SWA #5

Rhetorical Analysis on Gregg Easterbrook’s Article
The author of this article, “Virginia Tech and Our Impoverished Language for Evil”, is a contributing editor at The New Republic and wrote this article to object against the media and announcers on television “sugar-coating” tragic happenings like the Virginia Tech shooting. The criminals or the crimes they commit are not spoken of for what they really are and in turn make them sound less serious than what they really are. The Virginia Tech example shows how the media and news stations would never call the criminal a “killer” or a “murderer” but instead called him a “shooter” which does not give the correct image of what really happened. The tragic massive homicide is not given that image. Gregg states “Many news reports spoke of the slaughter as if it had been a bad, bad car crash with no one really at fault.” Moral dimension is removed giving the illusion that bad things just happen instead of human wickedness making bad things happen.
With all of the talk about the media, I think this article could mainly have been targeted towards them to let the media know what they are doing. It could also possibly be directed toward the public so that people do not get caught up thinking something is not serious when things like the horrible homicide talked about in the article happen and are detrimental. His arguments are very convincing and I completely agree with his point of view on the issue. The media and television constantly try to make all bad things seem better. In my perspective, I do not understand how a mass murderer cannot be called for what he is when he did one of the most horrible things you can do and yet we cannot be judgmental on it. If that cannot be judged and shown for what it is, what can? The author stated it the best way possible when he said, “Evil exists and must be spoken of as evil, not in euphemism.” Why is there such a problem getting the hard truth about what goes on around us in the world?
The other issue that is discussed in this passage is how the criminal was being justified for what he did. The media and psychologists tried to simply play it off as a confused gunman so that the fact that real evil exists, does not get acknowledged. It is a hard thing to grasp when you have to realize and acknowledge the fact that your own species and race is capable of such heartless antics. Maybe this is the reason people cannot confront the fact that when a person kills another it makes them a murderer and when it is done in a right state of mind, it shows it is done out of pure cold heartlessness.