Listened to Optical Delusion from On the Media | WNYC Studios

Impeachment ennui, Virginia's Lobby Day, and accountability in Puerto Rico.

A gathering of thousands of armed protesters in Virginia last weekend prompted fears of mass violence. On this episode of On the Media, how some militia groups are spinning the lack of bloodshed as victory. Plus, fresh demands for accountability in Puerto Rico, and why the senate impeachment trial feels so predictable. 

1. Bob Garfield [@Bobosphere] on the present moment in the impeachment trial. Listen.

2. Lois Beckett [@loisbeckett], reporter at the Guardian, and OTM producer Micah Loewinger [@MicahLoewinger] on the efforts to shape the media narrative among gun rights activists at Virginia's Lobby Day. Listen.

3. OTM producer Alana Casanova-Burgess [@AlanaLlama] on the "double-bind" Puerto Rico faces as earthquakes shake the state. Listen here. 

🎧 The Daily: How New Zealand Banned Assault Rifles in Six Days | New York Times

Listened to The Daily: How New Zealand Banned Assault Rifles in Six Days from New York Times

The prime minister took swift action against the weapons used for a massacre at two mosques in Christchurch.

👓 ‘Heathers’ TV show cancelled again following Pittsburgh synagogue shooting | The Independent

Read The new 'Heathers' TV show keeps getting pulled off the air due to mass shootings (The Independent)
Paramount Network's remake of the cult 1988 black comedy has been rendered tasteless by a string of mass shootings over the past eight months

👓 I am 18. I belong to the massacre generation. | Washington Post

Read I am 18. I belong to the massacre generation. (Washington Post)
It was last Saturday when it hit me that my entire life has been framed by violence. I don’t remember being born on Jan. 28, 2000, and I don’t remember being a year and a half old when 9/11 happened. I don’t remember the panic of my mother as she stepped outside our house in Washington and smelled the smoke of the burning Pentagon. I don’t remember her knowing I would grow up in a changed world.

🎧 The Daily: The Fight Over 3-D-Printed Guns | New York Times

Listened to The Daily: The Fight Over 3-D-Printed Guns from nytimes.com
Critics say that publishing blueprints for 3-D-printed weapons is a threat to public safety. Supporters say it’s a First Amendment right.

📺 October 3, 2018 | Amanpour & Company | PBS

Watched October 3, 2018 from Amanpour & Company
Christiane Amanpour interviews Michael Lewis, author of “The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy,” “Moneyball,” & “The Big Short;” and Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian Foreign Minister. Michel Martin interviews Larry Ward, the Chief Marketing Officer at Gun Dynamics.
What a painfully depressing episode

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Putting ‘Fake News’ on Trial | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Putting ‘Fake News’ on Trial by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

The families of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 are suing a conspiracy theorist who claims the massacre was a hoax. Their lawsuits are bringing the issue of “fake news” to the courts.

On today’s episode:

• Elizabeth Williamson, a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times.

Background reading:

• The families of eight Sandy Hook victims, as well as an F.B.I. agent who responded to the massacre, are suing the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for defamation. Relatives of the victims have received death threats from those who embrace the falsehoods Mr. Jones has propagated on his website Infowars, which has an audience of millions.

👓 How School Shootings Spread | New Yorker

Read How School Shootings Spread by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell (The New Yorker)
An increasingly ritualized form of violence is attracting unexpected perpetrators.
An intriguing article whose theory seems both applicable and timely. It also seems extensible to additional areas, some of which I’ve noted in my annotations.

Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

Most previous explanations had focussed on explaining how someone’s beliefs might be altered in the moment.

Knowing a little of what is coming in advance here, I can’t help but thinking: How can this riot theory potentially be used to influence politics and/or political campaigns? It could be particularly effective to get people “riled up” just before a particular election to create a political riot of sorts and thereby influence the outcome. Facebook has done several social experiments with elections in showing that their friends and family voted and thereby affecting other potential voters. When done in a way that targets people of particular political beliefs to increase turn out, one is given a means of drastically influencing elections. In some sense, this is an example of this “Riot Theory”.


“But group interaction was such that none could admit this without loss of status; in our terms, their threshold for stealing cars is low because daring masculine acts bring status, and reluctance to join, once others have, carries the high cost of being labeled a sissy.” You can’t just look at an individual’s norms and motives. You need to look at the group.

This might also be the same case with fraternity shenanigans and even more deplorable actions like gang rapes. Usually there’s one or more sociopaths that start the movement, and then others reluctantly join in.


If a riot evolves as it spreads, starting with the hotheaded rock thrower and ending with the upstanding citizen, then rioters are a profoundly heterogeneous group.


Granovetter’s model suggests that riots are sometimes more than spontaneous outbursts. If they evolve, it means they have depth and length and a history. Granovetter thought that the threshold hypothesis could be used to describe everything from elections to strikes, and even matters as prosaic as how people decide it’s time to leave a party.


The first seven major shooting cases—Loukaitis, Ramsey, Woodham, Carneal, Johnson and Golden, Wurst, and Kinkel—were disconnected and idiosyncratic.

Seven though? In such a short time period? These must have known about prior ones or else perhaps the theory doesn’t hold as much water. Similarly suicide could be added as a contagion that fits into this riot model as well.


That’s what Paton and Larkin mean: the effect of Harris and Klebold’s example was to make it possible for people with far higher thresholds—boys who would ordinarily never think of firing a weapon at their classmates—to join in the riot.


He disapproved of Adam Lanza, because he shot kindergartners at Sandy Hook instead of people his own age: “That’s just pathetic. Have some dignity, damn it.”

This model of a dialectic suggests that the narrative can be shaped, both by the individual reader and each actor. Can it also be shaped by the media? If these mass-murderers are portrayed as pathetic or deranged would that dissuade others from joining their ranks?
gandalf511 on Oct 13, 2015

gandalf511, I like the idea you’ve elaborated here, and it may work to at least some extent. One other hand, some of these kids are already iconoclasts who are marginalized and may not put much value or faith in a mainstream media representation. The tougher needle to thread is how to strike a middle ground that speaks to potential assailants?

🎧 ‘The Daily’: When Gun Violence Is a Daily Threat | The New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: When Gun Violence Is a Daily Threat by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com

As hundreds of thousands of demonstrators prepared to march in Washington in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., students on the South Side of Chicago felt sympathy, but also frustration.

Why hadn’t the gun violence in their community earned the nation’s outrage?



On today’s episode:

• Sameen Amin, a senior video producer at The New York Times.

Background coverage:

• Video: Ke’Shon Newman’s brother was shot and killed on the South Side of Chicago, where gun violence is a daily threat. He decided to join the march in Washington with high school students from Parkland, Fla.

• For some students who joined protests against gun violence over the weekend, bloodshed doesn’t come in isolated bursts of mass slaughter, it’s a constant urban reality.

• Highlights from the March for Our Lives: Students protesting guns say “enough is enough.”

👓 ‘The Daily’: ‘The Gunshine State’ | The New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: ‘The Gunshine State’ by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com
Florida is a friendly place for gun owners, and the N.R.A. and lawmakers have often blocked proposed restrictions. What changed after the Parkland shooting?

🎧 Amy Klobuchar | The Atlantic Interview

Listened to Amy Klobuchar by Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic Interview
Amy Klobuchar, the first woman to be elected U.S. Senator from Minnesota, has been been working faithfully toward little victories in Donald Trump's Washington. Now, she's turned her attention toward that unicorn of lawmakers all over the country--a sensible gun bill that can get around the National Rifle Association. She talks to the Atlantic's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg about how this time might be different, and why she is taking Donald Trump at his word. They also discuss her tater tot hotdish recipe.

👓 Mass shootings in the US: there have been 1,624 in 1,870 days | The Guardian

Read Mass shootings in the US: there have been 1,624 in 1,870 days by Sam Morris (the Guardian)
There is a mass shooting – defined as four or more people shot in one incident, not including the shooter – nine out of every 10 days on average

🎧 The Daily: Trump vs. the N.R.A. | The New York Times

Listened to Listen to ‘The Daily’: Trump vs. the N.R.A. by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com
The president stunned lawmakers with calls for gun control. Also, Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, is to step down.

🎧 The Daily: Guns and the Midterm Elections | The New York Times

Listened to Listen to ‘The Daily’: Guns and the Midterm Elections by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com
Will gun control be a dominant topic in races across the U.S.?

🎧 The Daily: The Day Their Childhood Ended | The New York Times

Listened to Listen to ‘The Daily’: The Day Their Childhood Ended by Michael Barbaro from nytimes.com
“I feel broken, I feel defeated. Right now on my mind, it’s not going to be fine.” Six students at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., spoke to a Times reporter.