Say, what was all that fuss down in Ferguson about, anyway? According to This Town author Mark Leibovich, it’s just a lot of hot air from, you know, the media.
“In a less media-saturated time, we might have gone on to consider this serious news event on its own terms, with journalists providing facts and insights, and politicians pondering a course of action. But in the mixed-up scrum of politics and media that our so-called national conversation has become, a serious news event is only the start of the news. Soon after the shooting, the suburb of Ferguson became a roiling caldron of outside observers, all bent on “bearing witness” to the situation.”
So the whole question of whether flash grenades, tear gas, and sniper rifles are an appropriate response to a protest regarding the shooting death of an unarmed black man at the hands of a white policeman can be pushed off the table while Mark harrumphs about the way we live now—“ In what has been the most news-filled summer in recent memory, our leaders in the media-political class have been prodigiously bearing witness … to, well, something — Iraq, Syria, Gaza, the southern border, bullying, obesity, the ice-bucket challenge, Brangelina; LeBron returning to Cleveland; the soccer player who bit that guy’s shoulder; and Johnny Football’s middle finger.”
Can the issues raised by the police conduct in Ferguson, and by the arson and looting that unfortunately accompanied the protests, really be ranked with the ice-bucket challenge and “Brangelina”?* I know it’s easier to bitch about the media, and pretend that in the old days things were better, than to come up with some useful ideas about addressing the problems underlined by the events in Ferguson, but easy isn’t always worth a damn.
*Is “Brangelina” still a thing? Would a Kardashian or Beyoncé reference be perhaps more appropriate?
