At Anna’s suggestion – from the forums – here’s what I was loosely trying to say yesterday:

I’ll vent my own spleen about this one. I don’t like it. It’s not strong enough. I just barf information out there without much thought.

With that said, some other things that reminded me of that book and have been going on the media in general (aside from the Paris/Nicole reunion)

David Karr… The way the stories were written you could tell from the get go he didn’t do it. They wrote about how he brought Jon Benet home after school and then mention that it was during the Christmas holidays… and there was more. Then they come out with the announcement like it’s shocking “oh, he didn’t do it – the DA made a mistake – we’ve all been duped”

Then there’s the shooting at the Amish school – horribly tragic, but thanks to it the media tries to invade their lives because they’re off the beaten American iPod sucking track. We get story after story about the quirky Amish – their culture, religion, social structure. It’s like they’re skittish little sentient alien gophers – so peculiar and quaint. Instead of “it can happen anywhere to anyone – crazy doesn’t always discern”. The only thing that could top it at this point is if someone went after Hasidic Jews and hit one of their schools.

The other angle the media seemed to beat on with that particular tragedy – this idea that the Amish could forgive. To me that says a lot about our culture. When we sit back and say “what, the alien gophers in the buggy aren’t calling for blood? What’s up with that?” Let me tread in murky water a bit – we are in theory a Christian based society. Why is it then that we find the notion of forgiveness alien? Alien to the point it becomes a major news topic?

I just think sometimes we take our cues from the media. The media chooses what we find important and what gets tossed aside – it’s only by reading the smallest articles in the paper that we tend to get a larger picture of our bigger world.

… and I wish I were smart enough to write about it.