Third Post: The Jena 6 Coverage
To be honest, I hadn't really kept up with the whole Jena 6 thing. I know it's a cause celebre being championed by Al Sharpton; I know that six black kids beat a white kid into a 3-hour mini-coma, and that they were subsequently charged with attempted murder. I didn't really see any legitimate controversy. Of course there is the usual blind solidarity one sees from some of the more prominent members of the NAACP, in this case unhappy with the attempted murder charge. To which I say, you don't pit six guys against one if all you're looking for is a fight; they should have reasonably known that a fight stacked that ridiculously to one side puts the one in reasonable fear for his life. I would think that much was common sense. I was prepared to just ignore the rest of the coverage, however, there were some black students at the free speech area the other day, one just silently holding a rather poorly-tied hangman's noose. I think this could be considered a sort of coverage, albeit one lacking subtlety and any sense of objectivity. The Jena 6 thing wouldn't be such a big deal if there weren't people across the country with small demonstrations like this one, and I bet I'm not the first one to get new information walking by one.
I generally try to ignore racial issues, as they seem to only drive people apart, rather than make forward progress. For my money, taking sides in a legal case where one side's cause of action goes to race usually equates to choosing between a rotten guy and a rottener guy, with both sides racing to the nearest collection of cameras to talk about how they're fighting for justice, to implicitly call the other guy a racist, and to generally make melodramatic and indignant noises for as long as those cameras are on. I try to ignore these cases because after watching the whole process repeat itself to the point of predictability, they began to annoy.
However, that noose got my attention, as it was surely intended to, and once I got over the poor knot-tying skills, I got on some cable news and the BBC online. The BBC had an article about how David Bowie gave $10,000 to help in the Jena 6's defense. Predictably, the NAACP' chairman put words in Bowie's mouth by saying that he "shares our outrage." And that pretty much set the tone for the rest of my afternoon, as almost every article quoted someone who either felt vehemently that the Jena 6 were wronged, or someone that tip-toed around the idea that they did viciously beat another kid in a six-to-one fight, and that they can legally be tried as adults under certain circumstances, this being one of them. Honestly, I just hope the whole thing ends soon so I can stop hearing about it. I know that sounds apathetic, but even the most shocking case can be made to bore people if you put it on every news channel 24/7 day after day. To sum up, I would characterize the media's coverage of the whole Jena issue as obsessive, sensationalized, and (quite literally) mind-numbingly ubiquitous.
