*February 15, 2018–Yesterday, a young man walked into a high school in Parkland, Florida and shot 17 people. Since I first wrote the angry piece below, there have been 162 school related shootings in the United States. Incidents from a pellet gun aimed at a passing school bus to the unthinkable massacre of 20 first-grade children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary. I’ve not included the mass shootings which happened outside of schools–and there have been many. Clearly, no one has done anything to prevent these senseless tragedies from happening, nor do they seem to care.
It’s not an accident that on days like today, the newspaper is folded in a particular way when I slide it from its clear bag. The “Currents-Health” section is strategically viewed first, along with the latest piece on “Portion Patrol.” But the largest article on the page, “A sense of urgency” seems vague so I’m forced to flip it over to find information that will help me know if my indigestion is bad enough to seek assistance at the ER. This is where the publisher’s strategy of trying to cover up the main page headlines fails, because now I can see them. And even though I knew they’d be there today, they are sobering. How can they not be? And how can I not read what’s written there regardless of how sad and angry it makes me?
Quite a long time ago, our local paper ran a dramatic and now famous photograph on its front page of a fireman carrying a small child from the rubble of a building destroyed by a monster. So many people complained about the inappropriateness of that photo being the first thing they saw that morning when they opened the paper, that now, sensitive material is always buried behind another section. Or tastefully covered, so that it can be avoided, or perhaps made more palatable after readers have had the opportunity to peruse something far more important about how granola “hangs with bad calories,” or whether that fart stuck crosswise is worth seeing a doctor about. (more…)