Whose Narrative is it Anyway?

Another health crisis for my mother meant another chance to channel surf between moving in to her apartment to take care of her dog and visiting the hospital. 

Being given free reign of the remote enables me as it has in the past to toggle between two wildly divergent views of the world, parallel universes one might say whose points never meet. 

I'm talking about the two cable television channels (which we don't have at home) which on my mom's TV, sit only two clicks from each other, MSNBC and FOX. Watching these two networks side by side as I've been doing, it doesn't take much to realize why this country is hopelessly divided at the moment. 

The current crisis happened to coincide with the internationally publicized trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager from Illinois who shot and killed two men and severely wounded another during the unrest, or riot if you prefer, (depending upon which side you're on), over a white police officer shooting Jacob Blake, a black man, seven times in the back, right in front of Blake's children. This all took place in Kenosha, WI, a city I know intimately, which sits smack dab between Chicago and Milwaukee. 

If you choose FOX as your prime method of news delivery, this is what you know about what happened the night of August 25, 2020 in Kenosha:

Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man who spent his summers in Kenosha working as a lifeguard, offered the owner of a used car lot that had been torched by rioters, to help defend the business from further damage. Armed with a medical kit in one hand and a legally obtained AR-15 style rifle in the other, Rittenhouse found himself under attack from members of a mob. One of them, Joseph Rosenbaum, a man with a long criminal record, chased the youth into a parking lot while threatening to kill him, then lunged at Rittenhouse, trying to take his rifle. Fearing for his life, Rittenhouse opened fire on Rosenbaum. As he desperately ran from the scene trying to find police to report the incident, Rittenhouse was chased by more rioters, all with criminal pasts, one of whom jump kicked him after he stumbled and fell to the ground. Another, Anthony Huber, smashed the youth in the head with a skateboard and also attempted to take his gun. Again, fearing for his life, Rittenhouse shot Huber. Shortly thereafter, another rioter, Gaige Grosskreutz, pointed a pistol at Rittenhouse who in self-defense, shot Grosskreutz in the arm. 

If MSNBC is your primary news source, this is what you know of the same story:

A high school dropout from Antioch, IL, Kyle Rittenhouse, an alleged white supremacist and pathological liar, had a passion for law enforcement and Donald Trump. Enraged by the destruction of property during the unrest over police brutality that was taking place in another state, Rittenhouse took it upon himself to drive from his home in Illinois to Wisconsin armed with an assault rifle, to inflict vigilante justice in a place where he had no connection. During a confrontation with some of the protestors, Rittenhouse shot and killed two unarmed men, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, then shot and severely wounded Gage Grosskreutz.

Rittenhouse was charged with two separate counts of first degree reckless and intentional homicide in the deaths of Rosenbaum and Huber, attempted first degree homicide in the shooting of Grosskreutz, and reckless endangerment for firing shots at the guy who kicked him. Another charge of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18 was dismissed by the presiding judge due to a technicality. 

Both networks provided virtually gavel-to-gavel coverage of the trial, not surprisingly each with their own slant on the proceedings. 

The Second Amendment and one's views of it play a great role in one's views of the case. To the gun crowd, many of whom are devotees of Fox, Rittenhouse was well within his rights to arm himself in order to help protect businesses targeted by lawless arsonists and looters, and also in defending himself against the men who intended to harm if not outright kill him. 

To those on the other side, Rittenhouse should have stayed at home that night and left the policing to the police.

The reaction to the jury's verdict of not guilty on all counts was also predictable. To the Fox crowd it was considered a victory of the American judicial system, preserving the right to bear arms and to defend oneself by using deadly force if necessary. To them, Rittenhouse was not only hailed as a fine, upstanding young man, but also a hero who has been celebrated and treated with offers of employment by ultra-right legislators tripping over themselves to hire him, a prime-time interview on FOX with their biggest star, Tucker Carlson, and an invitation to Mar-A-Lago where he was granted an audience with the exPOTUS.

To the other side, the verdict was a miscarriage of justice which set a dangerous precedent that will only encourage more people to openly carry guns in public. To them Rittenhouse is at best a foolish young man who got himself in way over his head, at worst a vigilante, some even call him a terrorist, bent upon taking the law in into his own hands in a place he had no business being. For them he murdered two men in cold blood, severely injured a third, and deserves to be held accountable for his actions.

After the not guilty verdict was read, FOX's prime time talking head Sean Hannity read a laundry list of misdeeds perpetrated by the mainstream media in their coverage of the Rittenhouse affair. According to him, "the media" (I guess to Hannity that term doesn't include himself or his employer), completely misrepresented the case by reporting falsehoods and leaving out details that "didn't fit into their narrative". That narrative according to Hannity, is to promote a progressive, left wing, "woke", anti-gun, pro-abortion, anti-Christian, pro-ANTIFA/BLM, and anti-American agenda.

Full disclosure, if you've read anything in this space before, you probably know my sentiments do not lie with FOX. In fact, I find the organization and its representatives to be for the most part, reprehensible.  

But in this case, having watched a good deal of MSNBC, CNN and FOX coverage of the Rittenhouse affair, I think Hannity has a point. That began to hit home after things I had assumed from the outset turned out not to be true, such as Rittenhouse having no connection to Kenosha, or that his mother drove him to Kenosha that fateful night, or that he illegally transported the gun from Illinois to Wisconsin. And the most controversial tidbit of information broadcast about Rittenhouse, that he is a white supremacist, has never been firmly established. For what it's worth, he publicly denies it.

Now these misconceptions once widely broadcasted MAY have been cleared up by MSNBC and CNN, but they certainly didn't go out of their way to do so. In fact, looking back on virtually everything I read and heard about the case from my usual go to news sources such as The Atlantic, the New York Times, NPR, and when I get the chance to watch cable TV, MSNBC (my mother's network of choice), the picture painted of young Mr. Rittenhouse's character was indeed bleak. There was little nuance, he was painted by and large as an ultra-right-gun nut, very possibly a white supremacist, and little more.  It didn't help his reputation that his cause was quickly picked up by nefarious groups such as the Proud Boys. 

I felt the coverage of the trial, especially on MSNBC was especially biased, leaving little doubt that Rittenhouse acted out of malice in killing two men and severely injuring another.  One of the talking points of Hannity and his FOX colleagues was that the just-left-of-Attila the Hun media infused the most polarizing issue of the day, race, into the equation. 

Again, reluctantly I have to agree. It's true that the violence in Kenosha was directly set off by police shooting a black man and fueled in large part by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a few months earlier. But all four of the men that Rittenhouse shot at were white. Nevertheless, the question kept coming up again and again, what would the outcome of the trial have been had Rittenhouse been black? 

Other than stirring up more outrage, I'm not sure of the point of that question. I believe that had the circumstances been exactly the same but for the race of the defendant, in other words had a black Rittenhouse gone to Kenosha to help protect businesses from arson and looting, then had been chased and threatened by rioters whom he ultimately shot, I truly believe the verdict would have been the same. 

I believe this because after having listened to much of the evidence at the trial as well as having seen several of the videos of the shootings, I have no doubt that given the law presented them, the jury came to the correct conclusion. This is a controversial opinion especially in my circle of friends and family. But according to Wisconsin law, Kyle Rittenhouse from what I can tell, was within his rights to carry the weapon. You may or may not agree with the law, I sure as heck don't, but that opinion is irrelevant in a court of law. A jury's responsibility is not to judge the merit of a law, nor judge the character, politics nor feelings about race (repugnant as they might be), of the defendant. 

A jury's one and only job is to determine if the law in place was broken.  It is also clear from the testimony that Joseph Rosenbaum (who was carrying a chain), initiated the hostilities between himself and Rittenhouse, and the subsequent string of events that let to the other shootings. Rosenbaum verbally threatened Rittenhouse's life, chased him, and in the end, grabbed for his gun. 

The other men shot by Rittenhouse, also initiated their confrontations with him. 

It is entirely reasonable that in the moments before he shot and killed Huber and Rosenbaum and shot and wounded Grosskreutz who was pointing a pistol at him, Rittenhouse felt his life was threatened because it probably was. And according to Wisconsin law, that is a sufficient motive to legally shoot someone. 

However, being found not guilty in a trial does not necessarily make a defendant innocent. It's absolutely true that Rosenbaum and Huber most likely would be alive today had Rittenhouse not brought his gun to the protest.

Rittenhouse is not a hero. Openly armed with a powerful, deadly weapon that night as several other people were, Rittenhouse was an active participant in the violence that took place on the streets of Kenosha. As such, Kyle Rittenhouse is the poster child for the absolute insanity of laws around this country that enable people not only to own deadly weapons designed to commit mass murder, but to openly carry them in public. 

To the gun crowd who claim that Rittenhouse was just defending himself when he shot three men, killing two of them, I would ask this: would you feel the same if a protester, one of those big bad ANTIFA/BLM types you fear so much, shot and killed a self-styled paramilitary vigilante like Rittenhouse because he felt his life was threatened? It does go both ways, Wisconsin law permits everybody, protester and vigilante alike to openly carry weapons in public and use them if need be for self-defense.

I'm guessing had that been the case, the folks over at FOX would have been singing a different tune, one that better fit into their own narrative. 

I think it goes without saying that there is no room for agendas and narratives in the work of real journalists whose responsibility, in a perfect world anyway, is to the best of their ability report facts in an unbiased fashion. The people over at FOX get around this by claiming their prime-time talking heads are entertainers not journalists, ever since their defense of Tucker Carlson in a defamation suit brought against him and the network, that claimed no reasonable person would take anything Carlson said seriously. 

In her ruling in favor of Carlson, the judge in dismissing the case said this:

Fox persuasively argues . . . that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism about the statements he makes....whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson's statements as exaggeration, non-literal commentary, or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same—the statements are not actionable.

Clearly the only credibility the FOX trolls have is what they bring to the company's bottom line, determined of course by their ratings. So as long as they tell their millions of viewers what they want to hear, according to the network it doesn't matter what they say or what damage it may cause. 

I would assume that the folks over at MSNBC and CNN looking toward their own bottom line, have at least a slightly higher standard and would not take such a brazen approach. Credibility over there, I would hope anyway, has at least as much to do with a semblance of accuracy in their reporting as presenting a palatable message to their viewers.

Of course journalists are only human and it's reasonable to expect them to have an opinion about what they're reporting. 

This is all the more true in a time when our country is indisputably at a crossroad, where our future has the possibility of moving in one of two distinct paths, either towards or away from democracy. It's only natural that all of us, journalists included, will be taking sides. 

Nevertheless, I believe it is incumbent upon real news organizations and the journalists they hire, to report as accurately as possible, giving expression to all sides of the story.

As an example, in all the coverage I witnessed, I did not once see or hear any reference on either MSNBC or CNN to the suffering of the people of Kenosha who watched helplessly as their city was in flames. It seemed as if the only viewpoint that mattered was that of the black community who was rightfully enraged by the shooting of Jacob Blake. To those news organizations and to those people who insist that looting and arson are justified if they are committed in the name of protesting injustice, I would ask this: How would you feel if it was your home or business that was going up in flames? Unless you are my friend Don Flesch (or someone like him), who somehow managed to find understanding and forgiveness as the family business he devoted his life to was being destroyed by looters and arsonists, your opinion on the subject is meaningless.

In the end, the MSNBC version of the Rittenhouse affair was just as incomplete and ultimately dishonest as the FOX version.

I'm reminded here of a scene from one of my favorite movies, The Right Stuff. In the scene, the CAPCOM folks on the ground are debating whether or not to tell astronaut John Glenn that there may be a fatal flaw in his spacecraft. Fellow astronaut Alan Shepard sets them straight by telling them, "He's a pilot, he needs to know the condition of his craft."

Here is an amazing film of the actual event. At around two minutes into the video, CAPCOM informs Glenn that there is to be a change of plans in his reentry procedure. Glenn asks them the reason for this and they tell him: "We'll get back to you." Then you hear Shepard come in and tell Glenn the truth about what's going on with his spacecraft.

My point is this, Democracy dies through division and hatred, promoted through dishonesty, misinformation, and outright lies. If our fragile democracy is to survive, we need to realize that we are all in this together and especially to be told the truth about the condition of our nation. If the folks at MSNBC and CNN are truly on the side of democracy, which I think they are, they need to trust the intelligence of their audience to make up their own minds by honestly telling the complete story, even if what they are reporting is not exactly music to their ears. 

In other words, leave the bullshit to Fox. 

Hannity was indeed paying them a high compliment. In accusing "the media" of lying and obscuring the truth all in the name of fitting a narrative, he was really saying this: "hey guys, you're acting just like me."

It's truly a cold day in hell when I agree with Sean Hannity.

By the way honey, pass me the blankets, it's freezing in here. 

On controversy, icons and photography

There's a photograph that's been making the rounds for six years that continues to create a stir. Five young adults, a woman and four men, are engaged in what appears to be casual conversation on the banks of the East River in the neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. The photograph could be an ad for high priced vodka, or an illustration for a lifestyle piece on artists living in Williamsburg, were it not for the background which dates the photograph almost to the minute. The picture was taken on September 11, 2001 and in the background is the Manhattan skyline with a huge plume of smoke emanating from the spot where the World Trade Center stood, only minutes before.

Of the hundreds of thousands of photographs made that day, this particular one sat in a box for years as its author, Magnum photographer Thomas Hoepker, felt it was too enigmatic to publish given the raw emotions of the time. The photo was finally published four years later, and was picked up by the New York Times critic Frank Rich on the fifth anniversary of the attack. It has since been dubbed "The most controversial photograph of 9/11."

Rich uses the subjects in the photograph and their alleged indifference to what's going on behind them to illustrate how quickly Americans would put the sorry event behind them. He wrote:

Seen from the perspective of 9/11’s fifth anniversary, Mr. Hoepker’s photo is prescient as well as important — a snapshot of history soon to come... This is a country that likes to move on, and fast. The young people in Mr. Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American. 

The article then goes on to blast the Bush administration and in typical Rich style, everything he finds objectionable about Americans.

Did Americans really just keep on going, throwing off 9/11 like a bad penny? I hardly think so. Today, five years since the Times article and more than ten years since the tragedy, 9/11 is still a festering sore.  Yes there is some indifference. I wrote about that subject in this space last year. However in most cases, the very words "nine eleven" evoke horror, grief and sorrow, just as they did ten years ago. That date will live in infamy long after the last generation who was around to witness it has passed on. Most importantly, our soldiers are still sacrificing their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, direct results of the attacks of 9/11. They don't have the luxury of tossing away that day, nor has any American who cares about them or the memory of their fallen comrades, or needless to say, the direct victims of 9/11.

We move on, yes, but only because life demands that of us. What else can we do?

Not only do I discount Rich's assessment of the American psyche since the attacks, but I find his remarks about the photograph, which have since been expanded upon by others, to be not only dead wrong, but also lazy and harmful.

In my opinion, Rich's (and others') assumptions about Hoepker's photograph tell us absolutely nothing about 9/11. They do say a great deal however about the medium of photography and its ability to manipulate, misinform and distort reality.

On a quick glance, the five subjects do appear to be oblivious to the tragedy that is taking place just a few miles away. There are no tears, no grimaces, no beating of the breasts. No one is gazing off to the south to look at the scene of the terrible carnage. The ease of their posture suggests they could be chatting about their artwork, or the new night club down the block.

Frank Rich assumes they have already moved on, just minutes after the towers fell.

But how does he know that? What's to say these folks weren't in lower Manhattan when the planes hit, evacuated the borough via the Brooklyn Bridge, made their way up to Williamsburg and just before the photographer snapped their picture, caught up with their friends, relieved that they too were safely out of harm's way?

The truth as we'll see in a minute, not surprisingly exists somewhere between these two highly unlikely scenarios.

The question is, does the truth behind this picture really matter? A "work of art", as this photograph is portrayed in Jonathan Jones's recent article in the Guardian, represents a greater reality, one that goes beyond the picture frame. Jones suggests that the Hoepker photograph illustrates the very human condition of life going on in the face of tragedy, which is a recurrent theme in art throughout history. Yet paintings and literature represent symbolic figures. Portrayed within the frame of Hoepker's photo are recognizable individuals who have stories that may or may not jibe with Thomas Hoepker's, Frank Rich's, Jonathan Jones's or anyone else's assumptions. Given that I'd say yes, the truth does matter a great deal. And if we don't know the story behind those people in the photograph, then it's best to leave them, and the picture alone.

This is nothing new. The history of photography is filled with iconic images that aren't exactly what they seem. There is a famous photograph by Margaret Bourke White that portrays a Depression era bread line made up of African American people. The people are standing in front of a billboard that pictures a happy white family driving in their car, the copy of the sign reading: "World's Highest Standard of Living; There's no way like the American Way." The irony of this scene is pretty hard to miss and for years the photograph has been used to illustrate the inequality between the races in this country. Now there's absolutely nothing made up about the photograph, but what some folks who use it to illustrate racial inequality in America fail to mention is that the people in the bread line were flood victims. They were temporarily dispossessed naturally, but we simply don't know what their everyday lives were like and where they fit in the overall economic spectrum. Like the 9/11 photograph, the subjects of the Bourke White photograph were recognizable and may or may not have appreciated being used as symbols of a cause.

One of Diane Arbus's most enduring images is of a young boy in a park, holding a toy hand grenade. He holds his body in an unnaturally stiff position, his free hand in a claw grip, and there is a bone chilling grimace on his face. It is a haunting, ominous image. That is until you see the proof sheet that shows the rest of the pictures the famous photographer shot of the same boy. In the other pictures, the boy looks like a normal little kid hamming it up for the camera. The picture Arbus chose to use was the last shot on the roll where the child, possibly out of frustration, or boredom of being photographed, mugging it up to the extreme, strikes the curious pose. Arbus was known for her portraits of freakish looking people and this picture used in the context of her other work, made a statement about the human condition, one that the artist conjured up in her mind.

The subjects of the 9/11 photograph were not asked permission to be photographed. That's not at all unusual in photojournalism. The photographer writes that in his journey down through Brooklyn to get closer to Ground Zero, he came across this scene of relative tranquility in the midst of the chaos. He snapped three pictures and moved on. There was no contact between him and the subjects so he couldn't have possibly known their stories. I'm guessing, being a photographer myself, after shooting only three frames in the midst of a day like that, he probably put those folks entirely out of his mind until he saw the images.

Shortly after Rich's article came out in the Times, David Plotz of Slate Magazine published an article whose title expressed his feelings in no uncertain terms: "Frank Rich is Wrong About That 9/11 Photograph." The article is so spot on that instead of quoting sections from it here, I suggest you just read it yourself. Plotz not only made some assumptions of his own about the subjects of the photograph, but asked them to contact Slate to tell their story. Two of them did. You should read their replies for yourself as well, here.

It turns out that two of the people, a couple at the time, watched the Twin Towers collapse from their rooftop in Williamsburg. Shocked like everyone else, they made their way down to the waterfront where they saw thousands of folks covered in dust walking across the Williamsburg Bridge, helping each other in any way they could. Before the famous brief encounter with Hoepker and their date with destiny, the couple encountered the other three men in the picture, all total strangers. The man in the photograph noted that the event brought people together in ways only a catastrophe can. He writes:

Had Hoepker walked fifty feet over to introduce himself he would have discovered a bunch of New Yorkers in the middle of an animated discussion about what had just happened. He instead chose to publish the photograph that allowed him to draw the conclusions he wished to draw... A more honest conclusion might start by acknowledging just how easily a photograph can be manipulated, especially in the advancement of one's own biases or in the service of one's own career.


The woman in the photograph wrote later confirming the man's words and added that she too is a professional photographer who didn't touch her camera that day, in part because:

This somewhat cynical expression of an assumed reality printed in the New York Times proves a good reason... I also have a strict policy of never taking a photograph of a person without their permission or knowledge of my intent.


She went on:

I am a third-generation native New Yorker, who knows and loves every square inch of this city, as did her ancestors before her. My mother and father are both architects and artists who have contributed much to the landscape of this city and my knowledge of the buildings that are my hometown and my childhood friends.


The woman added that her mother once worked for Minoru Yanasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center and concludes:


...it was genetically impossible for me to be unaffected by this event. 


So it turns out that Frank Rich was right on one point; the photograph is indeed an important, perhaps iconic image that illustrates the American experience on 9/11.

It just illustrated the opposite of what he assumed.