Addendum: I wrote this post back on April 22, talking about how our society likes to glamorize the worst criminals. I just thought I’d bring it back up again in light of the national magazine using a relatively flattering photo of the Boston Marathon bomber on its cover. Sure, they call him a monster as well, but in today’s “whoop-ass” culture, it only builds his status. If a publication really wants to depict him as a monster, why not photos of Martin, Krystle, Lu and Sean? Anyway, this is just another example of the society’s glorification of the negative; of the criminals. Shame on society for accepting this. Below is what I wrote back in April.

Growing up, I liked the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers with Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. Not for the violence that it showed, but more for the story lines and the various messages it gave. (For those who have seen the movie, I have used the “You knew I was a snake” story on multiple occasions)

The main point of the movie is really a social commentary in how Americans seem to turn our worst criminals into folk-heroes with a morbid fascination. The description of the movie on IMDB is as follows:

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and psychopathic serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

I’m not going to directly blame the media here as the media really gives the public what they’ll buy. In this area, it’s kind of sad that so many people will be fascinated with a Charles Manson, an Adam Lanza, a James Holmes or most recently, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Many people will know exactly who these people are and can probably name them off the top of their head. Walk up to someone and ask who Adam Lanza is and images of Newtown will immediately come to mind. But ask the same person to name a single one of the 22 victims in the Newtown tragedy. The vast majority of people will be stumped. Aurora? Same result. It won’t be long until the names Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzhi and Sean Collier are forgotten unfortunately. Why is this? What is the fascination with the murderer and lack of memory for the victims? Wouldn’t it be great if the media were disciplined enough to put a self-imposed blackout on the names of the murderers. Once they are caught, there’s not really any great reasons to keep using their name. It just perpetuates this “fame” even further, and this kind of attention is what some people feed off of. Let’s not give that to them. Let’s starve them of it and instead focus on the victims. As an example, here is a reminder of the victims from the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the Aurora shooting and the recent events in Boston.

Newtown, CT Rachel D’Avino Dawn Hochsprung Anne Marie Murphy Lauren Rousseau Mary Sherlach Victoria Leigh Soto Charlotte Bacon Daniel Barden Olivia Engel Josephine Gay Dylan Hockley Madeleine Hsu Catherine Hubbard Chase Kowalski Jesse Lewis Ana Marquez-Greene James Mattioli Grace McDonnell Emilie Parker Jack Pinto Noah Pozner Caroline Previdi Jessica Rekos Avielle Richman Benjamin Wheeler Allison Wyatt

Aurora, CO Jonathan Blunk Alexander J. Boik Jesse Childress Gordon Cowden Jessica Ghawi John Larimer Matt McQuinn Micayla Medek Veronica Moser-Sullivan Alex Sullivan Alexander C. Teves Rebecca Wingo

Boston, MA Krystle Campbell Martin Richard Lu Lingzhi Sean Collier