(no subject)
Memetics at work:
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.
....
"Everything was embellished, everything was exaggerated," said Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley. "If one guy said he saw six bodies, then another guy the same six, and another guy saw them - then that became 18."
I had a feeling things were more like this than the war-torn American Mogadishu we were all informed had taken place. I'm really sick and tired of the stories circulating around the internets about the savage, uncivilized masses taking over the Convention Center (and even more so of holier-than-thou spectators complaining about the attitudes of the displaced people) and so here's hoping that the real story of the Convention Center - that the only suffering was totally and completely at the hands of the government - grows legs and makes the rounds. It's doubtful, though. It doesn't play into any previously held stereotypes about poor people, people of color, or urban people, and it doesn't let middle class white people comfort themselves with the knowledge that this couldn't happen to them. Therefore, it is of little to no use in the popular media.
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Speaking of fucked up beliefs within the popular imagination and victim blaming, check out this account of the rumors which surfaced after the Kent State shootings:
[A]fter four students at Kent State University were shot and killed by members of the Ohio National Guard, several rumors quickly spread: (1) both of the women who were slain were pregnant (and therefore, by implication, were oversexed and wanton); (2) the bodies of all four students were crawling with lice; and (3) the victims were so ridden with syphilis that they would have been dead in 2 weeks anyway. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, these rumors were totally untrue. The slain students were all clean, decent, bright people. Indeed, two of them were not even involved in the
demonstrations that resulted in the tragedy but were peacefully walking across campus when they were gunned down. Why were the townspeople so eager to believe and spread these rumors? It is impossible to know for sure, but my guess is that it was [...] because the rumors were comforting. Picture the situation: Kent is a conservative small town in Ohio. Many of the townspeople were infuriated at the radical behavior of some of the students. Some were probably hoping the students would get their comeuppance, but death was more than they deserved. In such circumstances, any information putting the victims in a bad light helped to reduce dissonance by implying that it was, in fact, a good thing that they died.
The rest of the post is really good, addressing the 'just world' hypothesis, which is basically the idea that the universe is inherently ordered and just. Except, not in the lovely Buddhist sense of karma or the Wiccan sense of threefolds. Rather, bad things happen to bad people, and good people make good decisions, which keep them out of harms way. You don't have to be a genius to know what a crock of horseshit that belief system is. Unsurprising, as the primary adherents of the 'just world' hypothesis tend to be:
people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to "feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims."
Ironically, then, the belief in a just world may take the place of a genuine commitment to justice. For some people, it is simply easier to assume that forces beyond their control mete out justice.
Fascinating stuff.
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This is a cool NYT article about the increasing number of doulas. ciaraxyerra wrote a lot about doulas in one of her issues of her zine (can't remember which one), which was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing. I'm glad to see it taking off, because I love the idea that the mother receives just as much love and care as her baby does. Pregnancy and childbirth seem like such uniquely terrifying (to me, anyway) experiences that to have someone holding your hand through the entire process would be invaluable.
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This week is Banned Books Week. I urge you to read at least one from this list. You know what that means! Time to bust out the Judy Blume. Awww yeah.
Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.
"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.
The real total was six, Beron said.
Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.
....
"Everything was embellished, everything was exaggerated," said Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley. "If one guy said he saw six bodies, then another guy the same six, and another guy saw them - then that became 18."
I had a feeling things were more like this than the war-torn American Mogadishu we were all informed had taken place. I'm really sick and tired of the stories circulating around the internets about the savage, uncivilized masses taking over the Convention Center (and even more so of holier-than-thou spectators complaining about the attitudes of the displaced people) and so here's hoping that the real story of the Convention Center - that the only suffering was totally and completely at the hands of the government - grows legs and makes the rounds. It's doubtful, though. It doesn't play into any previously held stereotypes about poor people, people of color, or urban people, and it doesn't let middle class white people comfort themselves with the knowledge that this couldn't happen to them. Therefore, it is of little to no use in the popular media.
------
Speaking of fucked up beliefs within the popular imagination and victim blaming, check out this account of the rumors which surfaced after the Kent State shootings:
[A]fter four students at Kent State University were shot and killed by members of the Ohio National Guard, several rumors quickly spread: (1) both of the women who were slain were pregnant (and therefore, by implication, were oversexed and wanton); (2) the bodies of all four students were crawling with lice; and (3) the victims were so ridden with syphilis that they would have been dead in 2 weeks anyway. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, these rumors were totally untrue. The slain students were all clean, decent, bright people. Indeed, two of them were not even involved in the
demonstrations that resulted in the tragedy but were peacefully walking across campus when they were gunned down. Why were the townspeople so eager to believe and spread these rumors? It is impossible to know for sure, but my guess is that it was [...] because the rumors were comforting. Picture the situation: Kent is a conservative small town in Ohio. Many of the townspeople were infuriated at the radical behavior of some of the students. Some were probably hoping the students would get their comeuppance, but death was more than they deserved. In such circumstances, any information putting the victims in a bad light helped to reduce dissonance by implying that it was, in fact, a good thing that they died.
The rest of the post is really good, addressing the 'just world' hypothesis, which is basically the idea that the universe is inherently ordered and just. Except, not in the lovely Buddhist sense of karma or the Wiccan sense of threefolds. Rather, bad things happen to bad people, and good people make good decisions, which keep them out of harms way. You don't have to be a genius to know what a crock of horseshit that belief system is. Unsurprising, as the primary adherents of the 'just world' hypothesis tend to be:
people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to "feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims."
Ironically, then, the belief in a just world may take the place of a genuine commitment to justice. For some people, it is simply easier to assume that forces beyond their control mete out justice.
Fascinating stuff.
-----
This is a cool NYT article about the increasing number of doulas. ciaraxyerra wrote a lot about doulas in one of her issues of her zine (can't remember which one), which was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing. I'm glad to see it taking off, because I love the idea that the mother receives just as much love and care as her baby does. Pregnancy and childbirth seem like such uniquely terrifying (to me, anyway) experiences that to have someone holding your hand through the entire process would be invaluable.
-----
This week is Banned Books Week. I urge you to read at least one from this list. You know what that means! Time to bust out the Judy Blume. Awww yeah.