Misdirected Blame

Gator Collet thought it was funny. As 16 year-old Jason Robinson lay bleeding to death on the floor of his social studies class last Monday from stab wounds inflicted by Gator and two friends. Gator Collet laughed while chanting, "Jason's going to die, Jason's going to die."

And a short while later, down a blood-soaked hallway in Dartmouth, MA, Gator Collet's wish was granted as Jason Robinson's short life came to a painful and messy end.

Gator and his friends apparently had a grudge against one of Robinson's friends. They drove to Dartmouth High School armed with a pipe, a buck knife and a baseball bat, intending to settle a score. But as they burst into the first period class in this sleepy southern Massachusetts town, they didn't find who they were looking for. Instead they were asked by Jason Robinson what they wanted with his friend. The only answer he received was several quick knife thrusts to the abdomen.

These three boys drove up to a school, intent on committing a murder in front of dozens of people, and they did just that. The three were apprehended the same day and were arraigned Tuesday in District 3 Juvenile Court in New Bedford. They are awaiting a trail that, with roughly twenty-five eyewitnesses, they have little chance of winning. It is what should be an open and shut case, both legally and morally. These kids committed a horrible crime without provocation and should never see the light of day again. The question is this: if the judicial system is capable of treating these kids as adults, why can't the media do the same?

Directly below the story about the arraignments in Wednesday's Boston Globe, there was an expose on the details of the assailants' lives. It turns out that "Gator Collet had a troubled past" and was involved in "a series of skirmishes" with officials at a school that he later left. His motorcycle-driving father "sports a shaved head, a pigtail, and tattoos." The family owns two old Corvettes and has a penchant for decorating their house with Native American artifacts.

I was also enlightened that Nigel Thomas, another one of the pubescent primates, had a "strict stepfather" who "had allegedly abused him." His mother died of cancer five years ago and he had been living with his friend Gator for a few months. According to the Globe, Nigel and Gator "forged a friendship rooted in skateboarding," an "obsession that set them apart from their peers."

Karter Reed was not so lucky, Paradoxically, his media image suffered because he was relatively normal. He was "a quiet boy and good student." Pity for poor Karter, for he didn't exemplify the convenient image of a kid failed by the society--up all night watching slasher flicks after being abused by one or more members of his dysfunctional family while the system turned a deaf ear to his horrible problems. There was nothing to blame in Karter's mundane backgroud except for the fact that he was also skate-boarding when they handed out brains and souls. The uncolorful Karter is mentioned only once more in the article.

Sadly, we live in a society that refuses to judge anyone without a disclaimer. No one is completely guilty, no one is ultimately responsible; we all suffered during childhood. All of our actions are at least partly the fault of our parents' deficiencies, society's ills, and television's images. Far be it for America to judge anyone on moral grounds for what they have done, for we didn't grow up in their circumstances. Anyone can be absolved as long as someone makes the villian out to be a member of a dysfunctional family or an unfair society.

The Boston Globe, specifically, is not to blame, for it is merely a part of a larger national trend to relieve individuals of responsibility for any immoral act by blaming anyone but the perpetrator. The message is being blasted loud and clear from the stages of television talk shows and 12-step help groups; heinous acts of violence and depravity are not to be judged as stand-alone crimes, but rather in the larger context of the possible failings of an individual's relationships with others and with society. And this phenomenon is not limited to criminals whose childhood is in the recent past; celebrated killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Robert Alton Harris have details of their childhood splashed all over the headlines of the nation.

If we are to believe Geraldo and Oprah, these young men are not to be held completely culpable for their actions. Sure they stabbed Jason Robinson without either provocation or remorse, but isn't someone else to blame? The tired excuse of the effects of racism is inapplicable here, as all of those involved were white. The theory of economic deprivation as an inevitable creator of violence also fails to save these residents of middle-class, suburban Dartmouth.

With the more popular excuses rendered ineffective by the facts, we are asked to consider increasingly pathetic and implausible motivations. Look at the parents: look at their bodily ornamentation, look at their modes of transportation. Consider the way they brought these kids up, consider their hairstyles, consider anything but the fact that their children have committed an animalistic crime for no discernable reason and without any possible excuse.

The real injustice here is the idea that the stabbing was an inevitable tragedy for everyone involved. By delving into the pasts of the murderers and seizing upon any tidbit of possible trauma, the media is sending a signal that this story is more complicated than it might appear. The media is correct that there are two sides to every story, but the real sides are right and wrong. Bleeding and fleeing, human and savage, dead and alive. There is no in between in an act such as this, and to pretend otherwise is irresponsible.

Some will blame MTV for raising these youths on images of sex and violence. Some will blame less than ideal home lives. Some will blame monetary troubles, some unresponsive teachers. Some will blame you, some will blame me, and many will blame themselves. But as this false chorus of collective culpability reaches a crescendo, the real guilty party can still he heard if you listen carefully enough. He is the boy laughing while another lies choking on his own blood.

The murder of a local student has prompted another media storm falsely condemning "society" for the act of an individual.