But he plays one on TV.

Yesterday, Chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee Darrell Issa called White House Press Secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar.”  As former communications staff for different government officials and politicians, one thing I would never do is lie to the press.  It’s just not worth it.  Issa’s comments, while in keeping with the general tone we have come to expect in politics, are ridiculous.  As a Democrat, I hope he does continues his clear overreach because he is and it’s obscuring any valid points he may have.  Benghazi was a tragedy, not a scandal, but the press issue and the flap over at the Internal Revenue Service deserve investigating.

Watch Issa prove me wrong here: 

Oh, it is worth noting, that Issa may know a thing or two about “paid liars” as his then-spokesperson Kurt Bardella impersonated Issa in an interview with Howard Kurtz (writing then for the Daily Beast).  You can read more about that here.

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It’s occasionally difficult coming up with something to write about, a subject worth turning into a full column here. I generally publish four pieces a week at The Daily Banter along with several other smaller posts over at my own site, Deus Ex Malcontent, and I can’t lie and say that I’m always inspired to go on a tear or provide some insight into a subject I care deeply about. Sometimes I just have to wing it.

Thankfully, there are two topics that never let me down when I need something to write about, two subjects that are always there for me that I can count on to be amusing or infuriating enough to be able to turn into decent copy. One is, of course, CNN, because you can practically set your watch by the network doing something really inexcusably stupid; the other is the entirely predictable outrage from the professional left over one silly thing or another. To wit, today — when both of these favorite topics are coming through for me like gangbusters.

Live From Right Over Here

Years ago, when I was still doing local news, there were plenty of times when our crews would be forced to pull a little sleight-of-hand during live shots. Because of a lack of resources, and sometimes satellite time and such, our team coverage would occasionally be nothing more than a couple of people plugged into the same truck, just positioned on different sides of it so that the shots would look different and maybe, if you were lucky, you could make a two-box work during the setup or the toss from one reporter to another. Yeah, maybe it was fudging, but it was necessary and it looked good on television. Believe me, local TV is more “theater of the mind” than you’d expect; you have no idea the kind of nonsense that goes into putting together your average 5 o’clock newscast. Whether or not it’s ethical behavior, I’ll let you decide. My check cleared every two weeks so after a while I just shrugged and went with it, sometimes even patting myself on the back for my ability to pass the nightly news Kobayashi Maru.

Here’s the thing, though: That was local. Like I said, there were resource and budget constraints to consider and that forced you to have to cheat a little here and there. CNN Center in Atlanta, however, is the world’s largest ATM; under no circumstances should the network ever have to resort to the most ridiculous forms of local news trickery and when it does, it deserves to be roundly mocked for it. Case in point: the instantly infamous conversation that happened yesterday morning live on CNN’s air between Nancy Grace and Ashleigh Banfield.

Now right off the bat I could excoriate CNN, and I have in the past, for its indefensible irresponsibility in continuing to give Nancy Grace a forum on its air. The woman is a despicably unscrupulous monster, a shameless, arrogant, damn-near sociopathic peddler of cheap prurience who’s already killed one woman who hadn’t been officially accused of anything and who went on to put the lives of those involved in the acquittal of Casey Anthony in jeopardy, all in the name of lining her own pockets and increasing her own visibility. She has no place being on CNN or any network associated with it. She’s an embarrassment to respectable journalism and to decent society in general and she should probably be facing criminal charges rather than holding court nightly on a national news network.

That aside, that moment of “d’oh” yesterday came when alert viewers noticed that Grace and Ashleigh Banfield, during coverage of the Cleveland kidnapping rescue that saw them having a live back-and-forth with each other in the kind of two-box I mentioned earlier, were actually reporting from the exact same parking lot. The Atlantic published what may have been the first piece on it, pointing out the comical stupidity of CNN trying to put one over on its audience when it was obvious by the traffic passing behind both shots at nearly the same time that Grace and Banfield weren’t more than a 50 or so feet apart from each other. It doesn’t sound like that big a deal until you actually watch these two try to pretend that they’re on opposites sides of the city of Phoenix (where they were actually covering the Jodi Arias trial, by the way). All Banfield had to do was walk a few steps over to Grace’s position and they could’ve been on the same camera together, but somebody thought it was a good idea to try to fake it — and the result was the kind of thing The Daily Show often does as a joke.

But this isn’t The Daily Show we’re talking about. As the promos so often remind us, this is CNN. Although it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.

Bottom line: Another day, another vaudevillian-level CNN fuck-up.

The Onion Makes Everyone Cry

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but The Onion has managed to piss of a very vocal portion of the feminist media community. I’m sure your psychic wounds, along with those of the rest of our shattered nation, are only now beginning to heal in the wake of the satire site’s tweet-heard-round-the-world during the Oscars, the one that made an admittedly blistering statement about how our culture cuts apart and tears down female celebrities by jokingly calling nine-year-old actress Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt. Hopefully, a lot of intensive therapy has helped you to put the damage caused by reading that tweet behind you and I surely hope I’m not, through the unfortunate use of trigger words, bringing it all flooding back. If you need to take a few minutes to walk away, lest your PTSD start to kick up, then please feel free to do that. Remember, only together can we get through this. “2/24: Never Forget.” That day, we were all Quvenzhané Wallis.

This time, The Onion’s target was Chris Brown, who you, as a decent human being, know as an unapologetic, woman-beating dickhead, but who legions of his simple-minded jack-off fans think is a seductively romantic and profoundly tortured genius. It’s with this latter delusion in mind that The Onion proceeded to eviscerate Brown in a way he so richly deserves and as only The Onion can. If you haven’t read the story it posted on him yesterday, here it is in its entirely — because it really can’t be appreciated any other way:

LOS ANGELES—After revealing yesterday that he had recently split up with longtime girlfriend Rihanna, a heartbroken Chris Brown tearfully told reporters that he always thought the 25-year-old singer was going to be the woman he’d beat to death one day. ‘Despite all the ups and downs, I was so sure Rihanna was the one I’d take by the throat one day and fatally assault, and even toward the end I continued to hold out hope that we’d be together until the day she died at my hands from blunt-force trauma,’ Brown, 24, said in a radio interview this week, telling DJs he still has abusive feelings for his ex-flame and is hopeful that he might punch her again one day. ‘It’s hard knowing that there’s some other guy out there who gets to beat her senseless. In fact, for all I know, there might be someone out there assaulting her right now. And let me tell you, that guy is the luckiest guy in the world.’ A saddened Brown added that, should the couple not reconcile, he remains confident that the special someone he was meant to beat to death is still out there for him, and when he finds her, he’ll waste no time in slapping her.

Now, considering that everything you just read was aimed squarely at Chris Brown and Chris Brown only — and again reminding you, because it should never be forgotten, that Brown is a raging asshole who should at this very moment be getting the shit kicked out of him by the Sisters in the laundry room at Shawshank in preparation for the forcible anal penetration to come — you’d think pro-women advocates would be cheering the staff of The Onion. You would unfortunately be wrong, though. That’s because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from our insufferable social media Age of Outrage, it’s that there are some subjects that simply cannot be the subject of biting satire, no matter whom that very nasty bite is being taken out of.

From Jessica Valenti, to the Feminist Magazine, to the Global Fund for Women, to someone who simply suggested that “The Onion can go to hell,” a certain segment of the feminist media intelligentsia — though not a large one, to be fair — came out of the woodwork yesterday to sanctimoniously chastise a website whose smart humor and acid tongue almost never misfire. There was the usual indignation over the mere possibility that someone already victimized by literal abuse might be victimized all over again by what they interpreted as figurative abuse; the lectures on how unfunny the subject The Onion was viciously parodying really was (as if the site’s editors didn’t know this and that wasn’t the whole point); the allegations that there are some subjects which are simply too sensitive to even try to use to make a humorous point.

First of all, as a commenter to my site yesterday said, as a rule while everyone’s entitled to his or her opinion, unfunny people don’t get to tell truly funny people how to be funny. The Onion is generally masterful in its satire and it takes a willingness to never hold back — to always be ready to “go there” — to create the kind of vital social commentary it so often does. There’s nothing more ridiculous than having to explain the joke, but the incidents of it being necessary these days in order to avoid the call-out culture and outrage machine winding up seem to be getting closer and closer together. In this case, it’s precisely because Chris Brown continues to see himself as both a sexy, gentlemanly lover of women and the pitiable victim of a public witch-hunt — the true victim in the Rihanna beating episode — that The Onion’s attack on him is so incisive and so satisfying. Also keep in mind: There are women out there who still love this asshole, who do buy into his self-pity party and consider him a misunderstood artist, and that’s where The Onion piece acts as a kind of brilliantly worded warning masquerading as humor.

What the writers at The Onion did, as usual, was take down a cultural target that deeply deserved it. And while the overall subject is one that really isn’t at all funny, they managed to do it with almost no collateral damage. For that, as usual, they deserve applause, not condemnation.

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The yearly White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner tomorrow evening represents all that is wrong with the corporate news media. It is event where members of the news media get to mingle in a big swanky hotel with the people they are supposed to be holding to account, and pose for photos with celebrities.

And it’s getting worse and worse. From Politico:

If you needed a sign that the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner has hit a new level of star appeal, you need look no further than the E! Network’s decision to cover this year’s red carpet at the Washington Hilton for the first time.

E!, after all, is the cable network known for its wall-to-wall celebrity programming and its blanket coverage of such events as the Oscars and the Golden Globes.

Any self respecting journalist would not be seen dead at an event covered by E!. Yet vast swathes of the DC press corps will be there, dressed in tuxedos, hoping to fuel their careers in an industry that prefers blond hair to actual reporting skills.

The truth is, if you took reporting seriously, you also wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the subjects you are supposed to be holding to account in a social setting. Real journalists should be hostile to power. Real journalists should be hated by the establishment.

And if you’re there tomorrow, you’re definitely not a real journalist.

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New Yorkers can breathe a sigh of relief. From CNN:

The surviving suspect in the Boston bombings has told investigators he and his brother planned to bomb Times Square, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.

“Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets,” Bloomberg said.

The two came up with the plan spontaneously after the Boston bombing, as they talked in an SUV they hijacked, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev initially told investigators that he and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, had talked about going to New York to “party.” Then in a second round of questioning Sunday evening into Monday morning — during which Kelly said the suspect was “a lot more lucid” than the first time he was interviewed — he revealed they planned to use their remaining explosives there, Kelly announced.

The plan “fell apart” when the SUV ran low on fuel in the Boston area and the Tsarnaevs ordered the driver to pull into a gas station, Kelly said. The driver escaped during the refueling, he said, and police subsequently caught up with the Tsarnaevs.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Daily Banter Mailbag! Today, Bob, Ben and Chez discuss the Boston marathon bombing suspects, filibuster reform, and the indestructible status of CNN’s John King.

The questions:

1) Wow. I guess we could’ve seen the religion of the Boston Marathon bombers coming, but their ethnicity really threw us all for a loop. Now that we know they’re Muslim but NOT ARAB (in other words, they’re white) how do you think the usual racist crazies on the right will respond? Think this will confuse them since they may not know who to hate?
– Troy

Chez: It’s funny because the first thing I thought of when I saw the images and heard about the background of the Tsarnaev brothers was how David Sirota and Tim Wise’s heads must be spinning. Gosh, they’re white, so I guess that’s good, but, oh noes, they’re still Muslim. Obviously this same thing applies to the dickhead conservative contingent as well. I honestly don’t know how they’ll respond in the long run. First of all, right off the bat, it’s not like we can bomb Russia or an associated territory. I think Islam will once again come under fire but I think Arab’s dodged a bullet — figuratively and literally — and that may if nothing else finally wake the right up to the fact that Muslim doesn’t always equal Arabic.

Bob: The fact that at least Tamerlan was evidently a “radical Muslim,” and that they’re loosely connected with Russia, is enough for the hooples out there who regard Muslims as the enemy irrespective of skin color. Already, Graham and McCain are leading the way to have Dzhokar declared an enemy combatant, thus escalating the war on terrorism to all varieties of terrorist. This should give the jingoistic nutbags enough fuel for anti-Muslim bigotry and (hopefully not) random attacks on anyone with a Russian accent.

Ben: I don’t want to sound like a bore here, but your question presupposes Tsarnaev’s guilt Troy, and I think it’s worth pointing out that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still a suspect, which means he is not guilty of anything until proven otherwise in a court of law. Obviously it seems like a pretty clear cut case, but I think everything should be done to maintain due process and avoiding any assumptions to the best of our abilities. To your question -  it doesn’t really matter what the nut jobs say as they’ll find any story mildly relevant to their own xenophobia. Most of these idiots don’t know know where Chechnya is, so as long as it sounds foreign and has Muslims in it, it might as well be an Arab country.

2) Alright so I don’t know how to put this any more bluntly: nothing of any significance is going to pass the Senate until filibuster reform happens. Nothing. So why is virtually everyone, including Harry Reid, ignoring this? Screw the whimsical jalopy of the self-adoring Rand (Ayn) Paul, we needed the filibuster reformed or eliminated 3 months ago.
– Robert

Bob: While I think the system needs some changes, I’m not as hell-bent on eliminating the filibuster, since the Democrats will eventually be a minority in the Senate and we might need to filibuster something heinous that comes down from a crackpot Republican president. That said, I think we need Republican Party reform. We should continue to shame them for filibustering everything, even laws they used to support, and abusing the rule. At some point, they need to start acting like grownups and learn how to compromise their positions for the sake of getting something done.

Ben: Not sure how to respond to this – filibusters aren’t inherently bad, it just depends on when/how they are used. The Republicans are shamelessly abusing the filibuster, so right now it’s something I’d like to see go. Then again, the Dems might need to filibuster some Godawful piece of legislation from a Republican President, so I’d probably support it again. It’s a difficult one.

Chez: What happened in the Senate with sensible gun safety legislation was one of the most inexcusable things I’ve ever seen come out of our government. Agreed that filibuster reform needs to happen but I honestly don’t know why it’s not happening and when it might ever. Drawing a complete blank except to say that it makes sense, ergo our idiot government will avoid it like leprosy.

3) How long before John King resigns from CNN in disgrace?
– Lisa

Chez: He’s not going anywhere. John’s generally a good reporter; I have no idea why he allowed himself to get fucked so badly. I think if he were to leave CNN, though, it would be a shame because while the buck should stop with him, it began with a management decision made well above him that NEVER should have been made. CNN’s fuck-up was so monumental that it should be taught in first-year journalism for decades to come. In the race to be first and “exclusive” King went all-in on something that I guarantee he, deep-down, was hesitant on. I have to imagine the blame rests with the sensationalist culture Jeff Zucker is creating at CNN — it’s going to destroy that network from the inside out.

Bob: If there was any justice, he’d be severely scolded and discredited for that display on Wednesday. But he’s a robot who’s incapable of human emotion. Therefore he’ll always be considered a very serious member of the Most Important and Excellent News Team Ever.

Ben: I feel a little bad for John King – he’s obviously under pressure from management to get CNN ‘exclusives’ at all costs, so he did something stupid and reported on one that turned out to be bullshit. This kind of stuff really shows you how ridiculous the corporate news media is. They spend hours telling everyone how they are ‘the best news network on television’ and forget that they are supposed to do actual news reporting. If CNN concentrated on doing proper reporting rather than swapping faceless presenters around and chasing ratings, they wouldn’t get embarrassed like they did last week. John King isn’t the problem if you ask me, it’s the decrepit industry he’s in. And sadly, it isn’t going anywhere.

—–

Got a question for the mailbag? Email us at TheDailyBanter@gmail.com!!!

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Here’s your quote of the day and you should read it a couple of times so that it’s seared into your memory:

“Just because Jon Stewart makes fun of it doesn’t mean he’s right.”

That’s CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker, at a meeting of the Atlanta Press Club earlier this week. Zucker was smugly brushing off the criticism his network has been on the receiving end of since he took control and turned it into the Poop Cruise channel. According to the man most famous for running NBC into the ground — laying the foundation, or lack thereof, that would take it from first place to an unprecedented fifth place in the national numbers — those mocking CNN on other TV outlets are just jealous, while the torrent of ridicule the network has faced lately on social media is merely to be ignored, particularly those irritating voices on Twitter, a platform he considers a “frenemy.” Jeff Zucker, by the way, is apparently a 16-year-old Mean Girl holding court at Beverly Hills High School.

When he took over CNN, Zucker notoriously said that he was going to broaden the definition of journalism to the point where, one would imagine, he’d be able to put anything on CNN and call it news — employing a twist on the Nixonian logic that if the president does it, it’s not illegal — while also suddenly viewing half of what was on cable as his competition. To that end, after his self-satisfied shot at Jon Stewart, he admitted that he considers The Daily Show one of those new competitors.

Maybe that’s what makes it so entertaining that Jon Stewart gets to rub Zucker’s face in CNN’s breathtaking fuck-up yesterday, the one that saw network stalwart John King report that there had been an arrest in the Boston Marathon bombing and, at the prodding of Wolf Biltzer, that the man under arrest was a “dark-skinned male.” Now make no mistake, there’s nothing at all funny about CNN’s embarrassing mistake, which truly was one for the ages, a moment that should live on literally as a teachable one by being examined closely in every first-year broadcast journalism class at every university across the country for decades to come.

We all know what eventually wound up happening: CNN was wrong. Dead wrong. About everything. And it had to walk it all back live on the air while trying desperately to cover its own ass. A national news network had reported that an arrest had been made in a terrorist attack and that the suspect very likely confirmed the worst fears of a very large segment of the public. The implications for America and for a hell of a lot of Americans couldn’t be overstated. And the whole damn thing was wrong.

And so, last night, pointing out the disastrous impact the report could’ve had for the country and did have for CNN while also, admittedly, enjoying more than a little understandable schadenfreude, Jon Stewart eviscerated CNN on The Daily Show — and took a not-so-subtle shot right at Zucker by running clips of the initial CNN “exclusive” and saying with phony diffidence, “You know, this is why you turn to CNN in a crisis. We make fun of them sometimes… you know, as one of their competitors I guess we just get a little jealous.” It was a personal slap across Zucker’s face that no one in the audience probably got, but if you followed TV closely was a moment to cherish.

There isn’t a person out there with a working pair of eyes and ears and a knowledge of recent events who doesn’t know that Jeff Zucker is a narcissistic ass with a history of failing upward who’s practically destined to destroy what remains of the once-great CNN from the inside out. Yesterday’s on-air disgrace shows that it’s already happening, and Zucker’s arrogant dismissal of those who know what’s coming and who publicly lament it lets you know that what we’re seeing now is only the beginning.

Yeah, Jeff, maybe Jon Stewart’s not right about everything he makes fun of. But he’s right about CNN.

CNN just proved it.

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Responders rush to help the fallen seconds after the explosion

It is very important that facts rule a response to the atrocious bombing of Boston Marathon runners yesterday. As conspiracy theorists attempt to insert their own prejudice and hate into the equation, responsible news outlets and publications must do their best to provide the best information according to what we actually know. Thus far, the following facts have emerged about the bombing:

Two bombs went off and a possible third and fourth were defused. The two explosions happened near the finish line on Boylston Street, only hundreds of yards apart and over 5 hours into the race. According to the BBC:

The first explosion came at about 14:50 local time (18:50 GMT) on the north side of Boylston Street, about two hours after the winners crossed the line.

There was initial confusion and panic. Some runners fell to the floor while police and bystanders ran to help those caught in the blast.

Then seconds later, another explosion ripped into the crowd further away from the finishing line, about 170m from the first blast….

Unconfirmed reports said two other unexploded devices were found near the end of the race but were safely defused.

Three people are dead, and over 150 have been injured (although the number is still rising). Eight people are thought to be in critical condition. An eight year old boy, Martin Richard, was killed waiting for his father to finish the marathon. His mother and sister were seriously injured. According to the Huffington Post, 25 -30 people have at least one leg missing.

According to CNN, an apartment in Boston has been searched and items removed. There is still no official suspect.

According to the Guardian, police questioned two male Saudi Arabian students this morning:

Speaking beforehand, one of the men told the Guardian he was there to meet a friend who lived on the fifth floor. Police examined the men’s passports and appeared to make telephone calls before escorting them into the elevator.

CBS reports that a civilian tackled one of the students after noticing ‘suspicious behavior’, but that: “The person in custody is not charged and not under arrest. He is being cooperative, answering their questions, and denying involvement.”

The White House stated that the bombings would be treated as “An act of terror”. President Barack Obama stated that: ”We will find out who did this. We’ll find out why they did this.. Any responsible individuals, any responsible groups, will feel the full weight of justice.”

According to Reuters, local hospitals have been treating lots of shrapnel injuries, indicating the the bombs were designed to maim:

Hospitals in the Boston area were planning surgeries for some of the victims, many of whom sustained lower leg injuries in the blasts, said Peter Fagenholz, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“We’re seeing a lot of shrapnel injuries” from small metal debris, Fagenholz told reporters outside the hospital. Doctors treated 29 people, of whom eight were in a critical condition.

Below is footage of the immediate aftermath. The enormous bravery that so many people showed in rushing to help those caught in the blast with almost no regard for their own safety is absolutely astonishing:

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Let’s get right into it. Yes, CNN’s coverage of the verdict in the Steubenville rape trial, whether entirely intentional or not, came off as more than a little biased in favor of the teenagers who were on trial for the crime rather than either extending the same courtesy to the victim or, even better, remaining objective and dispassionate. Now, if you can’t see why this is, why CNN did what it did, you’ve apparently forgotten that this is the same network that went completely ape-shit over a stranded cruise ship last month, putting every available reporter on it, at the exclusion of a lot of other important news, and blowing up what was essentially a nonsense story that affected exactly nobody in the audience into the second coming of the Hindenburg. How CNN didn’t print up t-shirts with a picture of a cruise liner and the words “2/15 – Never Forget” on them is startling when you consider the amount of resources and airtime the network dedicated to the Carnival Triumph “disaster.”

The point is this: Emotion and stories that play on emotion — stories that seek a visceral reaction from viewers rather than a cold, analytical response — make for great TV. Television is a visual medium and the angle of the story with the best visual element will almost always win the day. And because the victim in the Steubenville rape case was shielded from the press and therefore wasn’t available to have her emotions splashed across the airwaves and otherwise exploited by the coyotes of the media — because she couldn’t be put on camera and we couldn’t see her cry — the focus of the story became the people whose reaction we actually could see: Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond. Is this wrong? Yes. In a case like this, offensive? Absolutely. This, unfortunately, is how it is, though.

I’d really like not to be able to pin something like this on new CNN chief Jeff Zucker, the man almost entirely responsible for the Carnival Triumph debacle — not the cruise itself, the obsessive-compulsive cruise coverage — but it’s hard to ignore the ethical and journalistic bankruptcy of Zucker’s overall news philosophy. Keep in mind that before he ran NBC completely into the ground, he was the wunderkind who turned the Today show into a ratings and revenue goldmine by treating fluff with the kind of gravitas normally reserved for real news and staging gimmicky “event” programming designed to get people talking around the water cooler. Zucker loves emotion. He loves it a lot more than real, honest-to-Christ news, which can occasionally be wonky, unwieldy and impossible to distill down to an instantly memorable soundbite or the image of the crying mother of a missing kid.

I’m not saying that a specific edict came down from Jeff Zucker notifying the CNN talent and producer corps that they should concentrate on the pain and suffering of Trent Mays and Ma’Lik Richmond instead of that of the unnamed victim as the Steubenville rape trial finally came to a decision. But the boss’s worldview instantly becomes the staff’s worldview, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a kind of robotic groupthink kicked in and even some of CNN’s best and brightest, like Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow, succumbed to it without even realizing it. When there’s upheaval in a newsroom — or any other place with a new person in charge, for that matter — everyone tends to overcompensate in favor of doing what he or she figures the boss wants, even if that person isn’t acutely aware of it.

If you’re talking about something silly and superficial, like, say, beating the story of a stranded cruise ship to death because it’s a great picture and you’re sure to get powerful soundbites when the thing finally docks, it’s not the end of the world. It’s baffling and ridiculous, sure, but not unforgivable. But when you’re talking about the story of a young girl who was dragged around from party to party and defiled in unspeakable ways — and an aftermath in which the arrogance and imperiousness of a local football program left many trying to cover for the boys responsible for the prolonged attack — it’s despicable to slobber all over the tears you can see rather giving due deference to the grievous wounds you can’t.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out the tragedy of young lives that went horribly astray, or the systemic corruption that didn’t simply allow it to happen but encouraged it, or the greater lesson about what’s expected of boys and men who live in a civilized society in which women are to be respected rather than treated as objects, or what the entire case says about kids and the culture of self-exhibitionism in the internet age. All of these are worthwhile subjects for discussion in the wake of what may be just the first trial to come out of the Steubenville rape case. But none of these is the main subject.

The main subject, particularly in the immediate aftermath of this verdict, is the victim. Just because she can’t be seen doesn’t mean her presence shouldn’t be heard and felt. That’s the job of a journalist: to give voice to the voiceless. It’s not to fall back on the easy emotion that any idiot can put a camera on and stick a microphone in front of. That’s just being lazy. And, in this case, damn unethical.

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