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03 26 01
WORD GAMES
Last week on Hannity and Colmes, and also on The O'Reilly Factor (trust
Faux News to stay on-message throughout their evening entertainment),
the hot debate was whether the "liberal" media was using a
double standard because the murder of 13-year old Jesse Dirkhising did
not receive the same amount of coverage as the murder of Matthew Shephard.
Before I go further, let me state that I am not comfortable with the
notion of "using" the death of a human being, ESPECIALLY a
child, to further a political agenda, and I had serious doubts about
writing this rant for that very reason. But the "double-standard"
accusation which has been thrown out and which the likes of Sean Hannity
are having such fits of excitement over is so illogical, unfair and
just plain WRONG that if I don't rant about it I might well have a stroke.
So here goes.
Jesse Dirkhising was murdered in Arkansas in September of 1999. Though
the defense asserted that Jesse's death was an accident, a jury found
Joshua Brown, age 23, guilty; he now faces life imprisonment. The Dirkhising
murder was a sex crime; a rape-murder -- one of 46 rape-murders in the
country during 1999.
The accusation from the right-wingers is that the Dirkhising murder
has not received as much attention as the murder of Matthew Shephard
(a young homosexual man who was the victim of a hate crime and whose
murder was national news) because the murder was committed by a homosexual
(two of them, actually; the other man, Brown's partner, is 39-year-old
Davis Carpenter). They charge that the mainstream media doesn't give
more coverage to the Dirkhising case because they don't want to "offend"
the gay community. Their "proof"? In the month after Shephard's
death, Nexis recorded 3,007 stories about it; in the month after Dirkhising's
death, only 46 stories were recorded.
Now, I don't know how many stories were recorded about the other 45
rape-murders that occurred in 1999 (I'd love to know), but I'm willing
to bet that the vast majority of them received less media coverage than
Jesse Dirkhising's murder. Certainly, Faux News has not shown any interest
whatsoever in discussing those crimes. And I'll go out on a limb again
and say that the vast majority of those crimes were undoubtedly committed
by heterosexuals.
The simple fact - obvious to anyone without a homophobic agenda - is
that the Dirkhising murder didn't receive as much attention as the Shephard
murder because the Shephard murder was a hate crime, and the murder
of Jesse Dirkhising was not. And yet the right-wingers refuse to acknowledge
this, instead yelling that ANY murder is a "hate" crime (and
using cute phrases like "Oh, are there 'kindness' crimes?").
In order to further their agenda, they play games of semantics and steadfastly
refuse to argue in a logical manner. They won't differentiate between
a hate crime and a sex crime, because they oppose hate-crimes legislation...and
their strategy is to pretend that there is no such thing as a "hate
crime".
Jesse Dirkhising's murder was a terrible thing, and the men responsible
certainly need to be locked up. But it was NOT a hate crime, and to
treat it as such is to show a clear bias against homosexuals...unless
you also treat EVERY rape-murder as a hate crime, which the regressives
clearly have no interest in doing -- and which, further, would be illogical
and unreasonable. Sex crimes are not hate crimes in and of themselves.
You could have a rape-murder which would classify as a hate crime...the
rape-murder of Brandon Teena (whose story was told in the film Boys Don't
Cry) was certainly a hate crime. Jesse Dirkhising's murder was not.
The right-wingers are twisting phrases around in this instance in order
to continue their relentless efforts to swing the media bias further
to the right AND to lend support to their anti-gay beliefs. I can't
begin to describe how sickening this is to me, how utterly low and disgusting.
Of COURSE they want Jesse Dirkhising's murder to receive extensive coverage,
and they don't at all mind exploiting it to reach their goal. But there
is simply no clear comparison between what happened to Jesse Dirkhising
and what happened to Matthew Shephard. You'll forgive me for using this
tired old phrase, but it's comparing apples and oranges. They are not
the same, and the regressives should not be allowed to get away with
saying they ARE the same.
If an eighteen year old boy and a sixteen year old boy get into a fight,
and the older boy wins, could that logically be called "child abuse"?
I don't know anyone who would use that label to describe a fight, and
yet if you follow the "reasoning" behind the right-wingers'
argument in the Shephard/Dirkhising controversy, then you'd have to
use the term "child abuse" -- the younger boy was abused,
and the older boy is technically an adult.
The cultural war being waged by the right-wingers -- their attempts
to sway public opinion by consistently claiming they have the moral
high ground while at the same time making endless (and usually unsupported)
personal attacks aginst their opponents instead of focusing on actual
issues -- is an extremely nasty war, and not one that we progressives
can afford to ignore.
One can ALWAYS twist certain terms around to support an agenda, but
to do so is dishonest, underhanded and unethical. If you can't rely
on basic facts to support your argument, then there exists the very
strong probability that your argument is either extremely weak or flat-out
wrong. Interestingly enough, regressives almost NEVER rely on basic
facts when they debate. Instead, they use catchphrases - twisted around
to suit their particular goal - and platitudes and accusations and rhetorical
garbage. (And then, of course, they muddy the waters further by accusing
liberals of doing the same).
And the right-wingers HAVE to debate this way. Because the basic fact
is that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the right is wrong.
~Rose
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