I have to read Newsday for my PR position at Long Island Crisis Center. I normally don’t enjoy reading Newsday–I find it to be sensationalistic and it’s rhetoric paints only a slight gray between the Post and Daily New’s stark black-and-white, angels-and-demons view of the world. I oftentimes find myself thinking of that gray as a bridge between the more respectable Times and the filth of those other two.

But today’s 8-page spread on the Virginia Tech massacre was more than outrageous: it was irresponsible. Not only was the gunman glorified with a (terribly pixalated) full front-page headshot, but included in the spread (which was advertised on the front page: “8-Page Spread inside–Including Victims’ profiles–” like they were pop stars and we were going to learn their favorite color) was a chart-up of the guns he used–complete with crystal-clear pictures, the type of bullets each gun handles, and (oh, my, yes!) even pricing! Newsday is pretty strapped for profits these days; why not do a great advertising tie-in and put in some nice manufacturers’ coupons for a buy one, get-one-free on those killing machines? I mean–I’m an atheist–but Jesus Chrst, people!

And speaking of Jesus: Newsday’s favorite martyr, Cho, even went so far as to himself prophecy, in a posthumasly-released video, the reality the media-at-large has fulfilled by broadcasting it. Showing off his best English major chops, Cho recites:

“Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.”

Way-to-go, media! Cho is a Christ figure!

(I also wish 1010 WNYS would stop cheapening the horrible tragedy by referring to it as the “Virginia Tech Bloodbath.” Cho did not fill tubs with blood and force people to bathe in them– he shot a lot of people without remorse; calling it by such a cartoonish cliche is not only cheap, but also sick and heartless.)

My skin is crawling and my hands are shaking as I write this; I don’t know if it’s because I had to watch that video twice to transcribe the quote accurately or because I’m being suffocated by the layers of irony that surround the release of it in the name of such blatant glorification of all-things Cho. I’m waiting for Cho-themed T-shirts to go on sale on E-Bay. I don’t know what’s scarier, either: the fact that he had time to make the multimedia presentation and mail it off between sets of killings, the fact that he made it in full-knowledge it would be broadcast, or the fact that it actually was broadcast despite those other two embarrassingly frightening facts. It’s like he was stopping to call the kids between rounds of golf–except he was stopping to record a psychotic admission of guilt for the killings of over 30 innocent people. So I guess it was nothing like that at all, really, because it’s too fucked up to make any sense!

What kind of world is it we live in when the relationship between insane, lone gunman and media is so symbiotic that said insane, lone gunman knows to mail a cross-platform, media-friendly Press Kit to a major news media conglomorate right before he kills himself and 30 others? If this guy wasn’t a dead psychotic killer, I’d ask him for PR tips.

I work part-time for a multi-faceted not-for-profit that does more good for the world in one day than I could dream up in a thousand nights of sleep and we’re starving for media contacts and exposure. Yet, this guy with a penchant for guns and dark imagery kills 30 people and himself before I’ve even eaten breakfast and he’s mailing his portfolio to MSNBC for imediate broadcast all over the world! Am I the only one who sees this as fucked-up?

When Carol Kestenbaum and Nicole Shiffman were killed in Arizona, everyone at Long Island Crisis Center was personally affected. Carol Kestenbaum’s mother, Rita, is on our Board of Directors–she even used to be Vice President. I wrote a letter on behalf of the agency to Newsday and other local papers. In it, I wrote:

The need for friends and family to try to reach out and communicate with someone they feel may be suicidal or otherwise in pain, and to understand the warning signs of depression and suicide, are issues of great importance for counselors at Long Island Crisis Center—an organization whose board of directors Carol Kestenbaum’s mother Rita is a member of.

No amount of compassion and understanding can change what has already happened in Arizona, but we at LICC—and no one more so than Rita—also know that the need for compassion and understanding extends forward in time to those left after such a tragedy as well as backward to those who were directly involved in it. Grief at a terrible loss like this is hard for family members and friends, and the same communication and attention that was needed to prevent the tragedy is needed to overcome it. Our thoughts are with Rita during this difficult time.

It was never printed.

This year, Newsday awarded LICC a highly-sought-after $14,000 grant for our Street Outreach Project, so they must believe in what we do, right? I compose countless letters to the editor on topics such as the Children of Hope Hotline (which LICC operates), which I wrote over the winter after 2 or 3 babies were murdered before one unwanted baby was rescued due to the mother’s calling our hotline. None of my letters get printed by Newsday.

As Newsday pointed out, the similarities between Cho and Josh Mendel, the Arizona gunman, were glaringly obvious: the noticably “odd” behavior, the seclusion, the penchant for obsession and stalking. Mendel had reached out several times to family, even calling the cops begging for some help. The cop who arrived at his home told him: “There’s nothing we can do for you.”

Man-of-the-hour, Cho, was so desperate for an end to his self-descried “heartache,” he made some videos and snapped some photos, then sent them off to MSNBC in a sort of fucked-up, hyperreal, macabre version of a MySpace page.

The Crisis Center deals on a day-to-day basis with people facing these kinds of feelings of isolation, fear, anger, and disgust. When someone kills a bunch of people or their newborn baby, Newsday doesn’t come to places like LICC for a positive alternative to the grim result, it chooses to obsssively focus on the grim result, painting it as an ever-increasing drama of reality. A world of fear, detatchment, and disillusionment.

People who already feel this way–people like Cho and Mendel and the two at Columbine whose names I don’t even have the strength to bring myself to look up on Google–see a killer not only glorified, but painted as a harbringer of ever-impressive force, and their brains light up with ideas. Think about it: all of these killers have many things in common (race, age, to name a few), but the biggest commonality is their lonliness and desperation to be liked. They want attention and detest the things society loves instead of them. But wait–this one thing about society is something they can relate to: a sick fascination with gruesome death!

“Perfect!” Shouts Cho. “I love gruesome death, too! And you’re telling me if I fulfill my wildest fantasy, then people will finally glorify me for the powerful individual I really, truly am?!?! Fucking sweet! Gimme some guns and a camera!”

At LICC, we have community educators who go into schools to talk to kids openly about issues like self-injury, suicide, and homophobia. Sometimes–not too often, but often enough to surprise me–they face resistence from school administrators who fear that talking about these subjects will promote them, or plant them in the precious, innocent, unassuming minds of our youth. In the meantime, I know more kids who self-injure than don’t, and most people admit to suicidal ideation at some point in their lives. They all wish they’d had someone to talk to. It’s called normalizing, when someone tells you: you’re not alone, your feelings are natural. It’s a simple but powerful message.

So it amazes me to see the glorification of such grotesque human behavior; newspaper sales spike up when murder is on the front page and papers like Newsday shamelessly play into it. How is the media not supposed to act when that frontpage news is mailed right to them by the very subject? The shot on the cover of Newsday isn’t a criminal’s mugshot–it’s a celebrity’s headshot. Even (especially?) derranged, anti-social teenage boys want to be famous, and to them, “famous” is spelled C-O-P-Y-C-A-T. Cho himself glorified the Columbine two, calling them “martyrs.” This does more than suggest a unifying ideal–it cements one. And that is: your hatred and disillusionment–the very things which cause people to not like you–when taken to the extreme, will make everyone pay attention. It used to be when everyone in high school made fun of you because you were different and ugly, you took that passion and became Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix. You still died young, you still killed yourself, but you did so creating and without hurting others. Now, apparently, the thing is to become an eternal monster.

I keep retruning to that chart in Newsday on the guns Cho used. It reminds of a discussion we had today at work about a poster I helped design for an anonymous gang violence tip hotline. When we brought it to the school district who funded us on the project, a very tiny–but very loud–minority was outraged that the poster included a photo of a man holding a handgun behind his back. Above the photo, it reads: “Speak up before something goes Down,” then it gives the number below the photo and underneath the photo it reads: “Call today, before you regret tomorrow.” Again: a powerful and simple message.

This loud minority, however, ignorantly believes the discreet photo of a gun hung in a school (regardless of the context) will promote bringing a gun to school?!?! WTF?!?! The difference between the poster and the coverage of the Virgina Massacre is context. The poster’s message clearly does not promote violence, but in speaking up against violence you know might occur, though I wish that the media shared this minority’s same frame of mind in relation to turning desperate killers into idols.

This idolatry shouldn’t surprise me (it does), though, because it extends even into the supposedly positive messages we receive from the media. Who are our biggest heroes? Bigger even than celebrities? That’s right: cops.

In a seemingly related picture alongside one of the pages in Newsday’s coverage of the shootings, a white cop is holding a rifle at a random black man, who is lying facedown on the ground. The caption reads: An unidentified man is held at gunpoint during the manhunt on the Virginia tech campus.

The subtext of the picture is that, in the face of such chaos, the cops are trying to do what they can to restore order. We are supposed to view the cop as a restorative power, but look at where his power lies: in his gun. The very thing which Cho thought gave him his power is what we are subconsciously told to trust in. And we wonder why violence is idolized in this country? Even amidst such horrifying violence and death, we are told more violence and death is the answer. It’s the message our president sends us as well: freedom isn’t free, war is the answer. Of course Cho would turn to guns to try and attain power in a society where you’re constantly told that defeaing people is the only way to do so. Death is, after all, the ultimate defeat. A kid like Cho sees that photo and all he sees is a gun. Cops are heoes, cops are respected, cops have guns.

Look at the way cops are glamorized: a man kills a cop (who has a gun to protect himself with in just such an occasion) and he’s labeled a brutal, heartless murderer who deseves death row. A cop (or three) kills an unarmed man in a deluge of 30 some-odd bullets and we’re told they should get a slap on the wrist because they “were acting in good faith and trying to serve and protect.” Serve and protect whom? And if shooting an unarmed man is good faith, what the fuck is ungood faith?

The only ungood faith I see is the media’s ungood faith in our society’s intelligence and compassion. (I feel the need to clearly state that I in no way endorse any kind violence or could ever be violent myself–that I agree with what Cho did is NOT what I mean to say when I say what I will say next; I think I’ve made it obvious that this whole event is disgusting. I mean only that the blame for Cho does not lie entirely with him (but rather, also with the media who helped fuel him and continues to simultaneously do that while fueling possible future Chos by glorifying him), and I can sympathize with someone who feels as though those in power are foolish and have given up or never even tried in the first place.) But if I were to believe in what the papers say, I’d feel a lot like Cho when he said, “You loved inducing cancer in my head and fear in my heart… You have blood on your hands today.”