The L word
Excerpts from the crime chapter in Anneli Rufus' book "Party of One: the loner's manifesto"
I wish you could all read this chapter in it's entirety. I just copied out a few paragraphs. Sorry for typos.
The author's book introduction is here www.annelirufus.com but i wanted to focus on the media's use of this word. the news has got me all worked up.
"Like the bogeyman and the witches and ogres in fairy tales, the criminal-as-loner serves a social function. It sets the criminal apart from ordinary people, from the masses, designating him as a freak, a demon, an alien. This ties up matters neatly. It explains things. No "normal" person-one with friends and family, who says hello to his neighbors, who is recognizable as one of the mainstream tribe-- would rape a toddler or feed his murdered wife's corpse to a wood chipper. (The weirder and more perverse the crime, the more rapidly the press starts calling the perpetrator a loner) Declaring criminals loners -especially the sickest- is a form of primitive self-defense. It sets crime and the criminal mind safely outside the familiar realm of the majority. It is a way of saying this could never happen here. the kind of person who does that could never possibly be one of us. ...To ensure his separateness, to quarantine him, fling him beyond recogniability, sympathy, and even humanity, call him a loner.
While serving this purpose, the neutral word "loner" acquires a hideous coating.
But learning the true stories of criminals who are called loners in the press reveals, with striking frequency that these are not genuine loners. At first glance, they look or act like loners, but they are not. They do not wish to be alone. Their dislike of being alone is what drives them to violence.....
In the autumn of 2001, after anthrax spores sent through the mail killed several Americans, the FBI issued an official profile of the sender. "Loner Likley Sent Anthrax, FBI Says," ran the to LA times hedline. "FBI looking for a loner," declared Taiwan's Taipei Times. Other papers and networks worldwide joined the chorus. The profile also suggested that the killer was a 20 something American male scientist, familiar with New Jersey, who tended to hold grudges. While these details were mentioned in the articles, they did not make it to the headlines. Front pages did not scream, "Garden State grudge-holder sought" or "FBI pegs chemists." Of all the possible earmarks, "loner" took the hit.
If "driving while black" is cause for suspicion, then driving while a loner is none to safe, either. Imagine the uproar if all the articles cited so far in this chapter had used the words "Canadian" or "CPA" instead of "loner."
....What we have here is a crisis of semantics. The word "loner" based on the shallowest impressions of surface apperances, is being used wholesale to tar an amazing diversty of people- most of them not loners- with the same mucky brush. This crisis not only insults true loners, criminalizing innocent people through wrongheaded logic and myopic observation. It also keeps any actual criminals free, evading suspician as they bask in the safety of neither being nor appearing to be loners.
I wish you could all read this chapter in it's entirety. I just copied out a few paragraphs. Sorry for typos.
The author's book introduction is here www.annelirufus.com but i wanted to focus on the media's use of this word. the news has got me all worked up.
"Like the bogeyman and the witches and ogres in fairy tales, the criminal-as-loner serves a social function. It sets the criminal apart from ordinary people, from the masses, designating him as a freak, a demon, an alien. This ties up matters neatly. It explains things. No "normal" person-one with friends and family, who says hello to his neighbors, who is recognizable as one of the mainstream tribe-- would rape a toddler or feed his murdered wife's corpse to a wood chipper. (The weirder and more perverse the crime, the more rapidly the press starts calling the perpetrator a loner) Declaring criminals loners -especially the sickest- is a form of primitive self-defense. It sets crime and the criminal mind safely outside the familiar realm of the majority. It is a way of saying this could never happen here. the kind of person who does that could never possibly be one of us. ...To ensure his separateness, to quarantine him, fling him beyond recogniability, sympathy, and even humanity, call him a loner.
While serving this purpose, the neutral word "loner" acquires a hideous coating.
But learning the true stories of criminals who are called loners in the press reveals, with striking frequency that these are not genuine loners. At first glance, they look or act like loners, but they are not. They do not wish to be alone. Their dislike of being alone is what drives them to violence.....
In the autumn of 2001, after anthrax spores sent through the mail killed several Americans, the FBI issued an official profile of the sender. "Loner Likley Sent Anthrax, FBI Says," ran the to LA times hedline. "FBI looking for a loner," declared Taiwan's Taipei Times. Other papers and networks worldwide joined the chorus. The profile also suggested that the killer was a 20 something American male scientist, familiar with New Jersey, who tended to hold grudges. While these details were mentioned in the articles, they did not make it to the headlines. Front pages did not scream, "Garden State grudge-holder sought" or "FBI pegs chemists." Of all the possible earmarks, "loner" took the hit.
If "driving while black" is cause for suspicion, then driving while a loner is none to safe, either. Imagine the uproar if all the articles cited so far in this chapter had used the words "Canadian" or "CPA" instead of "loner."
....What we have here is a crisis of semantics. The word "loner" based on the shallowest impressions of surface apperances, is being used wholesale to tar an amazing diversty of people- most of them not loners- with the same mucky brush. This crisis not only insults true loners, criminalizing innocent people through wrongheaded logic and myopic observation. It also keeps any actual criminals free, evading suspician as they bask in the safety of neither being nor appearing to be loners.