loyally following some nefarious agenda of jihad.

Our media has a playbook and it always follows that playbook to the letter when it comes to mass shootings. I’m including a handy chart to illustrate said playbook .

1.       Determine race of shooter.

2.       If white, brand him a crazy loner. Everyone can relax.

3.       If middle-eastern, brand him a sane cold-blooded terrorist. EVERYONE PANIC!!

In a way, it’s very nice of our media to helpfully identify the intent of each mass shooter long-before we have to plod through some lengthy and boring investigation with all its “facts” and “evidence.” Who has the time these days? This way, we can quickly check on the race of the shooter and act accordingly. If it’s another in a huge line of white mass shooters who have claimed a staggering amount of victims over the years we can relax and sleep well knowing that despite our nation’s ridiculously lax gun laws and intensely violent nature, a white shooter absolutely portends no future violence we need worry about. Conversely, if the shooter is Muslim, we can immediately panic and assume that every brown-skinned person is planning to kill us all – despite infinitesimal evidence toward that conclusion.

Our national media: so helpful.