Skip to main content

Because Vernon Hunter was understood as victim

Googling "Vernon Hunter" on Monday night I was stunned by how little the national media, beyond Bunch, Crooks and Liars, the Associated Press and ABC's "Good Morning America," had paid attention to Stack's victim. "GMA" seemed to write about Hunter because the show featured Stack's daughter from his first marriage, Samantha Bell, calling her father a "hero." To her credit, Bell retracted her statement, and labeled Hunter the hero, when she learned about the man her father killed. (Joan Walsh, “Why so little attention to Vernon Hunter?” Salon, 22 Feb. 2010)

Because Vernon Hunter was understood as victim

I think many of us still avoid identifying with the "passive" victim, and take some pleasure in associating with the effective self-exertion of the killer. I think it means a lot of us have known substantial bullying in our lives, 'cause the most frequent reaction of those who've been bullied, when they witness someone else under attack, IS NOT actually to defend them but rather to (in psychological parlance) "identify with the persecutor" -- join the bullying crowd, and thereby avoid a re-encounter with previous shame and fear. Those who reach out to the victim: the better loved, not those who've suffered from bullying themselves. Vernon Hunter was not of course passive, but he is largely UNDERSTOOD as a "victim" -- that is, as fatally vulnerable. And so all the attention veered toward the hunter, rather than Hunter. That's my largest sense of the why.

There are also those who see him as a proxy. He is THEIR man, who just wouldn't shut up and take it. He isn't yours. He isn't mine. But I think we need to take care to note that in different situations, with different individuals, WE TOO might become so focused on the some particular someone who finally expresses OUR OWN discontent, rage, that the humanity of other people is lost to some extent in their becoming "wreckage" of our proxies' noteworthy concussive power. These headlines of yours have me thinking a bit of the "finally, someone speaks out!" excitement/relief, that has drawn many of the right in this instance to lose all contact/interest in Vernon Hunter.

1) The President Obama we voted for

I'll let a smart friend explain why Obama beat the GOP and won back his base, at least for a glorious day

2) Finally, some spine

The president gives (another) great speech. But it will take more than words to get his agenda back on track

and particularly this one:

3) Thank you, Sen. Franken

Senate Dems are saying he stifled Joe Lieberman to keep debate on track. Liberals are happy, whatever the reason

Link: Why so little attention to Vernon Hunter (Salon)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump

When Rose McGowan appears in Asgard: a review of "Thor: Ragnarok"

The best part of this film was when Rose McGowan appeared in Asgard and accosted Odin and his sons for covering up, with a prettified, corporate, outward appearance that's all gay-friendly, feminist, multicultural, absolutely for the rights of the indigenous, etc., centuries of past abuse, where they predated mercilessly upon countless unsuspecting peoples. And the PR department came in and said, okay Weinstein... I mean Odin and Odin' sons, here's what we suggest you do. First, you, Odin, are going to have to die. No extensive therapy; when it comes to predators who are male, especially white and male, this age doesn't believe in therapy. You did what you did because you are, or at least strongly WERE, evil, so that's what we have to work with. Now death doesn't seem like "working with it," I know, but the genius is that we'll do the rehab with your sons, and when they're resurrected as somehow more apart from your regime,