A pair of explosions rocks the finish line at the Boston Marathon, injuring at least a half-dozen people.

OK, I know that if you look for examples of poor media, there's plenty. Point is, there are also other outlets which do provide good analysis. And another point is that for good coverage you REALLY have to wait a bit longer for the "fog of war" to be lifted. (or in hype-terminology: when the hype has settled and average joe turns his head to the new hyped-up item). So if you don't want to be spoon-fed with hype, you have to be able to stay away from those live coverages and all. It's pure wank. No exception.

If you do look, look at it like you drink the new Beaujolais Primeur. A red wine with the same year you currently live in. You don't drink a Beaujolais Primeur to drink a good wine. You drink it to taste whether in a couple of years this year might be a good one.

IMO, a media-hype is in the eyes of the beholder. If you don't like hypes, there's plenty outlets giving you hypeless news. Tip: throw away your TV and only read the saturday paper with the long and more investigative articles and some other columns of people like Greenwald who you know you can trust. Simple as that. No hype implies slow and in current society "long overdue".

i am very put off by the fact that everyone is celebrating what an amazing job the police did.

um, let me get this straight...the most wanted person in the usa was a bloodied and injured 19 year old boy on foot and it took a homeowner to find him in his own backyard after 9000 police and fbi could not find him after a 15 hour search, all the while he was .7 miles from the first shootout. wtf?

what if that kid had his gun ready and popped anyone who looked into the boat? they would have told everyone it is safe to come out of their houses to have him murder someone within minutes.

they look like bungling idiots if you ask me and if this is the first act of "terrorism" on american soil and 1 of the 2 was interviewed by the fbi 2 years ago and left the country a couple times.

unreal.

yea, keep chanting use, usa and high-fiving the cops.

  On 4/22/2013 at 6:04 PM, Bob Dobalina said:

That account is so bazaar.

  On 4/22/2013 at 7:12 PM, jules said:

i am very put off by the fact that everyone is celebrating what an amazing job the police did.

 

um, let me get this straight...the most wanted person in the usa was a bloodied and injured 19 year old boy on foot and it took a homeowner to find him in his own backyard after 9000 police and fbi could not find him after a 15 hour search, all the while he was .7 miles from the first shootout. wtf?

 

what if that kid had his gun ready and popped anyone who looked into the boat? they would have told everyone it is safe to come out of their houses to have him murder someone within minutes.

 

they look like bungling idiots if you ask me and if this is the first act of "terrorism" on american soil and 1 of the 2 was interviewed by the fbi 2 years ago and left the country a couple times.

 

unreal.

 

 

yea, keep chanting use, usa and high-fiving the cops.

Apart from what everyone is saying, I hope you understand the reason why Obama makes such a point of it. Regardless whether you think you can do better, there was quite an amount of effort involved and at least one officer has died, as far as I can tell. In this period where 50% of government wants to slash government spending (paying those police officers for instance) and where anything the government does tends to get looked at with the eyes of a critical cynic, it's not bad to put their efforts in a more positive light, imo. The police is far from perfect, but you can be sure that one of the issues the police has to currently cope with, is a lack of respect. And if the police is there to just be a shooting target, and budgets are getting slashed, something is fundamentally wrong.

  On 4/22/2013 at 8:02 PM, goDel said:

The police is far from perfect

these word ring so true

  On 4/22/2013 at 8:06 PM, lumpenprol said:

 

  On 4/22/2013 at 8:02 PM, goDel said:

The police is far from perfect

these word ring so true

I know right? There are way better bands out there.

Rrrrrrrrrroxanne!

  On 4/21/2013 at 5:05 PM, xxx said:

To be sure, he's not innocent and the dumbassery is quite strong in this Padawan but I feel increasingly flabbergasted by the polarization of the entire world. That's a sweeping generalization and likely a product of living in 21st century America but people all around seem to be "going hard" on whatever it is you want to talk about: right vs. left/austerity in EU, gun control in America, DPRK bluster, etc. It's the idea that dumbasses like this who are imminently preventable could so quickly become the Archduke Ferdinand that bothers me. But, as a biologically oriented kind of person, it could be that the malaise I see is a symptom of the strain caused by both dwindling resources from a population out of control and the extreme asymmetry in the distribution of those resources.

 

TL;DR people are pissed off, it could have been stopped but bitches don't know 'bout my need for war, etc.

  On 4/21/2013 at 8:35 PM, jules said:

 

  On 4/21/2013 at 6:15 PM, zaphod said:

lumpenprol's attitude is most likely the correct one. i have no emotions one way or the other about the older brother, but the younger one has a narrative that allows for some level of empathy. at 19 i think there's an intrinsic ability to be duped by everything. it's taken me a while to realize that there isn't much difference between a 19 year old and a 12 year old. they're both idiotic children. i don't think this feeling means that he shouldn't be held responsible for his actions, and the sadness i feel at reading a story like this is a holistic reaction to the entire situation. the news, the people running onto the streets in boston chanting usa, usa, the little kid that got blown up in the initial attack and finally some clueless, alienated teenager holed up in a boat, bleeding out, having run over his own brother to make a self defeating, muddled political point that no american is going pay attention to. what a waste.

perfectly put.

 

Agree 100%.

The icing on the cake to this whole sad clusterfuck of a situation the kid is in is sealed by the fact that 99.9% of Americans he told about his home country Chechnya, including his college student peers and acquaintances, at best responded with "Oh where? Czechoslovakia?" American society as a whole has yet to grasp why our actions as a country set people to commit such horrendous acts and our leaders do everything they can to maintain that attitude. I still get furious with media outlets talk about things like presidential debates and rhetoric as if it shouldn't focus on "foreign policy" like it's a high school debate and not a real-life issue that affects the likelihoods of millions of people overseas. This shit won't begin to slow down, let alone stop, until the is a sea-change occurs in our foreign policy that involves major military de-escalation overseas and a massive reset of relations with major in diplomatic talks with current adversaries. I don't buy the idea that any empathy or sincere effort to understand this kid's motivations is inherently wrong. If we don't then we've missed the point entirely of why he planted bombs to kill and maim innocent civilians in a major American city.

Are you saying American (international) policies put them on the rails to do their heinous act? And that the US government do anything to distort that reality? Really?

  On 4/22/2013 at 8:02 PM, goDel said:

 

  On 4/22/2013 at 7:12 PM, jules said:

i am very put off by the fact that everyone is celebrating what an amazing job the police did.

 

um, let me get this straight...the most wanted person in the usa was a bloodied and injured 19 year old boy on foot and it took a homeowner to find him in his own backyard after 9000 police and fbi could not find him after a 15 hour search, all the while he was .7 miles from the first shootout. wtf?

 

what if that kid had his gun ready and popped anyone who looked into the boat? they would have told everyone it is safe to come out of their houses to have him murder someone within minutes.

 

they look like bungling idiots if you ask me and if this is the first act of "terrorism" on american soil and 1 of the 2 was interviewed by the fbi 2 years ago and left the country a couple times.

 

unreal.

 

 

yea, keep chanting use, usa and high-fiving the cops.

 

Apart from what everyone is saying, I hope you understand the reason why Obama makes such a point of it. Regardless whether you think you can do better, there was quite an amount of effort involved and at least one officer has died, as far as I can tell. In this period where 50% of government wants to slash government spending (paying those police officers for instance) and where anything the government does tends to get looked at with the eyes of a critical cynic, it's not bad to put their efforts in a more positive light, imo. The police is far from perfect, but you can be sure that one of the issues the police has to currently cope with, is a lack of respect. And if the police is there to just be a shooting target, and budgets are getting slashed, something is fundamentally wrong.

 

i am just saying it seems like a bungled situation that 9000 people couldn't find him in a half mile from his last spot. he was bleeding and they had dogs.

why did they say it was safe to come out of your home when it clearly wasn't? they had no idea where he was and they could have had a very serious incident on their hands had that boat owner been shot dead, and i am surprised he wasn't.

  Quote

 

 

 

The icing on the cake to this whole sad clusterfuck of a situation the kid is in is sealed by the fact that 99.9% of Americans he told about his home country Chechnya, including his college student peers and acquaintances, at best responded with "Oh where? Czechoslovakia?" American society as a whole has yet to grasp why our actions as a country set people to commit such horrendous acts and our leaders do everything they can to maintain that attitude.

 

 

you might wanna rephrase that. I don't think the geographic idiocy of the average American makes them deserving of death by terrorist attack. [edit: goDel beat me to it]

anyhoo, on the idle speculation tip, after thinking about it a little, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it was the younger brother who was calling the shots. Dzhokhar.

Not basing this on any direct evidence, just that from what I've read he sounds like the calm and collected one. While his brother was out being the meathead boxer, and flaunting his bling, Dzhokhar was seen as the low-key, thoughtful one. Yet he showed his face boldly on the day of the bombing. He was apparently cold-blooded enough to party and make small talk about the bombings afterwards. And he survived the shootout, while he seemingly literally threw his bro "under the bus." Would not surprise me at all if he egged his older brother on, to be the "muscle" of the operation. Plus, someone had to design and build the bombs...

The point was: do they deserve some respect in the media for how they dealt with this event? I'd say yes, for a number of reasons, even though it's obviously not perfect. But it should be obvious all the details need to develop. You can reason at this point "some" is too much and all, but that's a whole other issue.

It's a bit of a silly discussion, imo. I mean, are you actually interested into knowing whether anyone involved made a certain mistake or not? Or whether some officers did a better job than others? Nonsense. At this point in time it was a group effort. Some officers made mistakes. Some were complete heros, perhaps. As a group effort they deserve some respect. And yes, if it should be better, they need to improve themselves. And yes, lots of details should still be answered. But that just takes time. And in the meantime, I don't see why they shouldn't receive some respect for their efforts.

@jules

no i am just saying it seems that they should have been able to catch a bleeding 19 year old that close to the scene of the shootout.

i am not insinuating foul play or anything like that. i just don't think they deserved high fives for putting people in danger.

what do you think the news story would be right now if that boat owners head was blown off by a kid hiding there in the middle of 9000 officers?

I just think those questions need to be asked, but shouldn't be a showstopper at this point in time. I don't see this as a reason for them deserving any less respect than they are receiving currently. Even if at a later point in time it turns out huge mistakes have been made on this issue. Again, it was a group effort and not everyone involved was perfect. If some mistakes had been made, I don't think the whole group should suffer for it.

fair point

  On 4/22/2013 at 8:33 PM, goDel said:

Are you saying American (international) policies put them on the rails to do their heinous act? And that the US government do anything to distort that reality? Really?

I have a pet theory that at some point the general apathy of Americans might have factored in. It's all speculative and I've overstated it (the reference to the Czech twitter shaming was a cheap too). You called me out on that fair and square. As for the US government, I do not, DO NOT, think there is a policy effort to distort that reality - many politicians will however do everything they can to perpetuate the "war on terror' and there's already been efforts to link the brothers to immigration legislation. Exploiting is a better word. Hell I was a USAF brat and even lived overseas on bases during the 90s when terrorist attacks on military personal occurred. I'm not at all sympathetic to the people and entities who carried them out. In retrospect I know that the story behind such attacks are hardly clear-cut and black and white.

Also, I have no idea what the timeline is regarding these brothers in their path to carrying out the terrorist attack. It's probably likely they contacted many international terrorist groups and many online entities sympathetic to the pro-separatist and/or Islamic fundamentalist and more generally anti-Russian movements in Chechnya and the Caucasus. Something clearly made them decide to carry out an act here in the U.S. specifically though, what exactly in terms of their "goals" in deciding that is yet to be seen.

  On 4/22/2013 at 8:39 PM, lumpenprol said:

 

  Quote

 

 

 

The icing on the cake to this whole sad clusterfuck of a situation the kid is in is sealed by the fact that 99.9% of Americans he told about his home country Chechnya, including his college student peers and acquaintances, at best responded with "Oh where? Czechoslovakia?" American society as a whole has yet to grasp why our actions as a country set people to commit such horrendous acts and our leaders do everything they can to maintain that attitude.

 

 

 

you might wanna rephrase that. I don't think the geographic idiocy of the average American makes them deserving of death by terrorist attack. [edit: goDel beat me to it]

 

anyhoo, on the idle speculation tip, after thinking about it a little, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it was the younger brother who was calling the shots. Dzhokhar.

 

Not basing this on any direct evidence, just that from what I've read he sounds like the calm and collected one. While his brother was out being the meathead boxer, and flaunting his bling, Dzhokhar was seen as the low-key, thoughtful one. Yet he showed his face boldly on the day of the bombing. He was apparently cold-blooded enough to party and make small talk about the bombings afterwards. And he survived the shootout, while he seemingly literally threw his bro "under the bus." Would not surprise me at all if he egged his older brother on, to be the "muscle" of the operation. Plus, someone had to design and build the bombs...

 

Yeah my connection was a lazy one in terms of debate and being called out was warranted. (See above)

That's a logical take on the brother relationship, especially as mentioned earlier by zaphod, the age of 19 is about as typically irrational and fanatic as you can get. The question is what lead him from simply posting jihadist videos to carrying out a terrorist attack.

I think that twitter thing was both apathy and just plain trolling. It's one of those obvious trolling things you see from time to tie on 4chan as well. For instance when a picture of bill cosby is being posted with the accompanying text that obama looks stupid, or something. Obvious trolling, and there are always people crying "But that's Bill Cosby!!!!!!". " Gotcha!", the troll thinks.

^good point, I think by the time I saw the twitter thing most tweets were about it, not those who were plain and simple idiots...

also:

  On 4/22/2013 at 10:51 AM, goDel said:

Im off to work btw. Love the discussion, but hope im not getting too ad hominem ( although i know im awfully close at points) if i get too close justtell me im an idiot and ill back off. I completely respectyour opinion even though my language doesnt always show it that way

I won't call you an idiot but you would have a great career as an apologist in a different life.

I get that you don't have a problem with the way a lot of things went down. That's cool. Clearly though a lot of people besides me have a problem with the way things went down with the police and the way it was covered in the media. So yeah people are going to have complaints, but I appreciate your efforts to convince me and others why we shouldn't have any.

If that's what you think, I don't think you've understood me, tbh.

Critical questions should be asked, like I've already said in the post on top of this page. Don't put me in the "supports some kind of don't ask don't tell"-policy. That's complete bullshit.

I'm not accusing you of that, but you seem to have a problem with other people having problems with it whether it be the treatment of the suspect or the way it was delivered to the public. Fine I get that you don't have the same problems, but what I don't understand is why it's so important for you to beat into our heads why we shouldn't complain about things like the state of the mainstream media (like if we choose to watch it).
I'm not a 'news junky', politics at this point are practically my day job. So I think it's sort of a hard to say that if I think it's abhorrent I should turn it off. Part of my role in what I do is media analysis of events like this. You're a fan of Jon Stewart right? Well check out his coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, I thought it did a pretty good job of exemplifying the irresponsible and absurd nature of the reporting (yet im sure that he still had to stomach quite a bit of it to find the humor in it). Sometimes to get a good understanding of something you find so awful you have to immerse yourself in it, surely you can understand that?

Jules -- I'm no expert, but I take it that what happened was he was just outside the radius of their door-to-door search. They must have some procedure for determining how big that circle should be, and it just turned out it wasn't the right size to enclose how far he could have gone in that time. They only just missed him in their radius, though! And I presume they would have kept looking even if they told everyone to come out.

I do agree, though, that they didn't seem to wait super long before telling the citizens, 'Okay, we can't do this to you and make you hole up in your homes any longer, you poor, shuttered folks.' I think they could have lasted at least another day!

  On 4/23/2013 at 12:26 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

I'm not accusing you of that, but you seem to have a problem with other people having problems with it whether it be the treatment of the suspect or the way it was delivered to the public. Fine I get that you don't have the same problems, but what I don't understand is why it's so important for you to beat into our heads why we shouldn't complain about things like the state of the mainstream media (like if we choose to watch it).

I'm not a 'news junky', politics at this point are practically my day job. So I think it's sort of a hard to say that if I think it's abhorrent I should turn it off. Part of my role in what I do is media analysis of events like this. You're a fan of Jon Stewart right? Well check out his coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, I thought it did a pretty good job of exemplifying the irresponsible and absurd nature of the reporting (yet im sure that he still had to stomach quite a bit of it to find the humor in it). Sometimes to get a good understanding of something you find so awful you have to immerse yourself in it, surely you can understand that?

Because you (multiple) choose to watch it? Those devices have an off-button, don't they? It's in peoples power to decide which media outlet they choose, right?

Perhaps it's your job, but in general, the hype-complaint I hear far to often, IMO. Even on this side of the pond. And the complaints usually are huge generalisations about the media and everything that's bad about it. Apart from the couple of enlightened spirits actually taking the time to focus on something specific, most of the time the complaints are more a hype about the hype. A complete wast of emotional energy, imo.

Look I understand that there's a huge amount of complete garbage spewed across TV networks 24/7 on US TV, but to complain about it like there are no options is just as much complete bullshit. Just turn that friggin apparatus off. Easy. You won't miss a thing. If you don't like your job, find another one. If you like to tell people they're watching garbage, that's fine as well. But when you do, please be sure to be consistent in your methods and stay away from creating a new hype about a hype.

It's far too easy to criticise without taking any personal responsibility. If you want to criticise the police, fine, criticise all you want. But at least put in the effort to show what was wrong and what the alternative should be. At this point it's way too early to already criticise the police for things that did or didn't happen. It's been a couple of days, for f&cks sake! A thorough investigation about what went right or wrong already takes a couple of weeks. But somehow, you're already all-knowing and able to present your criticism? Come one man, that's basically using the exact method you despise about the media you criticise.

  On 4/23/2013 at 12:26 AM, encey said:

Jules -- I'm no expert, but I take it that what happened was he was just outside the radius of their door-to-door search. They must have some procedure for determining how big that circle should be, and it just turned out it wasn't the right size to enclose how far he could have gone in that time. They only just missed him in their radius, though! And I presume they would have kept looking even if they told everyone to come out.

 

I do agree, though, that they didn't seem to wait super long before telling the citizens, 'Okay, we can't do this to you and make you hole up in your homes any longer, you poor, shuttered folks.' I think they could have lasted at least another day!

yea, i totally get that. i am no expert either. i have a feeling if i robbed the 7-11 in my small shit town and tried to run over a few cops after shooting at them and then i ran away on foot and hid under a blanket in someone's backyard...i'd be found pretty quickly. and this town probably has 10 cops.

thermal imaging helicopters and dogs with his scent could not pick him up? he was bleeding like a stuck pig. and had bomb residue. it just seems crazy to me.

everything is a conspiracy!