The Real Backlash

[posted by Callimachus]

Is against the media:

[Taylor Marsh ] makes a good point when she notes that the same news organizations who gave us blanket coverage of V-Tech, including Fox having Mike Gallagher argue for concealed-carry in the hallways of the school the day after the shooting, have not covered the dead and injured of Iraq in that kind of detail. I would also add that they do not cover the efforts at rebuilding Iraq, either, and that they do not give much air time to anything that lacks a really good explosion. Part of the reason for that is that news outlets don't embed any longer, and many of them do not have any resources outside of the Green Zone.

As a nation, we seem to demand this dance of grief, expecting it to move along a timeline of our choosing, with anchors and other talking-head experts telling us when the "healing process" will begin, and how to achieve "closure". My goodness, some of them started talking about healing processes on the same day of the shootings! It seems as though the nation has a greedy demand to make the grief of strangers our own, in order to connect ourselves to the real victims of the crime -- and then to impose a schedule on grief on them. In that sense, the tone of the coverage is nothing short of ghastly.

My newspaper, somewhat against my advice*, ran one of the Cho photos this morning: The one with a gun in each hand, but not pointed at the viewer. Boy, did they hear it from readers. [Not as bad as the time they ran a photo on A1 of a large pregnant woman getting an ultrasound, though.] People hate those photos of Cho. Every time you see one, he wins again. He gets what he wanted.

I'm aware most of the backlash is against TV coverage (which is what people mean by "news" and "media" and even -- heaven help us -- "journalism" anymore) and I'm writing about newspapers. But the ghoulishness and the cynicism and the sickening, cloying, palpably false grieving of it are transcendant.

Yes, 200 died in Iraq terror attacks Monday. And 33 apparently died in one of China's notoriously dangerous coal mines. And it's a statistical certainty that many times 33 people died that day in every African nation of starvation and preventable diseases. And how many fetuses were aborted? And how many women died of improper natal care? And how many smokers died of lung cancer?

Journalism always has been like that: Lives are measured out in ink, like the Anglo-Saxons in their day measured out a life's worth in wergeld:

If any one with a hloth slay an unoffending twy-hynde man, let him who acknowledges the death-blow pay wer and wite; and let every one who was of the party pay thirty shillings as hloth-bot. If it be a six-hynde man, let every man pay sixty shillings as hloth-bot; and the slayer, wer and full wite. If he be a twelve-hynde man, let each of them pay one hundred and twenty shillings; and the slayer, wer and wite. If a hloth do this, and afterwards will deny it on oath, let them all be accused, and let them then all pay the wer in common; and all, one wite, such as shall belong to the wer.

In journalism? "If it bleeds it leads" is only part of the story. Not all blood is created equal, when you squeeze it into newsprint. I heard this version years ago: I suspect it dates from the 1960s. The wergeld might have changed since then, but the essence is the same: 5,000 starving Africans = 50 Arab political prisoners = 5 London bobbies = 1 local firefighters.

So the readers call in a rage and cancel their subscriptions because of the photos. Well, on the Internet there is no editor, there is no gatekeeper. People can choose to see, or not see, what they will. Go see what the "most viewed" photos have been the last three days.

* By which I mean, it was my stated advice, but nobody had asked for it.

The Truthers

Are on the case.

[Look for this to seep up into the general Americaphobic narrative of this tragedy to one degree or another. How did I know about this? A mainstream media journalist at a certain newsroom I know is all excited about this notion.]

Where's the Backlash?

[posted by Callimachus]

It was called "inevitable," not a matter of "if," but of "how bad." Americans would turn on their Korean neighbors once the identity of the Virginia Tech shooter was known. Fear of it was one of the first expressions of the South Korean leader on hearing the news of the tragedy. Personally, I found that rather offensive, in a minor way, but my irritation wasn't the most important or significant aspect of that day.

I thought I'd give it some time, and wait for my friends who ceaselessly search out only the bad and the ugly in America to serve up the examples. But I read through my usual plate of left-side blogs and media sites today, and I'm not seeing the "inevitable" backlash. All the New York Times can manage is an anonymous, hearsay account of kids being spit on:

An unidentified man called into a show on Radio Korea here to say that his young son had been spat on by two students at school, said Charles Kim, executive director of the local Korean-American Coalition, who was a guest on the show.

Sort of like how Americans get spit on in Europe and other places, I guess. Ditto the Washington Post, which also offers a second hand account of an admittedly rattled Korean-American feeling like people were looking at him funny:

Young Bong Kim, senior pastor of McLean-based Korean United Methodist Church of Greater Washington, shared an e-mail in which one of his parishioners said he was experiencing such pressures.

"People in my office look at me differently," wrote the man, a government employee working in the District. "I cannot even approach my co-workers to talk. I feel so ashamed. I feel like I gotta do something to show that I'm a good neighbor."

Another example I saw (Cox News wire, I think) of a story devoted to the "backlash" had to content itself with anonymous racist comments on Myspace blogs. Really!

Korean Americans have been apologizing all over the Internet for this killer. I want to join those who tell them, I understand your wish to represent your community and to be known as good citizens in this country, and I appreciate and honor it. But really, you don't have to apologize. Cho was a nutter. We all have them. It's not your fault, and no one thinks it is.

So I'm asking, sincerely, has anyone got any examples of a serious, widespread backlash against Korean-Americans because of this? And watch someone go and pull something incredibly stupid 5 minutes after I hit "publish." Or is my suspicion right that Americans as a whole generally are pretty good about distinguishing individuals from ethnic groups? Because today it's a Korean-American and tomorrow it will be some other hyphenated case.

Koreans were singled out in the 1992 L.A. riots, but that's a specific and complex prejudice of the hood (see also "Do the Right Thing"). A lot of street-level stupidity was directed at anyone looking vaguely Middle Eastern after 9/11, but also a lot of protection and good will. Even in the most unlikely of places. And in that case there clearly was a cultural root to the attacks (as opposed to individual psychopathy) that preceded the backlash, which would explain, but never excuse, the sporadic harrassment.

While I'm asking for information, can anyone tell me how many Muslim- or Arab-Americans were killed after, and as a result of, the 9/11 attacks? Numbers seem scarce, and the only clear examples I can recall were unfortunate Sikhs who were misidentified by raging haters as Muslims.

It's possible, then, that more Muslim-Americans were killed by the 9/11 terrorists than by the American public's "backlash." I might be wrong about that. And of course murder is only the most extreme form of "backlash." But "the most extreme" seems to be the default expectation of most of the rest of the world -- and a good many of the antis here at home -- to anything having to do with my fellow Americans.