I'll Pretend If You Will

Oddly enough, I saw this the other night: Teen Fatally Stabbed at Oak Forest Party

Well, saw in the sense that I mosied past the scene, watched the crowd, wondered what happened as an ambulance pulled away. It's a quiet burb, and something like this doesn't happen very often. I've even been in that very house, many, many years ago at a classmate's third grade birthday party.

The story, of course, is the usual rundown you often get. Nice kid, well-liked, killed tragically. Fairly cursory media coverage.

Then there is the comments section on the newspaper's website. They've since done some scrubbing, but it was kind of amazing that the commenters were explaining what happened in far more depth and detail than the reporters. The deleted comments laid out a story of drug dealers, cocaine, and money gone wrong. What's stranger is the editorial choice to clean the comments about the victim while leaving intact the one about the suspect.

It's just interesting how we report these things. Assuming the deleted comments were truish (and they seemed plausible to me from what I know of the situation), it seems we often scrub the bad out of any seedy story, pretend as if these events are random and unexplainable. As if a drug deal gone wrong is as unavoidable as a bolt of lightning falling from the sky. With Chicago sunk deep into an epidemic of youth murders and violence, the local media seem to have elevated this sort of papering over to an art form. One story last year detailed a twelve or thirteen year-old kid murdered for cash. The coverage was the usual "My baby was a nice boy and never did anything wrong." Flowers, vigils, the victim well-liked and friendly, smiling in school photos.

And partially running an illegal gambling ring with ties to drugs and gang violence.

But they'll get to that. Eventually. After everyone has moved on to the next tragic story.

Isn't part of solving a problem admitting you have one in the first place? If the media can barely bring themselves to mention the causes for the violence, why do they keep pretending to ask what they are in those banal, soul-searching editorials about the horror and mystery of it all?

I'm all for sensitivity to victims, but at some point the constant, pitying whitewashing starts working against uncovering what is wrong with this city.

Comments

[Tim]

Hmm yeah I don't depend on the news at all these days, it's getting to hard to winnow fact from fiction and agenda from detail.

Oh this should make you smile a little bit
people acting responsibly and deciding not to go along with popular opinion
http://tinyurl.com/lexgtp

sometimes pigs do fly!

[blewsdawg Rick Caldwell]

You're back! And back on Typepad. So it's come to this, has it?

[Audrey the Liberal]

Maybe if drugs and gambling weren't criminalized, drug and gambling rings wouldn't be criminal enterprises.

[Tim]

:-P you moved to Cali yet?

[Sunless Tanning]

mmm Cali is pretty!
I have been there and is nice.
Tatiana

[Dental Care]

You have been in Cali?
I want to go there, do you recommend it?
Cheryl

[microgaming]

Completely agree to this post, everything is related to the worst end, but this has a very good reason, it pays. If you don't think like that your news is not going to be sold and nobody is gonna read them. Nowadays even death is interesting to sell if you know how to do it... so sad but... so true.

[kingbarel]

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[kat]

once I was told those same words from my boyfriend (I'll Pretend If You Will) and I send him to fly!!!!
He was cheating me!!!, besides he used to Buy Generic Viagra

[Soft Cialis]

damn girl!!!
good thing you kicked him out of your life!!!