Leave it To Fox News

Fox News "War On Christmas" dipshit John Gibson has come out in defense of media obssesion with the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder case. Give him and Fox credit for addresing the controversy. All of the high brow media sources, (NPR, NYT) have also been sucked into the hype, and have chosen to defend their reputations by pretending that there is no controversy about it. For once, let's raise a glass to the pseudo-populists. Now lets get to the bigger problem.

"I think the no. 1 issue to people in this country of all races, both genders, and all economic backgrounds is their children. Here we've got a guy who is an admitted pedophile, who can be hear literally drooling over the thought of luscious little JonBenet." Gibson

All true enough. But human beings are not symbols. JonBenet Ramsey does not represent all children, all child murder victims, or even the general vulnerability of children. To continue to present her as such, now that she has been dead longer than she lived, is an unforgivible insult. As it is unforgivible to make a symbol out of anyone who was once a living individual; with sovereign feelings and concerns that probably didn't have a thing to do with yours.

Let's not think for a minute that the Ramsey case is purely altruistic. Human beings are still mostly animals, after all, and the only death that an animal can conceive of is being eaten by a predator. We humans know that we will die. Yet we still have a hard time understanding what that really means unless someone dies at the hands of a human "predator, be it a terrorist, sex offender, or random thug. The media know that these stories will attract our attention, and that our attention will attract advertisers. This is why a poor girl who was murdered last decade gets more attention than the millions of children who are dying of cancer, AIDS, or starvation right now.

This contributes to some disasterous real world effects. Tax money spent on weapons and prisons, when more lives would be saved if it were spent on hospitals and research. Parents investing in guns instead of doctors and healthy food for their kids. We have created a society where we are taught that the biggest thing we have to fear is each other. Needless to say, this does not create a society where people are willing to help each other. Instead, some have turned to the very law of the jungle that our species has spent a million years trying to escape. A Mad Max fantasy land where government serves no purpose beyond interfering with a man's ability to defend his tribe.