Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: RE: All the News That Fits; How the media color their coverage.
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 09:33:51 -0500
From: "Rob Raisch" <info () raisch com> To: <farber () cis upenn edu> Dave, Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" deals with the same issues, driven not by some misguided allegiance to knee-jerk liberalism but by those who command our own government. I take strong issue with this author's comparing the horrific murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, with an equally horrific murder of a young Arkansas man by two gay men. In the case of Matthew Shepard, the rage that precipitated Matthew's torture and murder was driven by our society's marginalizing an entire segment of its membership simply based upon who they love; it was a hate crime. The case of two gay men raping and murdering another man wasn't predicated on his sexuality; it was driven by the same mental aberration driving most crimes of violence and murder. While no less abhorrent, it says nothing about a kind of intolerance and fear endemic to our society. To say they are the same is to ignore the root cause of each. (I also note that Matthew is clinically identified in the piece as a "homosexual" while the Arkansas murderers are described as "gay", a reversal of respect that speaks to the author's personal prejudices.) The book makes a valid point, but one of its foundation examples is simply wrong. /rr
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- IP: RE: All the News That Fits; How the media color their coverage. David Farber (Dec 13)