Everyone Will Remember Me
I just finished “Everyone Will Remember Me as Some Sort of Monster,” the Rolling Stone article on the December 2007 Nebraska mall shooting. Thinking back, I can hardly remember hearing about it in the news. And this is, in part, the point of the article.
It was a big story. For about a week. Immediately after the shooting, the media descended on the woodsy suburb of Omaha known as Bellevue (population 50,000), where Hawkins had been living, and began some hit-and-run reporting. But that soon sputtered out. After it was discovered that the shooter had a history of mental illness, the national media left town, and then when it came out that he’d recently been fired from a job at McDonald’s, even the local guys dropped the story and went back to reporting on the weather. That was pretty much the extent of the digging, as if losing the opportunity to flip burgers was what drove the teen to murder.
It’s a depressing time in which we live. A 19 year-old kid is so traumatized by his family and upbringing — the only “way out” he can see is to kill himself. I think of the hours he spent playing video games, drinking beer in his car, passing time in one institution or another. I think of the depression and self-destruction. And then I think about the sudden disappearance of the story. Where did it go? What was so important that the country quickly forgot about this shooting? Are we all so accustomed to hearing about these events that they have become that easy to ignore? What happens when we continue to ignore them?
Less than a decade ago, in the aftermath of the Columbine High School shootings, teen murder was such a horrifying novelty that it occupied the entire national conversation for months. But these days, teenage shooters come and go on TV with such regularity that their sprees hardly seem surprising anymore; on the contrary, it feels almost naive to be shocked. In the end, the Robert Hawkins mall massacre — the bloodiest episode in Nebraska since the Charles Starkweather murders of 1958, and one of the deadliest rampages in American history — amounted to just a few days’ worth of news and infotainment. Within two weeks of the shooting, Von Maur was speed-cleaned and reopened, just in time for the Christmas rush.
Apparently Christmas shopping is more important to Americans than acknowledging, than remembering the tragedy.
8 responses so far
Isn’t that scary? I lived in Chicago before moving to Santa Barbara, and a couple months after I moved away there were two shootings within a week or two. One was at a women’s clothing store, and the other at EIU. I didn’t hear about either of them until days after they happened. That is how little they were on the national news. It is so sad that our society has started accepting these killing sprees as typical tragedies in this day and age.
I know it’s not the media’s intention (by not covering the story), but is it possible that killing sprees like this might seem less glamourous to the killers if there is not as much media hype? Wishful thinking, I guess. Truth is that it probably wouldn’t deter them one bit, as long as SOMEONE would notice.
The focus on identifying and treating those with mental illness should intensify 100 fold. It’s still so taboo in the media, and doesn’t garner the attention than it should.
It was complete craziness in Colo after Columbine happened. They covered that story for a very, very long time…
It’s weird the same didn’t happen here. I hope we are not becoming desensitized to this type of horror.
It IS sad that senseless violence like this just gets passed over so quickly. But that’s what’s gotta happen in reality. Life goes on regardless of what happens, whether it’s someone winning Olympic medals, a murder spree, or a home burning down. It’s news when it happens, but we can’t dwell on it.
This post raises a ton of questions (a.r.w, what is your question here?)
However, I’d like to specifically comment on the media, and how news is covered.
The media is simply complicit in the disaster-capitalist, corporate-driven, illusion of free-choice industrial complex that our world has become (or perhaps it always was, I’ll leave that for another day). All the top media organizations are controlled by some of the top corporations in America: GE, Westinghouse, etc.
News media is there to drive ratings, to pick up viewers, and to make a profit. The Columbine killings, the VTech shooting, these are tragic events. It’s easier to cover these events topically, rather than investigate their causes. There’s only so much straight-up reporting that you can assign to school shootings, so the coverage is usually pretty temporary.
Question is: What is driving this topical coverage? Are news viewers unwilling or uninterested to tune into coverage of school homicides?
Or are news organizations just not covering it enough, not conducting enough investigative journalism, not giving a voice to some of the reasons behind these events because it’s simply
A. Too hard
B. Not profitable enough (because lots of money has to be invested in these efforts) and thus they are discouraged from covering these events by the companies that control them.
there’s also another related answer that I think the ARW is attempting to cover at the end of her posting.
D. News coverage of depressing events that are often complicated and unfathomable distract us from being good citizens who go to the mall and buy new houses and furniture and dishwashers and khaki pants. The companies that control the media organizations would suffer if we didn’t run our credit card bills into the ground buying their products.
This topic requires much more exploration, but I hope this is a start of a conversation.
What’s more, I think the internet and blogging are two ways to build in some institutional memory into the news cycle. With all the sources of news available to us today, it’s impossible to fit everything into your head. Fortunately, there are people remembering these things, and entering them into the ether of the interwebs.
So, you might say, I disagree with Angela. The internet allows us to dwell on these things. And we should. Because they are wrong. Because they happen for reasons that are within us to change (voting for funding counselors in public schools, for handgun locks, for after-school programs).
Nothing happens in a bubble.
S — Where is your option “C?” You go directly to option “D” — which, by the way, I believe is absolutely right on. What sells more papers anyways? What gets a website more hits? Lindsay Lohan with no bra? Or a Nebraska school shooting? It’s tricky to see the answer to this question, especially since a bra-less Lindsay Lohan IS in the news everyday (and by news I mean the media that most Americans are paying attention to) whereas the Nebraska shooting was in the media for a matter of seconds. Then again, as Matt said in his comment, Columbine was all over the media for weeks, if not months, and is still recognized on its anniversary. Have we become desensitized to these types of events because they are happening more frequently? Do we, as Americans, care less about this? We’ve certainly done a good job at ignoring the occupation of Iraq for 5+ years.
I never even heard about this. It’s hard to predict what kind of affect this media trend will have on this behaviour because on the one hand, the homicidal maniacs might not be so swayed to do it if the country won’t give two shits about it, or they might have to just think above and beyond to gain the attention they want, which would mean even worse shootings. I mean, look at the difference between Columbine and Tech, the difference in what happened, people’s reactions, and the duration of the hype. It really could go either way from here, and though it is sad that we are becoming desensitized it might create the former trend I mentioned in which people don’t resort to such measures due to lack of attention. Then again, it could easily go the other way.
My ex-metaphysical-boyfriend Brian lives in Bellevue and was headed to the mall the day of the shooting. Luckily, he was planning to go later in the day. But dude, that scared me.