On the Reaction to the "Tragedy in Tuscon"

To start out the only reason I used quotations is that someone else has already created the alliterative headline and to not put it in quotations would be plagiarism.

To say that there is a lot of news coverage on the events from last Saturday, is like referring to a rose as red, the white house as white, and the sea as blue. There is enough information out there and to talk about the shooting itself would be pretty much useless, but there is something I can talk about that might help. There is quite a bit about toning down rhetoric, which on paper is nice, but as Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation reminds us, paper is a flimsy thing. There is one thing we can do that will help. There is a psychological concept known as deindividuation, where when Identities are concealed or obscured, violence is increased. This was first proved in one experiment by Phillip Zimbardo in which he had subjects wear large pillowcase and referred only by number whereas the control group was referred to by name. The results indicated that when an individuals identity is known, that individual is less violent. This effect works in both directions, whenever an demagogue wants to rally people, only very rarely to the rail against individuals, and then only when those individuals are guilty of something, maybe criminally, more often not. More often than not, they railed against a group. There are many examples, one such would be Huey Long of Louisiana who used corporations as his proverbial punching bag. A more contemporary example could be Keith Olbermann who uses demeaning nicknames such as "Bill'o the Clown" for Bill O'Reilly, and "Lonesome Rhodes Beck" for Glenn Beck. Since he has apologized for a statement that implied violence, maybe he could keep a commitment to avoid dehumanizing nicknames. And then maybe Fox News commentators would stop referring to those in the country illegally as "Illegals", reducing them to a subhuman category. And maybe I could find an elegant woman who hangs onto my every word for a nice dinner date. For those uncertain the last statement was meant sarcastically. To put this in perspective I have a lot of respect for Keith Olbermann and find him entertaining or enlightening, but only very rarely both. I don't watch Fox News except for the clips shown on other news outlets to mock Fox News and the film Outfoxed which I recommend to anyone with an interest in the media.



Citation for the study: "The Human Choice" by Phillip Zimbardo