Morgan Freeman II

As I noted in yesterday's entry in this blog, Morgan Freeman wasn't the author of the essay that circulated madly about in Facebook last week after the Newtown shootings.

Here is the essay that was attributed to Freeman:

"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.

"It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine?

"Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

"CNN's article says that if the body count 'holds up', this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

"You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."

-------------------------

Now, first point, I happen to believe there is a lot of truth in that. We do need to focus on good people who do good things (like, say, the late Victoria Soto, who died protecting the children in her care), and we need to stop memorializing and thereby in a sense elevating pathetic losers and the harm they do.

I have made my living for a number of years now disseminating news, I have no "bash the eeeevil media" bias. But I do think that watching grisly TV reports about tragedies is no more edifying than watching other forms of "reality TV" such as those where contestants eat bugs and badmouth each other around a campfire.

Yes, it is necessary to get the information out there. But suppose some of the major outlets, by means of a voluntary code of conduct, agreed to refer to the shooters in such circumstances as "John Doe." They could still convey everything really necessary -- everything to inform public debate about school safety for example -- and they could sharply reduce the narcissistic possibilities that may appeal to those our anonymous essayist calls sad nobodies.

Second point: who is our anonymous essayist? our non-Morgan Freeman?

He may have-- or use -- the name "Mark," and he may be from Vancouver. A reddit thread is all the evidence we have for either of those propositions. It is better than nothing, which is what we have for any other proposition.

Final point: just how much should we blame Anonymous Essayist for the hoax?

Personally, I can't get upset about it. "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Or that you're not a famous actor. I can understand the real Morgan Freeman being unhappy, especially to the degree that the sentiments aren't really his, but the supply of my personal indignation-juice is limited and I'll spend it elsewhere.

The more important point would seem to be the first one. If you agree with me that AE had something important to say, you'll be likely to be forgiving about how he brought this important point to your and my attention.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog