The Chickens Come Home to Roost

When Sean Taylor, a rising star with the Washington Redskins, was fatally shot in his own home while his fiancée and daughter cowered in the next room, media coverage was quick to point out his troubled past. He was killed by one of four young men who were also black. That they were there only to burglarize his home, which they thought was unoccupied, is of no consequence, despite the argument of one of their defense lawyers. It’s an unfortunate fact that society sees this first as a black-on-black crime. We’re automatically suspicious, having seen one too many stories about athletes and guns. Once again, the stereotype is reinforced.

When Leeland Eisenberg walked into Hillary Clinton’s Rochester, New Hampshire campaign office with a cluster of road flares duct-taped to his body and took multiple hostages, the immediate concern was of course the safety of those hostages. He sounded like a real kook, a guy who needed a soap box, and built one following the time-honored American blueprint of televised threats and erratic behavior: another stereotype.

Eisenberg even called CNN, although Larry King was unavailable. There were only two possible outcomes. The police were quick to negotiate, but also rushed to surround the building with sharpshooters who would have taken Eisenberg down, should the order be given. It was only when he released the last hostage more than six hours later and walked out into the street to surrender his flares and then himself that the press shifted to the grim fact that Eisenberg was one of 541 victims of sexual abuse who received payments from the Boston Archdiocese in 2003.

So what’s going on here? Regarding Taylor, we’ve always been told that sports is a way out of the ghetto for some athletes of color. While it’s true Taylor’s father is a police chief, the son must have encountered some negative influence along the way, which resulted in his hanging out with the wrong crowd. What is it about athletic success that breeds violence? Isn’t the entourage loyal to its hero?

Regarding Eisenberg, why did he go to such lengths to try to speak with Hillary? What part of his troubled past—a pederastic priest, a wife who wanted a divorce—drove him to threaten an office full of people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The answer to both questions is that the media produces golden eggs—images that convey the messages that sell things. It’s the same process, regardless of whether it’s the hip-hop videos that show teenage gangsters who get women and money by brandishing firearms, or the daily sound bites from Baghdad that give suicide bombers their 15 minutes of fame by showing blood-soaked bodies with the number of the day’s dead superimposed in bold graphics like the score of a game. From these images, plans are hatched.

Four young men with prior records of petty crime, two of whom have some connection to Taylor, plan to steal his possessions when he’s not home. In the old days, or whatever you want to call that period in sports history when we looked up to our heroes instead of following their court proceedings, these young men might have been Taylor’s strongest supporters. Seeing someone make it out of the neighborhood used to be an incentive for the rest to follow, but the cult of violent personality, the 50 Cent school of thinking, makes it a cop-out not to grab the easy pickings. Why work for success when you can just take it? Everyone knows NFL players are rich, and that insurance pays for everything. Tell that to the young mother and her child who might not get a dime because she and Taylor weren’t married.

As for Eisenberg, he is in New Hampshire, the Granite State, where men settle their differences honorably, with fists or maybe even guns. But walking into a building with fake explosives strapped to his chest? What was he thinking? And didn’t Hillary vote for the war that launched a thousand suicide bombers? Here is the ultimate conflated image: the abuse survivor still haunted by conflicting symbols of piety and guilt seizes the media’s attention to ask to speak with the woman who branded herself, however unsuccessfully, as the nation’s health care guru. You can’t make this stuff up.

The media is not to blame for the acts of individuals. No one can predict the effects of messaging in a society built on open communication, but the content of the messages is what’s questionable. The news is the news, hip-hop is hip-hop, and jihadists are jihadists. We should be able to distinguish between reality and manipulated image. There’s enough to worry about without the inevitable copycats looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

The author is a graduate of the Columbia College class of 1969.