Kendall Stanley: Feeding the insanity
It’s a new breed of journalist, one brought to the forefront by an intractable problem we have here in America — the mass shooting reporter.
Schools, churches, Wal-Marts, synagogues, concerts — you name it, the mass shooting reporters are on their way. It both saddens and angers, saddens because it shouldn’t be this way, angers because efforts to stop or at least slow the killings goes wanting.
An organization that keeps track of mass shootings notes we’ve had more than 600 this year — a shooting every few days.
The most recent came at the Club Q nightclub in Colorado Springs and at a Wal-Mart out east in Virginia.
The shooting at a gay nightclub should come as no surprise. Leading up to the midterm elections there was a huge amount of anti-gay and anti-transgender rhetoric ranging from the choice of books in school and public libraries to flat out verbal expression of hate.
Club Q was similar to other gay bars in the country, a place where members of the LGBTQ+ community could come together, be themselves, not be judged. The bars serve as community centers, providing for the members of their community.
Outside the doors there was hate and at the least misunderstanding, inside the embrace of their community, no questions asked.
But how, one wonders, are we able to hold all the politicians who vilified their fellow citizens for supposed electoral gain to task?
It’s especially galling when the term in our prayers is used. What kind of prayer can you offer up after spewing hate for years? Would God even accept them?
So after a week of violence, the mass shooting reporters can still be taken aback by the responses to their efforts.
“When it comes to covering these mini war zones, reporters on the home frontare beginning to sound like veteran correspondents,” wrote columnist Greg Sargent in The Washington Post. “After a man with an AR-15 killed five people in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs last weekend, Ashley Michels, a reporter at a Denver TV station, offered some grimly revealing testimony.
“Unfortunately, I have covered mass shootings multiple times in my career,” Michels tweeted. She posted examples of vitriolic messages she received for covering that mass killing, adding, “This is the first time I can recall getting message after message from viewers like this.”
“The vile, deranged hate directed at LGBTQ victims was new to Michels. The experience of covering a mass shooting was not.”
Even in death the haters offer no rest for the victims.
Club Q wasn’t the first queer club to be the target of a killer. The Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL, was the scene of a shooting that killed 49, not including the gunman, back in 2016.
As someone noted on their Facebook page, all they wanted to do was dance.
More and more Americans have become openly welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community, same sex partners and marriage. But not all and it is those we have to fear.
An early start
Although Mother Nature warmed up enough to melt most of the snow dumped on us a couple weeks ago at least temperatures for a few days stayed low enough that our area ski resorts managed to lay down enough snow for a Thanksgiving weekend opening.
It is a blessing to an industry that is heavily dependent on the weather.
While tourism is big business in these parts only a little rain will keep you off the golf course. Unless there are storms with heavy seas, boating is a go. And if you’re lucky enough to own or can rent a cottage by a lake, well, that’s what we up here call lake life.
But to ski you need snow on the ground. Snowmaking efforts demand at the least cold temperatures and while effective, you can’t count on it.
So here’s to all the snow farmers working their magic on slopes around the area to provide for winter tourism!
And don’t worry, more natural snow is on the way as we settle into winter.
— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: Feeding the insanity
