Is the media focus on gunmen becoming more responsible? Why I’m not holding my breath

What video games did Benjamin Barnes play? What music did he listen to? So far, the press is silent. And that’s just fine.

It was almost one year ago that Jared Lee Loughner opened fire on a crowd of citizens outside a Safeway in Tucson, injuring more than a dozen people and killing six. One year later, a January gunman may have been found dead in the snow near Mt. Rainier, where a park ranger was shot and killed on New Year’s Day.

So far, the press coverage of Benjamin C. Barnes’ life could not be more different. Articles have focused on his shooting spree during a New Year’s Eve party just south of Seattle, his escape to Mt. Ranier park, and the shooting of Margaret Anderson, a 34-year-old park ranger. Speculation about Barnes’ motives have focused on his service in Iraq, his trouble re-adjusting to civilian life, and threatening suicide a year ago.

With Loughner, reporters pounced on his “obsession with the occult” and his love of at least one heavy metal song. Did Barnes live a life devoid of these interests? Or is the press looking elsewhere for explanations and meaning?

Likewise, when Virginia Tech shooter Ross Truett Ashley killed police officer Deriek Crouse at the college last month — a crime that sent echoes of one of the worst college massacres in history through the school — little was made of his hobbies.

Are reporters finally focusing on violent acts in a more responsible manner, leaving violent-media speculation out of their coverage? Is it because these criminals are adults that we focus on their mental condition rather than their personal interests when looking for murderous inspiration? Given the coverage of such recent events as a Milwaukee meetup gone awry or a child rapist convicted of murder, my hopes are not high. But coverage of these gunmen is certainly a step in the right direction.

Metal Monday: When heavy metal becomes linked with crime

I have a guest post today in USAToday.com’s Pop Candy section today examining the media’s obsession with linking violent crime and heavy-metal music. It’s called “Metal Monday: When heavy metal becomes linked with crime.”

Me in Mother Jones on the media’s double-standard

Monday, I looked at the lone-wolf reporters at the Washington Post who explored the possibility that Drowning Pool’s song “Bodies” had anything to do with the shootings in Tucson.

Today, you can read a new column from me at Mother Jones examining the media’s double-standard when reporting on mass shootings. Why are teen shootings so often blamed on music and video games, when adult shootings are linked to mental-health issues? Have a look.

In addition, the piece was quoted by Ann Powers in her LA Times coverage of the shootings.

Washington Post’s music scapegoating strikes a chilling chord

Drowning Pool photo courtesy of the band’s Web site.

It’s been a little more than a week since Jared Lee Loughner opened fire on a crowd gathered to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords outside a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona. Reporters have struggled to help readers find meaning in the situation, and while plenty of coverage has focused on the wrong things, plenty more has focused on the right thing: Loughner’s tenuous grasp on reality. As his friends told CBS about his deteriorating mental health, other reporters focused on the lack of mental-health services for teens who need them.

Not the Washington Post. Best known for its political reporting, including breaking the Watergate scandal, the Post decided to strike out on its own this week and examine Loughner’s musical choices, specifically his use of Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” in his now-infamous flag-burning video. The article stops short of outright blaming the song for Loughner’s crime, or even his mental state, but it questions the song’s moral qualities after it was apparently party to at least one other violent act:

Investigators haven’t suggested a link between Loughner’s violent outburst and “Bodies,” a 2001 single by the Dallas band Drowning Pool. But Loughner’s embrace of “Bodies” – at least as the backdrop to a favorite video – strikes a familiarly chilling chord: The Drowning Pool song served as the soundtrack to a double murder in Oakton, where in 2003, then-19-year-old Joshua Cooke cranked the throbbing tune on his headphones, walked out of his bedroom holding a 12-gauge shotgun and killed his parents.

As people curious to understand Loughner have watched his videos since the shooting spree, they have come upon a raging, edgy anthem that likely brought to mind the many previous cases in which songs were blamed — perhaps unfairly — for inspiring violence.

That phrase, “perhaps unfairly,” also suggests that it could be fair to say the song inspires violence. Even before the Post piece hit the Internet this week, Drowning Pool had pre-emptively issued a statement decrying any link between the song and acts of violence: “We were devastated this weekend to learn of the tragic events that occurred in Arizona and that our music has been misinterpreted, again,” the band wrote on its Web site. ‘Bodies’ was written about the brotherhood of the mosh pit and the respect people have for each other in the pit. If you push others down, you have to pick them back up. It was never about violence. It’s about a certain amount of respect and a code.”

The Post article analyzes the history of blaming music for violence, including the 1995 killing of 15-year-old Elyse Pahler by three boys who were Slayer fans. Unfortunately, the article claims the boys said the music made them do it. In fact, the boys themselves have said the music had nothing to do with their reasons for killing Pahler. The claim was only put out there to give Pahler’s parents cause to sue Slayer — unsuccessfully — for their daughter’s murder.

When are we going to stop looking at music as a possible motive for violent acts? There are actual songs about actually killing people that are cited less frequently than “Bodies” as the inspiration for potential murder sprees. I will grant that certain songs will sound different depending on the context. In the days after a mass shooting, hearing a song for the first time that repeats, “let the bodies hit the floor” can sound convincingly like inspiration. However, as soon as that thought hits, the first thing you need to ask yourself is: “Would this make me kill someone?” If the answer is “no,” then you need to start looking elsewhere for causes. If the answer is “yes,” please seek psychological help immediately.

Furthermore, if you’re in that space where you’re processing a tragedy and hearing a song that reminds you of that tragedy, you’re in the right place. Use that connection to process. To grieve. To put yourself in other people’s shoes — the victims’, their families’, the perpetrators’ — and try to puzzle it out, without coming to any conclusions. Just contemplate. Music provides a lens through which we can see various perspectives on events, both in our own lives and in the world around us. In many ways, that’s what music is for.

We don’t know for certain why Loughner chose “Bodies” as the soundtrack for his video (if it even is his video). We don’t know if he was a die-hard Drowning Pool fan or if he just like the song’s angry tones. (If you were making a video about burning a flag, what music would you choose to play in the background? The Beatles’ “Let it Be?” Katy Perry’s “California Gurls?” Frankie Avalon’s “Venus?”) Even if it were his all-time favorite song, there’s no way to say that it caused him to fire a gun into a crowd. It sounds like that particular plan hatched from his cracked, paranoid mind. At most, we could say that if he enjoyed that song, if it held some meaning for him, then perhaps there was something in his life that drove him to seek meaning in a song that sounds angry.

That, too, is what music is for.

Fortunately, the Post article concludes on a much more responsible note:

“The idea that we would diminish the speech that we allow based on how it might be received by the most unstable listener would leave us with little speech whatsoever,” he said, adding that “people commit murders in the name of the Bible or the Koran. To somehow hold the artist, the author, the speaker responsible for how the most unstable person drawn to the music or literature or movie might later act would deprive the 99.999 percent of people who never do anything illegal or violent.”

Loughner’s “twisted shrine” probably isn’t

Here we go: The media world is working hard to make sense of the shootings in Tucson on Saturday that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. First the blame fell on Sarah Palin and her “hit list” of Congresspeople she wanted eliminated from politics. Then shooter Jared Lee Loughner’s wacky YouTube videos were discovered. Then college classmates of Loughner’s began sharing stories about how strangely he acted in school. Apparently, multiple contacts with college police led him to drop out.

You’d think all this was enough to help people connect the dots, but a news photographer captured an image from Loughner’s backyard, depicting a toy skull in a flower pot surrounded by desiccated oranges and some candles, and suddenly he’s “obsessed by the occult.” Many media outlets spent Monday analyzing the image. Some were more rational than others.

There are a couple of possibilities that explain this scene. One is that Loughner created some kind of Halloween-inspired arrangement with the skull and the oranges (other photos of the property reveal an orange tree in the backyard) and then forgot about it, which would explain the state of the fruit.

The other possibility is that this really is some kind of pagan gesture. The difficulty, then, is in pinpointing the origin. Skulls are used in some pagan traditions, including Vodun-inspired paths as well as Satanism, but they’re usually real skulls or high-quality replicas, not toy skulls like the one pictured here. Oranges are also used in some faiths, predominantly as offerings to Buddha or African-based spirits. However, out of respect for the gods involved, offerings are not allowed to rot. That doesn’t mean Loughner wasn’t making this kind of gesture, but if he was, it suggests it was an ad-hoc effort, and one he abandoned pretty quickly. That hardly suggests a dedication to the occult.

Some articles have suggested that the candles contribute to the idea that this is a shrine or altar of some kind, but these are cheap candles easily purchased at the grocery store. They’re just as often used during blackouts as they are during ceremonies. Other articles went so far as to claim that the potting soil might play a ceremonial role. It’s true that a few faiths (such as Wicca) use earth or “graveyard dirt” (Hoodoo), but this really looks like it’s a place where Loughner’s family was storing its gardening supplies and other random knick-knacks. Storing potting soil on your pagan shrine is a little like storing a box of Triscuits on the altar in a Cathedral. Not only is it not generally done, but the presence of such a mundane item suggests a lack of respect for the whole procedure.

The larger question is: even if Loughner was exploring the occult, what does that have to do with his alleged shooting rampage? There is no known pagan or occult practice that calls for homicide in this manner (or most any manner). Does this scene tell us anything about Loughner as a person? Not really, unless being either a lazy occult dabbler or someone who makes Halloween decorations and then doesn’t clean them up afterwards really says anything. The most we can say about the “twisted shrine” is that it adds to Loughner’s emerging image as an aimless young man. Having a skull and some candles doesn’t make him any more evil, or any more capable of mass murder, than Martha Stewart or even Alice Cooper.

Unfortunately, the press loves this kind of detail because it allows reporters to paint a particularly striking image of someone we know very little about — and understand even less. Most of us can’t comprehend what would drive a 22-year-old to shoot anyone. It can’t be explained by any of the measures we have on hand. So we point to political rhetoric, or mental derangement, or skulls in flower pots. Those don’t truthfully explain it either, but it gives us something we can cling to, and this comforts our minds, which have trouble with the slippery nature of explanationlessness.

It’s important to understand why humans — and Americans in particular — do this when confronted with terrible acts they don’t understand. Check out these quotes from Robert C. Fuller’s important book, Naming the Antichrist:

“The symbol of the Antichrist has played a surprisingly signifiant role in shaping Americans’ self-understanding. Because they tend to view their nation as uniquely blessed by God, they have been especially prone to demonize their enemies. Throughout their nation’s history, they have suspected that those who oppose the American way must be in league with the Antichrist’s confederation of evil.”

“The history of Americans’ obsession with naming the Antichrist draws attention to their almost limitless capacity for mythologizing life. … Everyday life is viewed against a cosmic background in which the forces of good are continually embattled by the forces of evil. The problems and confusions that Americans face consequently can never be reduced to political, social, or economic causes.”

“[According to biologist Garrett Hardin], Any group of people that perceives itself as a distinct group, and which is so perceived by the outside world, may be called a tribe. … The essential characteristic of a tribe is that it should follow a double standard if morality – one kind of behavior for in-group relations, another for out-group.”

“The act of ‘naming the Antichrist’ has time and again promoted precisely this kind of tribalistic boundary posturing. It has made it possible to love one’s family and religious community while hating all who are associated with the Antichrist. Belief that Jews, Catholics, socialists, humanists, or feminists are in league with the Beast has made the most uncivil behavior toward the ‘social other’ a badge of piety and religious devotion.”

“Those who engage in naming the Antichrist feel themselves exorcised of the demons of disbelief and consequently numbered among those who will be vindicated on the day of final reckoning.”

In short, calling Loughner evil because of his actions helps us feel like we are separate from him. It allows us to assure ourselves that he is not like us, that we could never do what he did. Discovering toy skulls and strange fruit arrangements in his backyard only seems to confirm this evil. It puts everything into a safe, tidy little box. A box we don’t fit into.

But it’s not that simple. Stories like these lead the public to believe that people who legitimately and respectfully follow occult faiths are somehow evil — and even prone to violence. This is tantamount to occult profiling. It creates space for discrimination and religious intolerance. And honestly, this country does not need any more discrimination or intolerance. We’re already bursting at the seams with it.