Long Rant Ahead

[oloriel]

Read it anyway, if you have the time and nerves and English skills, because I am using my best rhetorics and putting all my passion in it and actually mentioning recent political , and all that jazz.

In the olden days, when the end of my high school days was in sight and I had to think about a career, I wanted to become a journalist. It seemed like a good way to combine my interests (such as writing, or travelling, or attending interesting events) with the inadvertant need to earn money. Well, yes, I am fairly shy, and I generally don't like provoking people, and I don't easily ask uncomfortable questions, but I figured I might learn that in the end, or do the sort of journalism where you don't need to talk to strangers much and certainly don't have to push them into admit them things they want to keep secret. I mean, I never dreamed of being the next David Frost or anything. Actually I never wanted to be a tv or radio journalist. I just wanted to write newspaper articles. Not even necessarily for a big newspaper like Die Welt or The Times; a nice, high-quality local paper would have been perfectly fine. (Yes, a shocking lack of ambition, I know - my parents and various parents of friends, who all felt like my guidance counsellors, certainly thought and said so.) It even gave me an excuse for the weird subjects I chose for university - they were perhaps not obvious choices, but they all kind of made sense in the context of "I want to be a journalist" (although my self-proclaimed guidance counsellors would, of course, ask why Japanese instead of Chinese, with Japan's economy on the way down and China on the way up (hah) and who wouldn't even understand when I told them I'd TRIED Chinese in school, I tried for TWO YEARS, and I just can't do it; not because of the Hanzi, which are bad enough, but because of the melody and lack of anything a non-English European would grace with the name of "grammar"*; and besides, what made them think that I wanted to write on economy anyway, seeing how in my opinion economy is doubtlessly important but nonetheless dreadfully boring). I did the internships and got the freelancer job and everything.

And then I kind of lost interest and just kept up the "newspaper journalism" excuse so I had something to say when people asked (as they often did and still do) "And what are you going to do with that?!" until I came up with "translation".

And now I think that Gods (because one is actually not enough to make clear how emphatically I am thinking this), journalism is such a CRAPPY business. Not specialist journalism, Chili, you've got my full envy for that, nor travel journalism, nor art journalism (although there's an awful lot of snobbery there) or even sports journalism (although I still can't see the thrill in writing about soccer clubs or olympic field hockey, but then I don't care much about soccer anyway, and I am certain that anyone who loves soccer and writing can find great joy in writing about soccer in the paper, just as anyone who loves economy, little though I can understand it, would find joy in writing about the stock market for money).
Currently we have two prime examples of the Crappiness Of Everyday Journalism in Germany, or more if you want to look further. But there's two that have moved me to write this ranty entry - gasp, shock, and that I, who generally don't (is that Latinate? It may be Latinate. If it's Latinate instead of Idiomatic: pretend I wrote "doesn't") write much about politics or recent events beyond my own horizon unless on a level of International Significance - so this is going to be centered on those two.

Because sometimes I catch articles/ reports - even I, who don't (see above) currently read many newspapers, or listen obsessively to the news - and immediately feel the urge to headdesk a lot (or, better, find the journalists and desk their heads in the hope that it helps). Instead of headdesking, I shall rant.

Case in point 1: The Althaus Case. The Althaus case, for those of you not German or Austrian or masochistic enough to follow German or Austrian news, began two months ago, with a German politician (Thuringia, CDU (Christian Democratic Union, which is less horrible than it sounds; in terms of US politics, the CDU would still be on the far left of the Republicans, even though they're right-wing) who during his skiing vacations accidentally crashed into another skier, killing her. A tragic accident, you might say, except with a politician involved any tragic accident would turn juicy.
Now as I said this happened over two months ago, Althaus has been condemned for Negligent Homicide (which even I, being neither a fan of politicians nor of accidents in general and accidents that kill people in particular, find kind of random, but ok), and you might think that about settles the matter.
But no.
Althaus, himself recovering from heavy head injuries after the above-mentioned accident, has announced that he wants not only to stay in politics, but run for prime minister of Thuringia (his current office) again come the next legislative period.
And that makes our beloved newspapers and radios and magazines and tv shows ask some questions I just don't get.
For example: Can a man who killed a woman (wife, mother, ...) ever, ever, ever talk about things like morals or road safety again?

And I go, Dude, what kind of idiot asks that question in that context?
I mean, what happened (so far as it can be reconstructed, with no witnesses and one of the two people involved dead and the other suffering from traumatic brain injury) is that he apparently took a turn where it wasn't planned by the designers of the slope - into the wrong direction, yes - and collided with another skier - and he wore a helmet and she didn't - which is why he was hospitalised with a traumatic brain injury whereas she died on the way to hospital - and yes, it's a tragedy, it is, because a human being died because of an unnecessary wrong turn -
But here's the news flash.
Skiing up a slope the wrong way is NOT AMORAL. Not even if it results in a crash that kills a human being. It's not like Althaus met Mrs. Christandl during a wild après-ski party, drank to much, tried to have sex with her and bashed her head with a ski boot when she refused his advances. It's not even like he saw her driving down the other slope while taking another and thought, "Teehee, let's take a turn up that slope and swerve right past her so she gets a fright!" which went wrong because he didn't manage the swerve. From all that can be reconstructed, he took a wrong turn because he had speed enough to go a bit up the other slope and thus prolong the fun until he had to take the lift again (something I, neither a superior nor an obsessive skier, have done many, many, many times). Unfortunately the other slope wasn't empty: there was another skier. Unfortunately the two - she, going downhill; he, going uphill - didn't pass each other as has happened in many such cases before (or so I assume: so it has happened when I took a wrong turn because I had speed enough to go a bit uphill to prolong the fun) but collided. Tragic? Gods, yes. Unnecessary? Doubtlessly. Amoral? NO. Nor is skiing up a slope the wrong way the same thing as, say, taking a one-way street the other way. Sad though the accident is, terrible though the loss of life is, it doesn't really have any impact on Mr Althaus' aptitude to talk about morals, road safety or quality management on skiing equipment for all I care.

Or, another not quite so random question, How come that no woman or man could be a politician with any kind of criminal record, moreover one for Neglicient Homicide, but this one isn't kicked out of office and even wants to run for prime minister again?

And I go, Dude, yes, it is sad that any other woman or man would have trouble with their political career for a crime as trivial as an unpaid parking fine, but THE WHOLE BLOODY REPUBLIC (and probably all of its neighbouring countries, this being a small country in a small continent where, if you were to drive in any direction from anywhere in the country, you'd be in a different country within less than ten hours) took part in this case and knows about just what (probably) happened. This is not a criminal record for Owning Child Pornography or Base Murder, it's an unfortunate accident that could have happened to the best of us and got over-exposed in the media.

The stupid, it burns us.

Case in point 2: A few days ago, a student went on a rampage in a small town in Southern Germany, killing 16 people. A tragedy: A 17-year-old student takes his father's (legally owned but not legally safe-kept) Beretta and shoots several students and teachers at his own school, and someone working in the garden along his escape route, and some random people in a car. Bad enough as it is; made worse by media coverage.

I don't know what the most common explanation for students running beserk with a gun is in the US (the lax gun laws, I assume) is, but in Germany it is "Killer Games" (meaning computer games like Battlefield or Half Life in which you get to virtually kill virtual people). Whenever someone runs berserk and kills other people? Killer games. The evils of computers, the intarwebs and "killer games" are boundless.
Aside from the fact that I find that vaguely absurd (I mean, thousands of people play "killer games" without ever feeling the need to kill real people), the proportions the "killer game" scare or the ev0l internets scare are bizarre.

Yesterday I read on the news ticker that "police had to research the motive again after the lead concerning an internet chat log turned out to be fake". Said internet chat log - possibly fake, possibly true - recorded the student (who killed himself after killing 15 other people and thus cannot be interrogated) saying something along the lines of "I'm gonna shoot those bastards at my school" in an online chat, which elicited comments along the lines of "Yeah right" and "Pics or it didn't happen".
THAT is not a motive. THAT is not even encouragement. NO, dear politicians, It doesn't prove that "the youth of today" (whatever that may be) is blood-thirsty. If one of my online acquaintances said "Dude, I could kill that asshole", I wouldn't be particularly alarmed, because, depressing though it is, in most cases it is just a figure of speech. Fake or not, "pics or it didn't happen" hardly makes for "those guys goaded him on! Ev0l chatrooms". "Pics or it didn't happen" might, at best (worst), be interpreted as the bit that pushed him across the line. There must still have been something that made him go "I'll kill those bastards" in the first place.

Or: "The culprit had learned to shoot straight and true by playing killer games." Excuse me, but... how does someone learn to shoot straight and true by shooting virtual people by means of a mouse-click or a joy-stick? I am not going to claim that I know much about firearms - all I ever learned to use was an air gun - but I doubt that shooting with a real gun is the same thing as shooting with a pixel gun triggered by a mouse-click. Perhaps, very perhaps, you may lose your restraints against shooting a real human being if you've shot too many virtual human beings, and I am willing to dispute even that, because - as mentioned above - thousands of people shoot virtual people without ever feeling the urge to shoot real people.

More likely is that there's just a certain amount of people who play "killer games" who also run berserk. Just as there's a certain amount of people who... wear underpants and run berserk. Or who like to eat pizza and run berserk.

But if you look at the media, and the comments of politicians...
Never mind that the culprit was depressive and broke off his therapy (yes, I know that the parents by now denied that he ever was in therapy, but you know what I would do if my son had killed 15 people and himself with a gun I'd negligently left open in my bedroom? There's one thing worse than leaving your gun around your 17-year-old son, and that's leaving your gun around your mentally unstable 17-year-old son if you know he's mentally unstable).
Never mind that the culprit was being mobbed and ridiculed in school. Revenge for the humiliation he experienced? Ah, no. After all, that would in a way hold anyone accountable who ever mobbed That Fat Guy/ That Geek Girl/ That Fag/ That Wallflower back in school.
Never mind that the culprit owned several soft-air guns with which he was apparently competent, training - legally - to hit home with a gun much closer to the real thing than, say, a computer mouse.
NEVER MIND THAT THE FATHER OWNED REAL WEAPONS AND AMMUNITION AND LEFT THEM AROUND WHERE THEY COULD EASILY BE OBTAINED - this being a criminal act in Germany - WHICH MADE THE WHOLE THING POSSIBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
No, it was the ev0l internets, more particularly the ev0l killer games of the computerised world, that made it happen. Ev0l bloodthirsty people goading the culprit on in online chats. Ev0l bloody games making him proficient in the art of killing people, and dulling him to the fact of killing people.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, this being not only a small country but also a country where the majority of people is older than 40.
At the current speed of technological development, the rift between generations has grown far wider than in an age when, say, the biggest technologically breakthrough was Moveable Type. People who are now 40, like the parent-generation, do not (gerenally) understand much about the life-world of people who are now 20.
People who are now 50, like the politician generation, understand less. Chatrooms? Weblogs? Computer games? Strange things from another planet. Incomprehensible, alien, threatening. "Killer games" can comfortably be blamed for all the evils of the world. Althaus probably played Grand Theft Ski 3 before that fateful accident. Probably Osama bin Laden sits in a cave somewhere, obsessively playing Half-Life. With all the blood patches.

This kind of idiocy has reached the point where I am prepared to side with whoever the media picked as their enemy of choice, like the Colognian Traffic Company. Whether or not they deserve the enmity. ARGH.

I suppose this should motivate me to become a journalist after all: The good kind who exposes this kind of idiocy for the idiocy it is. If there were world enough, and time... as it is, I am tired of just reading the bullshit. Denouncing/ exposing would, at length, break me, I think.
Or make me run berserk. Let it be known here: THE MEDIA MADE ME DO IT.

Besides, I just don't want to have to consider the kind of fools who write that kind of tripe my "colleagues".

Ilúvatar gracious.

- - -

*Which is by no means meant as a slight to either the Chinese nor Sinologists; Chinese is a fascinating language, it's just not a language I think I could learn.

Comments

[barbardin.livejournal.com]

DITO!

Thank you!
*hugs*

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of video-game blaming here, too. (After Columbine, in 1999, everything was the fault of The Matrix and of techno and trenchcoats; it was painfully easy for everyone to segue that straight onto games.)

Now I'll admit that after playing Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto, I know more about guns than I used to. That's because what I used to know was, "nothing at all," which has now been upgraded to, "some vague concept of the theory that a handgun and a rifle are not interchangeable."

Unfortunately "journalism" has gone to lazy over useful in most countries, as far as I can tell.

[yoodi.livejournal.com]

I feel (i.e. grieve) with you.

Sadly, there has to be a reason just why BILD is the most popular news paper.

In the past couple of weeks, I've noticed quite a lot of journalistic magazines/talkshows on telly dealing with the topic "Why is the modern generation of children a bunch disfunctional, lazy, bloodthirsty, cruel bastards????!!!!one!"
And that was before last Wednesday.
Every single time I see this discussed I go.... you know, *caring* for the younger generation is jolly nice, but youth has always been youth and outraged the elders. Always. If I were in the audience at such a show, I'd may well be moved to just get up and shout to all those dusty old gits (most of the time, all the guests *are*) "Use your brains for once, will you?! Just what did your parents think of your generation, then? And if you don't remember, read ancient poets. Or any literature, really."

Things are different, that's what's scary. But then, blatantly, things never *really* change. Not sure that's a comfort. In any case, it's facepalm-inducing.

[gaharr.livejournal.com]

God yes I hate it when people talk like that. degu_aus_stahl summed it up quite nicely:

1524/25 Bauernkrieg,
1618/48 Dreißigjähriger Krieg
1683 Belagerung Wiens
1756/63 Siebebjähriger Krieg
1789 Französische Revolution --> 1799 Napoleon --> Eeroberung von Europa --> 1815 Wiener Kongress
1848 Revolution --> 1864/71 Einigungskreige
1914/1918 Erster Weltkrieg
1939/1945 Zweiter Weltkrieg
1945/49 "Ausnahmezustand" Besatzung

1949 Gründung BRD und DDR ;Beginn Kalter Krieg

1953 Volksaufstand in der DDR
1961 Bau der Berliner Mauer
(Ich würde gerne die RAF mit einfügen, aber so richtig passt sie nicht in diese Liste)

No people have never been nicer, regardless if they were young or old.

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

God yeah. In one of my forums there is this guy who always rages that WHEN HE WAS SMALL AT LEAST THERE WAS THE CARING MOTHER AND THE STRONG FATHER AT HOME ON WHOM YOU AS A TROUBLED YOUTH COULD LEAN ONTO AND WEEP YOUR SORROWS AND THEN GO AND ~*FROLICK*~ IN THE UNTOUCHED NATURE WITHOUT CELL PHONES OR KILLER GAMES.

[allamistako.livejournal.com]

*Ironicly humming "My Generation"...*

[lene-de.livejournal.com]

Amen. Well just consider that big bosses, really big bosses, confirm in public without shame that they don't use the internet and don't have to because their secretary is printing out their emails. That shows perfectly the attitude towards internet of a huge amount of people who unfortunately are often in political leadership positions.

And internet makes for a perfect anonymous culprit. Of course nobody else is to blame, not the parents who didn't store away the weapons and ammunition safely, not the other pupils who weren't nice to him, not the teachers who didn't see anything and and and. They need to address the real problems.

[satismagic.livejournal.com]

Very well put. Amen to all of the above.

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

Well put. It is this why I'm glad I could squeeze myself into a specialist's niche that has nothing to do with politics. Although I would lie utterly if I'd say that if the first opportunity was to write for a "normal" newspaper, I wouldn't have taken it.

What I also think is outrageous for media which claim themselves to do RESEARCH is that they just took what the BKA gave them - and the screenshot is most definitely a fake. Imageboards have unique timecodes assigned to posts - one run through Google would have been enough to see how the real thread looked like of which the fake one was fabricated.