A Reaction to the Media surrounding the Colorado Movie Theater shooting
“Why do we fall, sir? So that we might learn to pick ourselves up.”
Alfred Pennyworth – Batman Begins
Unless you were living under a rock, you cannot escape the Media attention around the shootings in the Aurora Colorado Movie Theater. While this situation is tragic and perpetrated by one nutcase with a collection of guns, and unclear motivations beyond I feel making himself famous; we are seeing a New Media feeding frenzy.
To them this is manna from the Gods, a shooting connected to one of the most anticipated movies of the year? Instant ratings and page view advertisement winner for them – over the last few days we’ve seen little reporting, but lots of wild speculation based on half-rumors and misdirection because the News is a ratings game in the USA. It is all about 24 hour coverage, cool graphics, uninformed pundits jumping on the dark ‘Trekkie’ report and on the spot eye-witness interviews of people who were three blocks away. Leaving us all guessing at what was the cause? How did someone as unbalanced as these get guns? How did he order so much ammunition without a flag being thrown up and someone visiting asking why he needs 6000 bullets?
You are already seeing calls for tighter security at public events, the banning of Cosplayers at movie theaters, open carry be law (and how an untrained person with a gun would have stopped this shooting flat… Yeah right…) Heaven help us all if they turn up any comic book in his apartment, that will be the next target of this blame game. The evils of comic books will to blame… Everything and anything to keep the Media cycle turning, to keep those ratings coming in. Because when News becomes about the ratings, it stops being news, instead it is just a reality TV window and is treated as such.
All of them are forgetting one thing… This happened because of one unbalanced individual and if you are looking to place the blame then it lands squarely on James Holmes shoulders. He planned this, he pulled the trigger, he killed those people… No one forced him, no one was pulling his strings. It was a pure voluntary action on his part, he is a killer, a psychopathic nutjob out to make a name for himself, who surrendered the moment an actually threat turned up, and that is where the blame should stay.
Instead we get calls for us to lose more freedoms of which I have this to say…
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin Feb 17, 1775
We live in the land of the free and the home of the brave; we all forget that this sentence is a combination and that we must be brave to be free, for courage is what protects our freedoms and that is what we must all remain brave and free. Because every freedom we lose in the name of security and safety is harder to get back than you think. Do you really want your child to go through a full body scanner to watch the next Shriek movie? Because it wont keep her any safer.
What happened in Colorado is tragic incident, perpetrated by one inadequate little man. Sadly mass-shootings are becoming all too common here, but it no reason to change your life. The moment we do we lose… Do not be afraid, live your life and be free.
So endth the lesson… Be gentle with the world now.
