Desensitized (Battle Of The Outrageous News Stories)

[Rockadelic]

I read way too much news from around the world....and I see some crazy stories....but these three struck me this week as being signs of the apocalypse or somesuch overreactive BS.....so I want to take the pulse of the Strut...what is the order of outrageousness of the three below news stories in your opinion??

1) LANCASTER, Texas - Investigators said Monday they believe the 27-year-old son of Dallas Police Chief David Brown shot and killed a man at a suburban apartment complex and then opened fire on responding officers, killing one, before being shot to death. The younger Brown was said to have been behaving erratically before the shooting spree, wearing just sunglasses and boxers. The first man killed had just pulled into the complex in his car, with his wife and children, when he was fired on from the driver's side of the car. Before the police arrived a resident of the apartment complex took cell phone photos of the first murder victim and posted them online.

2) (NEWSER) ??? Joran Van der Sloot is charged in the murder of one woman and suspected in the disappearance of another???but for some reason, the single ladies can't get enough of him. He's being inundated with letters proposing marriage, or so he tells Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the AP reports. ???One of them even wants me to get her pregnant,??? he says.

3) SAN DIEGO ??? A 14-year old boy who stabbed a 13-year-old girl who is also the mother of his child was charged with attempted murder and other counts in San Diego Juvenile Court on Monday. The boy???s identity is not being revealed because of his age and because he is being prosecuted as a juvenile and not as an adult. The girl was stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife and taken to the hospital. She is expected to recover. The attack may have been precipitated by what police called jealousy issues between the two.

 

[staxwax]

That aint nothing mayn - I can think of three recent news stories just as bad.


This is simply how humans are - always have been, always will be. Things aren't getting any worse, or any better. Nor will they ever.

MYFOXNY.COM - A school teacher was found dead, stabbed more than 80 times. On Monday, police were still looking for her ex-husband as a "person of interest" in the case.

Customs Officer Shot 25 Times Outside Home


Maurice Gordon, Recently Assigned To JFK Airport, Gunned Down Following Dispute At Elmont Nightclub. Police are searching for the gunman who shot and killed an off-duty Customs and Border Protection Officer in Queens early Monday morning. It appears the man known as "Big Mo" was killed while protecting a relative.

Father And Son, 6, Shot Dead In Restaurant


A man and his six-year-old son have been shot dead in a California restaurant by a relative who then took his own life.

Aint no end of days, just business as usual for Homo Sapiens.

 

[Rockadelic]

I'm totally desensitized to murders......we're animals and kill each other every 3 minutes.





It's the serial killer worship, babies making babies killing babies and desecration of dead bodies as entertainment that's blowing my mind.

 

[Cosmo]

Shit is hectic out there. 52 people shot in Chicago over the course of 1 weekend, 10 of them dead.





http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2415428,weekend-shooting-roundup-062110.article





Chester PA - just south of Philly, 4 people shot dead in 1 week, one of which was a 2 year old boy. And Chester is SMALL, son.





http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/20/pa-city-calls-state-emergency-weeks-th-murder/

 

[staxwax]

Rockadelic said:I'm totally desensitized to murders......we're animals and kill each other every 3 minutes.





It's the serial killer worship, babies making babies killing babies and desecration of dead bodies as entertainment that's blowing my mind.




This too is simply part of the human condition i'm afraid. In only a slightly different context, serial killer worship and publicizing fotos of dead bodies are not considered shocking at all. Not to say this isn't disturbing behavior.





Like the man said:


Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto -


I am human, therefore nothing human is strange to me (sounds a lot ruder in Latin)





If anything is changing - it is our collective, ever increasing obsession with and exposure to the media.

 

[Imperial_Mao]

It's crazy time all over at the moment, we had a gun rampage in one of the quietest places in the UK recently :-





"Investigations into what made, taxi driver Derrick Bird shoot 12 people dead and injure 11 in Cumbria may centre on a family row, reports suggest.





Bird, 52, embarked on a rampage that began near Whitehaven and ended when he turned a gun on himself.





It has been reported he may have been involved in a dispute over a will, and police have confirmed solicitor Kevin Commons is among the dead."





This I spotted on the BBC website last night :-





"A French convict has gone on trial for murdering and eating part of the body of his cell-mate.





Nicolas Cocaign admitted to a court in Rouen that he killed his victim before cutting him open and removing part of his lung, which he then ate.





His lawyers said his repeated requests for psychiatric help before the attack had been ignored.





Cocaign, 39, faces life in prison if convicted for the murder of Thierry Baudry in 2007.





Prosecutors say Cocaign beat Baudry before stabbing him with a pair of scissors and then suffocating him with a plastic bag.





He then allegedly cut him open, removing a rib and pulling out part of his lung, mistaking it for Baudry's heart.





Before the trial, he had told investigators that he wanted to eat his victim's heart in order to take his soul.





"I made several appeals for help, saying I was a man capable of being dangerous. I took action, and then they took me seriously," he told the court.





The court also heard a summary of Cocaign's life, from his adoption at age three to his troubled youth and scrapes with the law.





He was serving a sentence for attempted rape at the time of Baudry's murder. A verdict is expected later this week. "

 

[asstro]

I recently listened to a podcast with a guy who is a kind of motivational coach for a bunch of MMA fighters and top level pro poker players, and he was saying that one of the first things he tells the people he works with is to stop watching or reading the news first thing in the morning. It's important to start your day off with positive and affirming thoughts and the current news media makes this almost impossible. Life is too short to bombard your psyche with this stuff constantly. I'm not saying we should stick our heads in the sand and pretend shit like this isn't going on, but at the same time, I think he's got a point.

 

[ketan]

Yeah, these are all tough to read.











But not as tough as this:





Tiger Woods Misses Daughter Sam's Birthday For Golf: Report


Posted: 06-22-10 02:54 AM





Tiger Woods was thousands of miles from his daughter on her birthday, just months after vowing that he would "never miss another one," RadarOnline reports. While Woods struggled through the second day of the U.S. Open tournament at Pebble Beach on the California coast last Friday, the web site reports that his daughter Sam celebrated her third birthday far away in Florida.





In April, Woods spoke of the pain he felt after missing his son's birthday while he was in rehab following the public revelation of his wild string of affairs. "I vowed I'd never miss another one after that," he said at the time.





While Woods was referring to his son's birthday, one might assume that the same principle would apply to his three-year-old daughter. It seems that competing in one of golf's most prestigious tournaments trumped his familial obligations, however.





This development may be the latest indication that Woods and wife Elin Nordegren (PHOTOS) are headed toward a long-rumored divorce. It was reported earlier in June that Nordegren may be seeking full custody of the children.





--





I'm obviously kidding. I just thought this thread needed a little something to ease the heart-eating tension in here.





I'm desensitized to a small extent, but I ended up watching this recent French horror movie - Inside - finally (was talking about it on the old board) and it was basically a dramatization of one of these types of looney bin type crimes...and I was outraged by the end of it. (But then again, I did sit through and watch the whole thing...Haneke would be pleased.)

 

[Rockadelic]

I refuse to watch horror movies when there are real life horrors going on.





I am also the dick that told my wife and kids while watching one particular episode of the show "ER" that they should turn that shit off and go down to the Children's Medical Center if they were entertained by kids being terminally ill.

 

[kitchenknight]

Rockadelic said:I refuse to watch horror movies when there are real life horrors going on.





I am also the dick that told my wife and kids while watching one particular episode of the show "ER" that they should turn that shit off and go down to the Children's Medical Center if they were entertained by kids being terminally ill.




As someone who believes in fiction as a way to teach ourselves about humanity, I do think fiction/scripted enterainment serve a different purpose than the news.

 

[Grandfather]

Hasn't violent crime been steadily decreasing (in the USA at least)?


Shit was a lot more hectic when I was younger.

 

[El Prez]

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/13579





Cleveland Cops Mistook Woman's Dead Body for Deer Carcass


Submitted by Leader Staff on April 8, 2010 - 9:38pm.





Lying along the side of the Interstate-90 was the deceased body of a woman lying in a fetal position. Two Cleveland police officers drove past the body, which had been dumped on the side of the highway, and did not stop because they believed it was a deer carcass.





The body had been reported early Monday morning by a motorist passing by, but Matthew Prince and David Muniz, driving by at 40 to 50mph, determined that it was a deer carcass. Instead of stopping to check things out, they called the Ohio Department of Transportation for remova.





Two more people reported the body, and about 90 minutes later, an employee with the ODOT called police to inform that it was a body, and not a dead deer.





..crime in Cleveland is so much a regular thing even the cops are ignoring nude dead bodies laying on the side of the highway.....

 

[Okem]

News as entertainment is one of the heinous things going imho.

 

[ketan]

Rockadelic said:I will rarely agree to watch horror movies when there are real life horrors going on.







gareth said:As someone who believes in fiction as a way to teach ourselves about humanity, I do think fiction/scripted enterainment serve a different purpose than the news.




I agree, but I don't need the visceral rush of clear and present gore that some new horror movies use to tell the story in my life on most days.





Has anyone seen Pixote? That strikes me as a good example of news as "entertainment" (quotes because it's hardly entertaining at times) that gets at the awful realism of something.

 

[kitchenknight]

I don't watch horror movies/slasher shit either, but I'd argue that shit can get so cartoonish and one-note that it is easier to discern from real life than something like ER (above) or The Wire, for instance.





I think the news emulating that shit is a bigger problem than our dramas being, 'ripped from the headlines,' or ripping out someone's heart, per se.

 

[mannybolone]

Grandfather said:Hasn't violent crime been steadily decreasing (in the USA at least)?


Shit was a lot more hectic when I was younger.




Depends on the neighborhood of course, but in general? Yeah, violent crime is much lower these days compared to 20 years back. I think the difference - and maybe this speaks to Rich's point - is that we're inundated with the media-fueled awareness of crime in ways that we were not in the past.





So our perception of danger may exceed the actual peril but I don't know if this gives much comfort.

 

[ketan]

gareth said:I don't watch horror movies/slasher shit either, but I'd argue that shit can get so cartoonish and one-note that it is easier to discern from real life than something like ER (above) or The Wire, for instance.





I think the news emulating that shit is a bigger problem than our dramas being, 'ripped from the headlines,' or ripping out someone's heart, per se.




DO NOT WATCH INSIDE! It's one note and it's a nightmare (arguably literally).

 

[kitchenknight]

ketan said:gareth said:I don't watch horror movies/slasher shit either, but I'd argue that shit can get so cartoonish and one-note that it is easier to discern from real life than something like ER (above) or The Wire, for instance.





I think the news emulating that shit is a bigger problem than our dramas being, 'ripped from the headlines,' or ripping out someone's heart, per se.




DO NOT WATCH INSIDE! It's one note and it's a nightmare (arguably literally).




Not an issue- I don't watch any horror flicks. Never will again... Not my thing, and I'm old enough to know.

 

[dukeofdelridge]

People that watch too much TV news seriously believe they're going to get shot today. Nobody does the math.

 

[Grandfather]

mannybolone said:...and maybe this speaks to Rich's point - is that we're inundated with the media-fueled awareness of crime in ways that we were not in the past.





So our perception of danger may exceed the actual peril but I don't know if this gives much comfort.




Excellent point man. But even still, I feel way safer now.