CSotD: Commentary on Aurora’s Dark Night
Skip to comments
As it happens, I'm in Denver, where I just did two journalism workshops at the Post for young writers, one which is an annual event for kids who want to learn about reporting, photography, etc., and the second a more focused training session for the young reporters (roughly 8 to 14) at the weekly publication I edit, which is part of the Post's educational services program.
The first of those sessions was Friday morning and, fortunately for us, the reporter who had volunteered to talk to the kids happened to be from sports, so he was there and did a brilliant session with them. But the photographer who was supposed to speak to them, and two other reporters who were going to help them with their reporting assignments, were understandably gone in the scramble of coverage from the shootings the night before.
So the kids got an unexpected lesson in the way reporters have to be flexible, how you can plan to interview a forester about pine beetle infestation and instead suddenly find yourself on the scene of an event like this one.
The coverage here has been wall-to-wall, and has varied greatly from incisive to repetitive as anyone with any involvement or contact or proximity to the event or the (alleged) shooter has received their 15 minutes quite literally.
The advantage of being a reporter, however, is that — depending, of course, on the directives of your editor — you have the ability to retain your role as "reporter" rather than "instant analyst," and those who wander off into Geraldo Rivera land have only themselves to blame.
For cartoonists, the need for quick commentary trumps the need for facts to emerge, and an event of this magnitude can't be ignored, as a quick trip to Cagle.com shows.
Which is to say, when Andy Griffith died, there was no particular need for 5,000 cartoons showing Sheriff Taylor walking away with a fishing rod on his shoulder. Griffith was popular, certainly, but his death didn't stop the nation and did not require any commentary at all, much less a flood of predictable Pearly Gaters.
But cartoonists were under a great deal more pressure to say something this time, and to say it quickly, and so we got the predictable, ridiculous "weeping Batman" cartoons, as well as a couple that inexplicably declared that the local police were the "real" heroes. (Their response time was excellent and they did help tamp down the panic, but that's not what "hero" used to mean.)
A newspaper can't simply print a cartoon about Mitt Romney's dog carrier at a moment like this, however, and you do have to say something. Mike Keefe, who recently took a buyout from the Post but remains in the area as a freelancer, simply acknowledged the event without direct commentary.
This may be the wisest approach, and Keefe has too much class to use "weeping Batman" as the way to do it.
Some cartoonists went after the gun culture, which is well within the realm of fair commentary, but there's an element here that must be taken into account, which is that the preliminary information does not suggest any reason the shooter should not have been allowed guns under current law. He had no criminal record, apparently had no record of mental illness treatment, was of age and seems to have prepared enough in advance to satisfy any waiting period requirements.
So, while I like Steve Breen's cartoon, I'm not sure it applies as directly as it might have:
That is, the gun culture is central to the problem, but we've seen much more egregious tragedies where access to firearms should have been harder.
In this case, I prefer Bill Day's comment on the pervasiveness of guns overall:
But I still think Fitzsimmons had the best commentary with an updated cartoon from five years ago, because it's not just "here we go again" in terms of "here's another shooting," but "here we go again" in terms of the full and predictable cycle. Including the ability to make a few small changes and still be spot on.
I don't take it as cynical fatalism, because, after all, he is, like the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, only showing the shades of what may be, not what will be.
I don't believe we are apt to change our ways as well as Scrooge did, and I do not foresee anything coming from this. But I think Fitzsimmons is on safer ground in his generalized comment than anyone attempting instant analysis on this particular incident.
And, in the realm of old cartoons that I wish no longer applied, my own take on instant analysis was summed up in a cartoon Ruben Bolling did in 1999, a few months after Columbine and in the wake of a few other school shootings. I just wish it weren't so relevant a dozen years later.
(And having just added that link to his blog, I realize I didn't have to search my own archives for this cartoon after all, since he has reposted it himself.)
Comments 8
Comments are closed.