You Say Gaddafi, I Say Qaddafi
This post is the final one of the Mirror Series. If this is your first visit to the Mirror Series, please click here and follow the arrows at the top right of each post to read the series from the beginning. Thank you for reading!
I am officially disgusted with the American news media. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I try NOT to watch anything blaring from the major news outlets on television. I am selective about where I get my online news, and I have been a loyal reader of the New York Times for years. Surely an esteemed organization like the NY Times wouldn’t get caught up in the sleezy, icky, sensationalistic reporting we see everywhere else.
That notion was shot to smithereens when I opened the paper yesterday and saw a picture of Gaddafi‘s bullet-ridden carcass. Or Qaddafi. While our American news media cannot decide how to spell the man’s name, they are thrilled to show us slow-motion clips of blood spewing from his body. They can’t wait to show us images of him dead, Dead, DEAD.
Yes, I think he was a Very Bad Man. He did Very Bad Things. But do I really want to see him, or anyone else for that matter, expiring on my computer screen like a scene from a horror movie? Can I feel safe opening reputable publications these days, when one I respected sees fit to print his blood-spattered image on its pages?
When we hold ourselves up to the mirror, what does it say about us as a society that we clamor for constant images of destruction and death, yet we arrest people in our cities for violating a municipal ordinance against using a megaphone on a public street?
I am disgusted with what I see in our mirror.
