Friday, March 26, 2021
Texts and pretexts in the news (and sermons). Dante alive and well. Moving a house--in San Francisco.
The News as Moral Exhortation
The recent news cycle covering the Atlanta shooting illustrates how news works. The news media (reporting and commentary) regularly frame stories mostly as lessons to be learned and, unfortunately, fail to reveal the dynamics of what actually happened.
The Atlanta shootings, for example, immediately became a story about Asian prejudice, as dozens of stories highlighting Asian prejudice appeared in mainstream media. We should be aware of and lament racist behavior toward Asians in our land. If nothing else, prejudice of any sort is a failure to live up to our nation’s ideals.
It’s interesting to note, however, that there seems to be no evidence that the shooter was a racist—at least according to the FBI. This prompted a long essay by Andrew Sullivan on how the mainstream media drew conclusions where logic did not go.
Here’s the truth: We don’t yet know why this man did these horrible things. It’s probably complicated, or, as my therapist used to say, “multi-determined.” That’s why we have thorough investigations and trials in America. We only have one solid piece of information as to motive, which is the confession by the mass killer to law enforcement: that he was a religious fundamentalist who was determined to live up to chastity and repeatedly failed, as is often the case. Like the 9/11 bombers or the mass murderer at the Pulse nightclub, he took out his angst on the source of what he saw as his temptation, and committed mass murder. This is evil in the classic fundamentalist sense: a perversion of religion and sexual repression into violence….
We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in this man’s history. Maybe we will. We can’t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.
To be fair to the many journalists who immediately assumed the shooting was mostly about race: Asians experience prejudice at levels ranging from benign to violent. Given the admirable commitment of these journalists to battling racism, it’s only natural to relate such events to other anti-Asian incidents and to murmur about the evils of racism.
This move by journalists reminds me of many sermons I’ve heard over the years. The text for the day is about X but mentions Y incidently, and so the preacher uses the text as a pretext to talk about what he or she is most animated about at the moment. I often excuse the preacher if the subject of the sermon is something I agree with, but I become irritated if it is not. Depending on how the news media makes use of an event, I am similarly ambiguous about the practice.
Perhaps this is the way national news always works. Perhaps mainstream journalists have always thought their job is to discern the meaning of an event that accords with the current worldview and/or passions of the guardians of our culture, whether or not that event actually demonstrates that.
To be clear, this is not just a problem with “progressive media.” When it was revealed that the young man’s motive was a moral and religious conflict over his sexual impulses, many began to point to the supposed sexual oppressiveness of evangelical culture—especially the version known as purity culture. So evangelical David French wrote an analysis that seemed to assume that the young man’s problem was that he was influenced by evangelical purity culture—or that this is the sort of thing purity culture can lead to. As far as his critique of purity culture, I found myself nodding in emphatic agreement. But I have to admit that, as Justin Taylor noted, there is no evidence that the shooter was embedded in evangelical purity culture as such—giving another example of the divorce between text and pretext. To me, the young man’s anxiety over his sexual addiction sounds like something that could overtake anyone who obsesses over some ideal of their religion or politics.
As much as I sometimes excuse it, there is a serious problem when the media does this sort of thing. What suffers is not only the specificity of truth but also genuine compassion. Once the Atlanta story became about Asian prejudice, the six Asian women became mere symbols of a larger issue. And the two non-Asians became, well, invisible. And it was almost impossible to then explore what was unique and incomparable about these women, as well as the shooter, who became merely a symbol of hate.
When it comes to mass shooters and their victims, we’re entering the profound mystery of a human being gone seriously awry and of unjust and inexplicable suffering. I am wise to remember that we cannot understand such events in a week or two, and that instead of journalism, perhaps fiction (one might begin with Crime and Punishment) can help us better appreciate the unique and precious humanity of perpetrators and victims.
Dante Alive and Well
Speaking of gaining perspective: how about waiting some 700 years after the news? Like reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, which alludes to many scandalous incidents of his day. But as this Dante scholar notes, his great poem transcends his time.
Dante’s concerns in the poem are those of any thoughtful person in any age or place: what is it to be a human being? how do we judge human behavior? what is important in a life or a death? Human behavior, our own and other people’s, is at the core of human experience in this world. A poem which encourages us to reflect on that behavior in all its countless manifestations will always be relevant.
I bring up Dante because yet another pope sings his praises in a forthcoming apostolic letter on the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. And because a philosopher friend (HT to J. Wood) has become a Dante fan in his later years, encouraging me to spend more time with the great poet.
The Challenge of Moving
If you think moving your belongings from one house to another is a chore, think about moving a whole house to a new location—in San Francisco. This video, accompanied by energizing music from the “Peer Gynt Suite,” ended too soon. I wondered how they were going to back the house into the slim lot prepared for it. Here’s a video that shows some of that—start at 7:50.
Anyway, I want to hear no more whining about how much trouble it is to move….
Grace and peace,
Mark Galli